Hem / Att delta i NSU / Förslag till nya studiekretsar / 2010 / D. Psychoanalysis and Politics

Psychoanalysis and politics

webpage: www.psa-pol.org

E-MAIL: psychoanalysis.politics[at]gmail.com

Coordinators/organizers:

Lene Auestad is a Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Oslo. She lives in London and writes on psychoanalysis and ethics/political theory. She is affiliated with the Centre for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities, Oslo, and has followed courses at the Institute of Psychoanalysis, London.
E-mail: lene.auestad[at]gmail.com

Håvard Friis Nilsen, former Research Fellow in intellectual history at the University of Oslo (1999-2005), writing on the history of psychoanalysis in Norway. Visiting Scholar at the History and Philosophy of Science Dept., University of Cambridge 2000-01. Today he is the director of the think tank Res Publica.
E-mail: havard.nilsen[at]respublica.no

Karl Eldar Evang is a psychologist (cand. Psychol.) from the University of Oslo, and psychoanalyst. He is a board member of the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society, and editor of their journal Cathexis.
E-mail: karl.eldar.evang[at]gmail.com

Jonathan Davidoff is a Postgraduate Student in Psychotherapy at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London.
Email: jondoff[at]hotmail.com

Organizing committee: Mikkel Astrup (Norway/UK), Joel Backström (Finland), Karl Figlio (UK), Jane Frances (UK), Tomas Jansson (Sweden), Hannes Nykänen (Finland), Linda Lund Pedersen (UK) and René Rasmussen (Denmark).

1. AIM OF THE PROPOSAL

2. CENTRAL POINTS OF DEPARTURE:

a. Transference, authority and power

b. Ambivalence and identity

c. After the Holocaust: transmission of trauma in post-war zones

d. Projective identification, containment and social defences

e. Critique of social identities: feminism and psychoanalysis

3. THE NSU WINTER SYMPOSIUM IN COPENHAGEN 2010

4. SYMPOSIA PLANNED

5. ORGANISING COMMITEE

6. SIGNATORIES IN SUPPORT OF THE PROPOSAL

7. SOME RELEVANT JOURNALS

8. SELECTED LITERATURE

9. ABOUT THE COORDINATORS/ORGANIZERS

1. AIM OF THE PROPOSAL    

The aim of this proposal is to gather a prominent number of experts in the field of psychoanalysis, to address how crucial contemporary political issues may be fruitfully analyzed and addressed through psychoanalytic theory. In the Nordic countries, we have a strong tradition of psychoanalysis, both at the universities and as professional clinical therapists, with analysts having taken part in public debates for half a century. But today, analysts and scholars interested in psychoanalytic theory find themselves marginalized in many quarters, just as psychoanalysis in general has been marginalized for decades. This marginalized position, however, may become a strength of an NSU-circuit. We believe that after decades of a general anti-Freudian climate, an NSU-circuit on psychoanalysis and politics may create an important space for intellectual exchange that will attract attention and interest not only from the Nordic countries, but worldwide. The overwhelming response to our call for papers to the winter symposium in Copenhagen (see below), seems to indicate that this may be the case. We received papers from UK, Germany, Hungary, USA, Mexico, in addition to the Nordic countries.

In our opinion, psychoanalysis represents a rich theoretical and practical tradition, which contains a reservoir of insights of relevance for social and political theory. Since its early days, psychoanalytic thinking moved beyond the consulting room to engage in a critique of instrumental reason, and a questioning of what constitute valid notions of freedom, reason and a good life. Questions of identity, authority, emotional ambivalence or construction of nationalism and cultural inferiority are all pervasively studied by psychoanalytically informed scholars.

We invite theoretical contributions and historical, literary or clinical case studies from philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, literary theorists, historians and others, welcoming perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools. Our project aims to coordinate, through the NSU organization, many of the most prominent psychoanalytic theorists and challenge them to address the relevance of psychoanalysis for present-day politics.

2. CENTRAL POINTS OF DEPARTURE

In what follows, we give some indications of how psychoanalytic thinking has been and can be employed to engage with political and social issues in our current social formations. These are by no means intended to be exhaustive but merely to give some pointers towards the potential relevance of these theories and their inherent metaphors and conceptual tools. 

2 a. TRANSFERENCE, AUTHORITY AND POWER

One of Freud’s most important contributions to an original understanding of power and authority lies in the concept of transference. Through transference relations, we endow another person or an institution with particular qualities, and embed them in expectations of authority, often irrational. Freud explored the foundations of authority and power, and the emotional component and ties in all social relations. When beginning to analyse transference, Freud questioned the legitimacy of power, including his own: “instead of remaining an obscure authority motivating his patients through irrational emotion, Freud moved his authority out into the open. Freud made an issue of his authority itself” (Abramson, 1984). Abramson correctly points to the potential of an analysis of transference for a questioning of power. Though almost totally neglected in contemporary political discourse, these concepts may illuminate many significant political phenomena; the American presidential campaigns is but one example of how a person through transference may be endowed with almost mythical, messianic qualities. The media-coordinated production of transference relations on a grand public scale is conspicuously prevalent in our time. Understanding the phenomenon of transference is important to any investigation of authority, whether it be e.g. feminist or constructivist in nature. An unmasking of transference and of interpersonal projective processes is thus a centrally important tool for social criticism.

2 b. AMBIVALENCE AND IDENTITY

Psychoanalysis has been a central element in 20th century social and political theory and discourse, ranging from the Frankurt school to Michel Foucault or Edward Saïd. The relevance of psychoanalysis as a political tool lies in its deconstructive eye towards all forms of pure identities: whether it be families, genders, nations, religions or classes. Psychoanalysis is a theory with a keen eye for the presence of ambivalence in personal or social/cultural totalities, as well as for the dangers inherent in all social identity formation; groups of “us” and “them”. In a political climate where the dream of simple, safe and pure totalities seems to be rising, the relevance of psychoanalytic critique is increasing.
When Edward Saïd was dying from cancer, he spent his last efforts on writing an essay on Freud and the question of identity, where Saïd claimed that Freud’s essay Moses and monotheism contained a key to a possible peaceful solution in the Middle East. A moving tribute to a Jewish intellectual from the foremost Palestinian one, Saïd’s text expressed a homage to Freud’s undermining of the strict separation between Jewish and Arabic identities.
In the late 1930's, although Freud was gravely ill, he was sufficiently disturbed by the evidence of the antisemitism of his surroundings to concentrate his last efforts on attempting to grasp the phenomenon in Moses and Monotheism (1939 [1934-38]). At the same time, he was grappling with his own state of being torn between belonging and nor belonging as a Jew. A central contribution of an ethics of psychoanalysis can be seen to lie in this refusal to settle comfortably the notion of identity, revealing how claims for national and racial purity upon closer examination always break down. Freud's emphasis on the role of ambivalence in human emotional life, in close relations as well as towards leaders and other group members adds a new dimension to social analysis, inviting us to look beyond the manifest display of emotion to question the substance of groups and institutions. As Rose (2007) points out, Freud's (1921) choice of the church and the army as illustrations of mass formations is radical in the sense of cutting across a distinction between (rational and constructive) groups and (dangerous, unruly) masses. The emotional ties that hold people together give rise to the highest cultural achievement as well as to destructiveness on a massive scale. Freud's explorations of the theme of the ambiguity that lies at the core of identity in the context of social bonds (1912-13) and antisemitism (1939 [1934-38]) have not lost their relevance today. Related phenomena in contemporary society include demonization of Islam, as well as a new antisemitism related to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

2 c. AFTER THE HOLOCAUST: TRANSMISSION OF TRAUMA IN POST-WAR ZONES

Psychoanalysis has been a vital theoretical impulse in understanding the emotional consequences of war, both on an individual and on a collective level. Psychoanalytic researchers in post-war zones or post-war groups have addressed reactions of guilt, shame, repression, shock, from Germany to the Balkan states.

After the Holocaust, a new urgency to understand the recent social and political collapse was felt, and psychoanalytic thinking was taken up as a relevant tool, in particular by members of the Frankfurt School of critical theory.  In Dialectic of Enlightenment antisemitism is described as being based on a 'false projection' which renders the environment as similar to itself, "confuses the inner and outer world and defines the most intimate experiences as hostile" ([1944]1997). The description can be seen to echo Freud's analysis in The Uncanny of formerly familiar, but repressed fantasies and fears that have been projected and appear as alien and frightening in external figures. A loss in richness of external perception is accompanied by a loss in the inner depth of the subject, a loss to the ego is reflected in a loss in experience of the object. When recording given facts without investing them with subjective meaning through interpretation, the ego shrinks due to lack of nourishment. It loses the ability to differentiate; "When the subject is no longer able to return to the object what he has received from it, he becomes poorer rather than richer" ([1944]1997). The process of rigid overinvestment of unintegrated meaning to the outer world fails to return an experience of fuller meaning.

A central analysis engaging with the effects of the Holocaust was Alexander and Margrete Mitscherlich's The Inability to Mourn (1975) where it was argued that Germans, by mobilizing great shared defences against guilt, shame and anxiety, avoided psychological association with Hitler and the Nazis. Only isolated regrets for one's own losses were permitted. Since mourning the loss of the Third Reich would have necessitated a confrontation with what the regime had done to its victims, the Mitserlichs' concluded that German society had blocked a process of mourning of the loss of its victims – the experiences were never really confronted.

In Israel, Rafael Moses (1993) argued that an Israeli reaction to aspects of the Holocaust was a deep sense of shame, and those who were not directly affected seemed to wish not to be too closely aware of what had taken place. The 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann represented a turning point in the process of relinquishing the widespread denial. More recently, the Israeli analyst Ilany Kogan (1995) has written about her therapeutic work with descendants of Holocaust survivors, describing how shattering experiences have been unconsciously transmitted to the second and third generation and how the therapeutic process reinstalls hope of letting go of overwhelming guilt and restore an ability to trust and experience love and intimacy. The psychoanalytic material on post-war traumas is of relevance for understanding national responses, but also for individual reactions in whole collectives of refugees and migratory groups.

2 d. PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION, CONTAINMENT AND SOCIAL DEFENCES

Our contemporary Western society is characterized by ever-growing commercial and public institutions, and a lot of our adult lives are lived within the workspace of a collective institution. To most of us, an understanding of the psychological processes within these forms of collective institutions is a pressing political question. Within the tradition of British object relations theory related to the Tavistock Institute, Elliot Jaques described how he had been struck by how institutions are employed by their individual members to strengthen their defence mechanisms. "It is as though," he wrote, "the members of groups unconsciously place parts of the contents of their deep inner lives outside themselves and pool these parts into the emotional life of the group," postulating unconscious collaboration between individuals in an attempt to relieve their anxieties; Where Freud discussed individual neuroses and cultural taboos as reaction-formations against emotional ambivalence, Jaques was concerned with defences against paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxiety as described by Melanie Klein; the fear of dying experienced as persecution in the paranoid-schizoid position, and the fear, of having caused damage to another in the depressive position. In social usage of projective and introjective identification other group members are introjected and become parts of one's inner world. As occupants of societal roles, people are allowed as well as required to take impulses and objects projected by others into themselves and to identify with them; to take on the qualities of the object they have absorbed. Thus, in addition to a manifest and consciously agreed form and content, an institution has a level of a phantasy content and form, which remains unconscious, avoided, denied and unidentified by its members (1955). Isabel Menzies Lyth's (1960) study of the situation of nurses in a training hospital has become a modern classic within this tradition. She described how the objective features of the nurses' work had a peculiar capacity to arouse early anxiety situations. The strong feelings the work gave rise to were countered by forceful and rigid defences, which in turn prevented the development and modification of these feelings. A failure of containment, a rigid container, entails an unprocessed remainder of raw, 'unthinkable' and incommunicable affect. On the border between the mental and the physical, this remainder can become deposited in individuals as physical or psychic disease or passed on as attacks between them. This perspective allows for a clearer view of phenomena such as polarization and exclusion in social relations.

2 e. CRITIQUE OF SOCIAL IDENTITIES: FEMINISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

Juliet Mitchell's (1974) rehabilitation of psychoanalysis within the field of feminist theory was initially triggered by the hostility of American feminism to Freud. She went to the States in 1964 and met with Marxist-feminist groups where the prevailing ban on women's sexual enjoyment was opposed and where the strong lesbian part of the women's movement began. From having regarded Freud as a sexual liberator these groups had moved to seeing Freud as an arch-patriarch. Always having found dialectic materialism valuable – "as a habit of mind, if people are making a noise about somebody being absolutely the intellectual opposition, the thing that we must all attack, you begin to think there must be something in that for them to be bothering", Mitchell read through Freud and emerged with a conviction of how a social analysis of sexuality could be added to a wider social analysis of economy, social actions, and classes. Through psychoanalysis one could get to ideology, in particular its reflection on the unconscious level. "Freud's account," she argued, "opens up ways in which we can think about why 'gender' conservatism persists in the face of change; why, indeed, the other side of progress seems always to be reaction."
Feminist psychoanalytic thinking has further developed on the one hand within object-relations theory, focused on how gender is created and developed within social relationships, and within the Lacanian tradition, focused on how gender is established in language, the symbolic. Chodorow, a prominent exponent of the former tradition, aiming to understand how gender identity is socially reproduced, has been criticized by Lacanian feminists for replacing a biological with a social determinism. The aim of the latter has been to employ a critical reading of Lacan to display how the unconscious constantly opposes social identity categories such as gender. Conversely, object-relations theorists criticize Lacanians for the analyses' level of abstraction and generality, regarding the theory as less fit for grasping the qualities of concrete, lived relationships.
Poststructural feminism has partially acknowledged its affinity to the psychoanalytic emphasis on the ambiguity and multiplicity of meaning formation, and partially rejected a relation to a layer beyond discourse and performativity. As Bjerrum-Nielsen (2007) points out, Butler's arguments to the effect that gender results from, rather than causes, discursive practices are equivocal as to whether they intend to affirm the embeddedness of subjectivity in cultural relations and structures of meaning, which would be compatible with psychoanalysis, or to reject the psychoanalytic presumption of an inner world altogether.
Butler's critique of substantialism, in line with psychoanalytic descriptions of how the unconscious undermines our socially construed identities and our everyday agentic self-conceptions, provides a lasting contribution to social theory. In her words: "You only trust those who are absolutely like yourself, those who have signed a pledge of allegiance to this particular identity. Is that person really Jewish, maybe they're not so Jewish. I don't know if they're really Jewish. Maybe they're self-hating. Is that person lesbian? I think maybe they had a relationship with a man. What does that say about how true their identity was? I thought I can't live in a world in which identity is being policed in this way." This line of critique, together with Jewish traditions of public mourning and a psychoanalytically informed ethic emphasizing a capacity to mourn, famously articulated in the Mitscherlich's book, have informed her more recent work. The question: "What is the condition under which we fail to grieve others?" links queer politics with the Israel-Palestine conflict – "Certain lives become grievable … and highly valuable – and others are understood as ungrievable because they are understood as instruments of war, or they are understood as outside the nation, outside religion, or outside that sense of belonging which makes for a grievable life."

3. THE NSU WINTER SYMPOSIUM IN COPENHAGEN, 19th –21st MARCH 2010

The ad hoc winter symposium entitled 'Exclusion and the Politics of Representation' posed the question of how psychoanalysis can be used to think about the invisible and subtle processes of power over symbolic representation, in the context of stereotyping and dehumanization: What forces govern the state of affairs that determine who is an 'I' and who is an 'it' in the public sphere?

The call for papers was sent to a wide range of academic institutions in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark as well as to some university departments in the UK. The initiative received very warm support from The Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society and The Danish Psychoanalytical Society. We received a total of 38 abstracts, within the deadline for proposals of December 1st 2009, thus even some very good abstracts had to be rejected. 17 abstracts were selected, encompassing a rather tight three-day programme. Just before the symposium three speakers were forced to cancel, so that the final programme consisted of 14 papers, representing a variety of theoretical approaches.

Copenhagen was decided upon as a venue due to the city's cultural tradition and closeness to the European continent. We also wished to pay tribute to the Danish critic and scholar Georg Morris Cohen Brandes (1842-1927), the founder of Cultural Radicalism in Scandinavia. A large number of people signed up for or declared their interest in the symposium. The total number of participants was 31. 21 were from Scandinavia; 9 from Norway, 4 from Sweden and 8 from Denmark. The total number of women was 12, the number of men 19. For the full programme and list of participants, see www.psa-pol.org.

The event was on the whole highly successful, including several papers of a very high quality. In a final summing up session, it was declared that although the programme was demanding in terms of the number of papers included, one left the conference room feeling energized. The general view appeared to be that such a meeting between different psychoanalytical approaches, this genuine openness towards other perspectives, was rare and very much appreciated.

The participants gave voice to a high level of moral support for the project; it was very clear that many wanted the project to carry on and to be invited back to future conferences. Several ideas for maintaining and creating for debates such as these were mentioned. The symposium had a large number of international participants, which was essential to the high academic level of the papers presented. Thus this project needs to continue with a large share of participants from outside of Scandinavia to create a vital forum for stimulating and challenging academic exchange.

We are working on the compilation of an edited volume for publication based on the papers presented at the conference.

4. SYMPOSIA PLANNED:

Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Environment

The economic imperative to exploit the environment overwhelms an ethical attitude towards it.  The politics of this exploitation bring out deep conflicts between exploitation and preservation, as in the deforestation of rain forests for lumber and creating grazing land; or the melting of arctic tundra by heat from oil pipelines; or the burning of fossil fuels without regard for global warming.  At the same time, movements to protect the environment according to an 'imperative of responsibility' (Hans Jonas) are often thought to be sentimental, ignorant of economic reality. If we take the Gulf of Mexico disaster, there is outrage, which is fully justified, but also does ignore the seemingly callous judgements that have to be made: a) to satisfy the American demand for oil; b) to assess the ways in which the environment will or won't recover. This sort of conflict, of conviction against conviction, suggests an unconscious, primitive state of mind, in which the environment is quite different from what it appears to be on the surface.  This territory is psychoanalytic, and it remains curiously unexplored, yet properly apocalyptic and in urgent need of exploration that would deepen debate.

Psychoanalysis, Literature and Politics

Literature in its broadest sense, that is, understood as a discursive practice, is one of the fields par excellence where subjective positions are produced. Thus, in literature political stands are articulated, revealed, problematised, dwelled. From Wilde to Bataille, from Woolf to Roy; just to name a few paradigmatic authors, there is certainly a vast political universe in literature which is resistant to exhaustion. Insofar as politics deals ultimately with the discourse that is produced in the intersubjective relation, it can be psychoanalytically interrogated as well. This encompasses manifold subjects to interrogate: those who engage in the writing-reading of the text, those present in the context or those who emerge in the trespassing of the aforementioned limits. This symposium aims to offer readings and counter-readings of this relation in the domain of the political, the psychoanalytic and the literary (both theoretical and non-theoretical; i.e. Psychoanalytic theoretical and non-theoretical literature, Fiction and non-fiction, novel, prose and poetry).

The History of the Bodily Fluids

In Stanley Kubrick’s classic film Dr. Strangelove, the psychotic cold-war general who single-handedly launches a nuclear attack on Russia, sends a telegram to the President of the USA: "If God’s willing, we will prevail, and will protect our precious bodily fluids." The general confides that he believes the bodily fluids sperm and blood to be the very locus of masculine, racial and cultural authority and power. In his psychoanalytic text The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Wilhelm Reich discusses how the myth of the pure blood lies at the core of fascist ideology, and is not necessarily a particular German idea: In the French progressive national anthem La Marseillaise, the "impure blood" denote the ones that are not part of the national brotherhood and fatherland. In Harry Potter, the "mudbloods" indicate the ones that do not come from pure magical families. Examples abound as to how bodily fluids have formed the basis of power structures, and lines of distribution and redistribution. The bodily fluids are often employed in calls for action or social unity in times of strife, as in Winston Churchill’s appeal to the nation through "blood, sweat and tears." The bodily fluids are also central in terms of human bonding. The mother’s milk is a source of primary bonding and orality, and absolutely crucial in Freud’s oeuvre. Fluids may express emotional states: disgust and spit are closely related. Mourning, grief, sadness or despair may all be expressed through tears.
This symposium invites psychoanalytic perspectives on the cultural history of the bodily fluids, in an exploration of the social and political dimensions of human liquidity.

We have chosen not to fix all the themes of the symposia in advance. Some other themes we are considering are:

Psychoanalysis and nationalism

Psychoanalysis and ethics

Sexuality, gender and social identities

Transference and politics in modern society

Psychoanalysis and totalitarian regimes

We remain open to suggestions for future themes from our participants.

5. ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Mikkel Astrup, Research Fellow, Dep. of Literature, University of Oslo – mikkel.astrup[at]hf.uio.no – Norway/UK.

Joel Backström, FD, Postdoctoral Researcher in Philosophy, Helsingfors/Helsinki University – jbackstr[at]abo.fi– Finland.

Karl Figlio, Professor, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex and Psychotherapist – kfiglio[at]essex.ac.uk – UK.

Jane Frances, Policy Adviser in Education, Changing Faces, London, PhD Candidate, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex – janefrances[at]gmx.com – UK.

Tomas Jansson, Leg. Psychotherapist – tomas.jansson[at]vgregion.se – Sweden.

Hannes Nykänen, Postdoctoral Researcher, Philosophy, Åbo University – hannes.nykanen[at]abo.fi – Finland.

Linda Lund Pedersen, PhD student London School of Economics and Political Science – sursol[at]gmail.com – UK.

René Rasmussen, Lecturer, Department of Literature, University of Copenhagen – reneras[at]hum.ku.dk – Denmark.

6. SIGNATORIES IN SUPPORT OF THE PROPOSAL

Ylva Ahremark, Candidate DPAS – Sweden.

David Bell, President Elect British Psychoanalytic Society, from 10th of July 2010: President British Psychoanalytic Society – UK.

Jon Rostgaard Boiesen, Research Fellow, Dep. of Philosophy, University of Aarhus – Denmark.

Julia Borossa, Director of Programmes in Psychoanalysis, Health and Social Sciences, Middlesex University – UK.

Zoé Castoriadis, Architect, conceil d'administration Association Castoriadis, Paris – France.

Fakhry Davids Psychoanalyst and Conductor of Group Relations Conferences, Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities – UK.

Ferenc Eros Professor, Doctoral School of Psychology, postgraduate programme in psychoanalytic theory, University of Pécs – Hungary.

Karl Eldar Evang, Psychoanalyst, Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society – Norway.

Karl Figlio Professor, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex and Psychotherapist – UK.

Haakon Flemmen, Research Fellow, Intellectual History, University of Oslo, Editor of ARR, Norwegian Journal of the History of Ideas – Norway.

Olivier Fréssard Philosopher, conceil d'administration Association Castoriadis, Paris – France. 

Stephen Frosh, Professor of Psychology and Pro-Vice-Master, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, London – UK.

Andrea Gabler, Sociologist, PhD, Department of Political Sciences of Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen – Germany.

Stathis Gourgouris, Professor, Director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) – USA.

Siri Gullestad, Professor of Psychology, University of Oslo, Psychoanalyst, Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society – Norway. 

Wendy Hollway, Professor of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University – UK.

Martyn Housden, Reader in Modern History, University of Bradford – UK.

John Fred Humphrey, Assistant Professor, North Carolina Agricultural and Technological State University, Department of Liberal Studies/Division of University Studies – USA.

Arne Jemstedt, MD, President Swedish Psychoanalytical Association – Sweden.

Tomas V. Kajokas, MD, PhD, Vilnius Society of Psychoanalyst/Study group – Lithuania.

Sølvi Kristiansen, President, Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society – Norway.

Lynne Layton, Editor, 'Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society', Psychoanalyst in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts; BIDMC Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School – USA.

Tove Mathiesen, M.D., Group Analyst, President, Danish Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy – Denmark.

Iréne Matthis, Professor of Psychoanalysis, Ass. prof. clinical neurscience, Umeå University – Sweden.

Calum Neill, Lecturer in Critical Psychology, Edinburg Napier University – UK

Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen, Professor, Centre for Advanced Study/University of Oslo (prev. Director, Centre for Gender Studies, Un. Of Oslo) – Norway.

Anders Ramsay, Lecturer in Sociology, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, University of Örebro – Sweden.

Peter Redman, PhD, Department of Sociology, The Open University and editor, 'Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society' – UK.

Berit Reisel, Psychologist, Oslo, Chairman of the Board, Centre for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities, Oslo – Norway.

Paul Ries, Practising psychotherapist, Researcher in Scandinavian Studies, Darwin College, Cambridge – UK.

Elisabeth Rohr, Professor für Interkulturelle Erziehung, Institut fuer Schulpaedagogik, Philipps-Universitaet Marburg – Germany.

Bent Rosenbaum President, Danish Psychoanalytical Society – Denmark.

Mats Rosengren, PhD, Philosophy, Professor in Rhetorics, Södertörn University – Sweden.

Yannis Stavrakakis, Associate Professor, School of Political Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Contributing Editor, 'Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society' – Greece.

Fotis Theodoridis, Lecturer in Economy, Södertörns Högskola – Sweden.

Sverre Varvin, Senior Researcher, Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress studies, Oslo, President, Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society until March 2010 – Norway.

Arne Johan Vetlesen, Professor of Philosophy, IFIKK, University of Oslo – Norway.

Harald Wolf, PD Dr., Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut Göttingen (SOFI), Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen – Germany.

7. SOME RELEVANT JOURNALS

Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society is the official journal of the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society. The journal critically addresses the intersection between psychoanalysis and the social world and explores the roles psychoanalysis might play in bringing about social justice and progressive social change.
Editors: Lynne Layton and Peter Redman. Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan.

Psychoanalysis & History is devoted both to the study of the history of psychoanalysis and the application of psychoanalytic ideas to historiography, thus forming a bridge between the academic study of history and psychoanalysis.
Editor: John Forrester. Publisher: Edinburgh University Press.

Journal of Social and Psychological Sciences publishes articles, reviews and original empirical research within the social sciences scope. Also publishes material concerned with psychosocial interventions for contemporary psychological issues. It serves as a forum where academics can express their thoughts and views about the current state of research within the Psycho-social umbrella.
Editors: Mauro Ramos D.J. Pereira, Shadreck Mwale and Phithizela Ngcobo . Publisher: Oxford Mosaic Publications.

THALASSA is the journal of the Sándor Ferenczi Society, Budapest. An interdisciplinary journal devoted to free investigations in psychoanalysis, culture and society. Thalassa has roots in the historical traditions of Hungarian psychoanalysis, but is not committed to any particular school or authority. The journal welcomes all original contributions, historical, theoretical, or critical, dealing with the common problems of psychoanalysis and the humanities.
Editors: Tihamér Bakó, Antal Bókay, Ferenc Eros (editor-in-chief), György Péter Hárs, György Hidas, Robert Kramer, Judit Mészáros, Júlia Vajda.

Divan is a Swedish journal of culture and psychoanalysis. It publishes texts in different genres but with a psychoanalytic or psychoanalytically informed starting point.
Editors: Cecilia Annell, Clarence Crafoord, Carin Franzén, Anna Fröberg, Agnes Mesterton, Barbro Sigfridsson, John Swedenmark, Bengt Warren, Nina Weibull, Maria Yassa.

Sitegeist - A Journal of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy, is a biennial peer-reviewed journal. In the field of psychoanalysis and philosophy, it offers a space for thinking, for questioning, for change and ultimately perhaps Geist – in English, variously: spirit, mind, intellect; and in its plural form, Geister: wit, genius and morale. It is committed to exploring the extended field of psychoanalytic thinking and engaging with the traditions of European thought.
Editors: Peter Wood, Kirsty Hall, Stephen Gee and Philip Derbyshire.

Journal of Psycho-Social Studies is a free e-Journal, recently re-launched with new editors, a new rationale and new kinds of content. As the discipline of psychosocial studies in all its diversity is flourishing, with conferences, publications and practices thriving, it offers a resource for debate, sharing work, airing issues and developing a resource for the subject area. The journal aims to cross disciplines and professional categories, draw on arts and intuition, science and social theory, the internal world and the political context.
Editors: Liz Frost and Helen Lucey.

8. SELECTED LITERATURE: 

Abramson, J.B. (1984) Liberation and its Limits. The Moral and Political Thought of Freud. New York: The Free Press.

Adorno, T.W. & Horkheimer, M. ([1944]1997) Dialectic of Enlightenment, London, New York: Verso.

Adorno, T.W./Frenkel-Brunswik, E./Levinson, D.J./Sanford, R.N. (1950) The Authoritarian Personality, NY: Harper & Brothers.

Ash, Mitchell G. (2010): Psychoanalyse in totalitären und autoritären Regimes, Brandes & Apsel: Vienna 2010.

Benjamin, J. (1988) The Bonds of Love, London: Pantheon

Bion, W. R. (1959) "Attacks on Linking" in Second Thoughts. London: Karnac Books.

Brecht, K. et al eds. (1985) 'Here Life Goes On In a Most Peculiar Way': Psychoanalysis before and after 1933. London: Kellner.

Brunner, J. (1994) Freud and the Politics of Psychoanalysis. WileyBlackwell.

Butler, J. (1997) The Psychic Life of Power. Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Butler, J. (2004) Precarious Life. The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London/New York: Verso.

Castoriadis, C. (1997) The Imaginary Institution of Society: Creativity and Autonomy in the Social-historical World. Polity Press.

Castoriadis, C. (2004/2007) Figures of the Thinkable. Stanford University Press.

Chodorow, N. J. (2. rev ed. 1999) The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. California: University of California Press.

Dalal, F. (2002) Race, Colour and the Processes of Racialization, London: Routledge.

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