Seminar Series

All meetings are on Sundays at 10am PST / 1pm EST and run for about ninety minutes. In each seminar, we will first hear from a presenter as a full group, then discuss the readings all together.

We have a sliding scale for participants, ranging from the full fee of $400 to free. Please select what you can afford. Suggested donation for fully employed, non-contingent workers and students who want to partake in all three sections is $400. Participants are welcome to join for all or some of the following meetings, but you have the opportunity to select the specific sections you wish to attend. Once registered, you will receive zoom information and access to the readings. Your contributions will fund our the continuation of this programming, as well as Parapraxis magazine. Register for Seminar Four: “Security” here.

Seminar Four: Security

Security is among our earliest needs: a secure hand props up the head that cannot yet hold itself up. In the infant-maternal scene, security is the shape and scope of safety. Its original availability makes its eventual withdrawal possible and tolerable. Security, we are told, not only prefigures the quality of later attachments, but also the ability to move freely and without fear. And yet, in a different discursive frame, freedom of movement is precisely what security limits. The fantasy of a secure "inside" – the home, the population, the nation – is protected from breach by the enforcement limits that corroborate the existence of threat. Threading these two meanings together, this seminar will look at attachment theory, institutional psychotherapy, and the leaking of national secrets to understand the psychic life of security at every scale. On our website, you will find the syllabus with the full list of readings and presenters, including Inderpal Grewal, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Perwana Nazif, and more.

Part One: The Infant’s World

January 21:  Inner States

• Melanie Klein, “Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States”

• Presentation: M. Fakhry Davids, MSc (London Clinic of Psychoanalysis)

• Recording: Available here.

January 28: Holding, Containing, and the Cold War

• D.W. Winnicott, (1960) The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 41:585-595

• Bion, W. R. (1970) Container and Contained. Attention and Interpretation: A Scientific Approach to Insight in Psycho-Analysis and Groups 2:72-82

• Presentation: Hannah Zeavin (UC Berkeley)

• Recording: Available here.

February 4: Familial Security

• John Bowlby, “The Nature of the Child’s Tie to His Mother” (1958)

• Marga Vicdeo, “Putting Attachment in its place”, “Attachment Theory from Ethology to the Strange Situation.”

• Presenter: Marga Vicedo (University of Toronto)

• Recording: Available here.

Part Two: The Securitized Outside World

February 11: Security Regimes & Imperial Entanglements

• Samar Al-Bulushi, Sahana Ghosh, Inderpal Grewal, “Security Regimes: Transnational and Imperial Entanglements.” Annual Review of Anthropology. 2023 52:1, 205-221

• Samar Al-Bulushi, Sahana Ghosh, Inderpal Grewal; “Security from the South: Postcolonial and Imperial Entanglements.” Social Text 1 September 2022; 40 (3 (152)): 1–15

• Presentation: Inderpal Grewal (Yale University)

February 18: NO SESSION

February 25: Leaking, Secrecy, & Paranoia

• The Manning-Lamo Cables; Freud, The Schreber Case (selections)

• Presentation: Wendy Lotterman (University of Oslo)

• Recording: Available here.

March 03: Suffering and Security

• Jean Amery, At the Mind’s Limits

• Esther Benbassa, Suffering as Identity

• Presentation: Zoé Samudzi (Clark University)

• Recording: Available here.

Part Three: Security Within & Without

March 10: Places to Say

• Writings by François Tosquelles (selections); Joana Masó, François Tosquelles. Soigner les institutions (selections)

• Presentation: Perwana Nazif (University of Southern California)

• Recording: Available here.

March 17: Protection, Security, & The Child

Presentation: Emily Hoffman (Columbia University)

March 24: Securing the Soldier

• Nadia Abu El-Haj, Combat Trauma (selections)

• Presentation: Nadia Abu El-Haj (Columbia University)

• Recording: Available here.

Previous Seminars

Seminar Three: The Wish

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WISH.

Before we could formulate psychoanalytic theories of desire, anxiety, and drive, Freud knew we had to be careful what we wished for. This seminar looks to the wish, both in its psychoanalytic and revolutionary contexts, moving between the psychosocial and political questions of yearning, horizon, utopia, desire, and sex. On our website, you will find the syllabus with full list of readings and presenters, including Jacqueline Rose, Amber Jamilla Musser, Anna Kornbluh, Akshi Singh, and more.

Part One: Dream

September 10:  Repetition and the Wish

• Sigmund Freud, A Phylogenetic Fantasy

• Presentation: Jacqueline Rose (Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities)

September 17: The Wish & The Symbol

• “Fort Da,” in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, SE 18: 13-17

• “Neurosis is articulated speech”

• The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II. “The Ego in Freud’s Theory and the Technique of Psychoanalysis,” 1954-55. “The Dream of Irma’s Injection” , pp. 146-171.

• Presentation: Mitchell Wilson (San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis)

September 24: Dreams, Dissociation, Self-Determination

• Marion Milner, “The dream of water behind the house: Need for the self-created environment” (From The Hands of the Living God)

• Donald W. Winnicott, “Dreaming, Fantasying and Living: A Case-History Describing a Primary Dissociation”

• Presenter: Akshi Singh (University of Glasgow)

Part Two: Utopia

October 01: Utopian and Scientific

• Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe (selections)

• Robin DG Kelley, Freedom Dreams (selections)

• Presentation: Kevin Duong (University of Virginia)

October 08: Critical Utopianism

• Jameson, An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army:

  pages: 1-20, 40-47, 54-55, 58-60, 73-96

• Presentation: Anna Kornbluh (University of Illinois at Chicago)

October 15: Queer Utopia

• Jose Esteben Muñoz, Cruising Utopia (excerpts)

• Presentation: Damon Young (UC Berkeley)

Part Three: Sex

October 22: Wishing for What Hurts

• Lauren Berlant, Sex, or the Unbearable

• Mari Ruti, Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings (Selections)

• Sianne Ngai, “Envy”

• Presentation: Ronjaunee Chatterjee (Queen’s University)

October 29: Seduction

• Jean Laplanche, Gender, Sex, and the Sexual

• Presentation: Gila Ashtor (Columbia University / IPTAR)

November 5: The Problem of Individuation

• Thomas H. Ogden, “Ontological Psychoanalysis or “What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?”

• Presentation: Er Linsker (Private Practice)

November 19: The Pain of Pleasure / The Pleasure of Pain

• Frantz Fanon's “The Negro and Psychopathology” and Joan Riviere's “Womanliness as Masquerade”

• Presentation: Amber Jamilla Musser (CUNY Graduate Center)

Seminar Two: Possibilities of Repair

Reparation has long been held out as the goal of psychic work. This seminar troubles the question of repair by moving between the psycho- and socio-political questions of repair, reparations, and irreparability. The seminars engage old and new theories and critiques of repair to focus on its status in psychoanalysis and in society from a wide variety of disciplines: Freudian-Marxist critique, Black Study, Legal Studies, trauma studies, and the history of psychoanalysis. Below, we have arrayed a full list of readings and presenters, who include Frank Wilderson, Grace Lavery, Tobi Haslett, Nica Siegel, Rinaldo Walcott, Anthony Farley, and more.

Part One: Repair

February 12:  Psychic Reparation

• Melanie Klein, “Love, Guilt, and Reparation” (1937).

• Presentation: M. Fakhry Davids (London Clinic of Psychoanalysis)

• Recording available here.

February 26: Reparative Reading

• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Paranoid Reading, Reparative Reading” (1995).

• José Esteban Muñoz, “Feeling Brown, Feeling Down: Latina Affect, the Performativity of Race, and the Depressive Position” (2006).

• Presentation: Grace Lavery (UC Berkeley)

• Recording available here.

March 12: Racial Trauma and Adaptation

• Beverly Stoute, “Black Rage: The Psychic Adaptation to the Trauma of Oppression” (2021).

• Michelle A. Stephens, “We Have Never Been White: Afropessimism, Black Rage, and What the Pandemic Helped me Learn about Race (and Psychoanalysis)” (2022).

• Presentation: Michelle A. Stephens (Rutgers University)

Part Two: Irreparability

March 26: Repair vs Revolution

• Frantz Fanon, The Wretched Of The Earth (selections) (1961).

• Presentation: Nica Siegel (Amherst College)

April 9th: Afropessimism

• Frank Wilderson, “The Narcissistic Slave” in Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms (2010).

• Saidiya V. Hartman & Frank Wilderson in conversation: “The Position of the Unthought” (2003).

• Presentation: Frank Wilderson (University of California, Irvine)

April 23: Self-Recognition

• Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (selections) (2014).

• Presentation: Wayne Wapeemukwa (Penn State University)

Part Three: Reparations

May 7: Property

• Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness as Property” (1993)

• Presentation: Rinaldo Walcott (University of Toronto)

May 21: The Nation Question

• Harry Haywood, “The Negro Nation” (1948)

• Presentation: Tobi Haslett (Yale University)

June 4: Reconsidering Reparations

• Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Reconsidering Reparations (2021)

• Presentation: Alyssa Battistoni (Barnard College)

June 18: Etiology & Temporality

• Frantz Fanon, “Racism & Culture”

• Sandor Ferenczi, “Confusion of Tongues”

• Anthony Paul Farley, “Critical Race Theory & Marxism”

• Presentation: Anthony Farley (Albany Law School)

Seminar One: The Family Problem

The first myth Freud sought to dismantle was that of the family. Yet within much of psychoanalysis as it is practiced, the family remains the fundamental—and exclusive—unit of analysis. The seminars engage old and new critiques of the family to focus on its status in psychoanalysis and in society from a wide variety of disciplines: sociology of the family, theories of family liberation, Freudian-Marxist critique, and the history of psychoanalysis. Below, we have arrayed a full list of readings and presenters, who include Fred Moten, Gabriel Winant, Sophie Lewis, R.A. Judy, Donald Moss, Fakhry Davids, Daniel Tutt, Lara Sheehi, Poulomi Saha, M.E. O’Brien, Anna Fishzon, and more.

Part One: Classic Psychoanalysis

May 8:  Family Romances (I)

• Sigmund Freud (1909) “Family Romances”

• ––––— (1913) “The Origin of Exogamy and Its Relation to Totemism,” from Totem and Taboo

• Presentation: Donald Moss, MD (Psychoanalyst, NYPSI & SFCP)

• Video available here.

May 22: Family Complexes

• Jacques Lacan (1938) Family Complexes in the Formation of the Individual (selections)

• ––––— (1969) “Oedipus and Moses and The Father of the Horde,” from The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, Seminar XVII 

• Presentation: Anna Fishzon, PhD, LP (Psychoanalyst, IPTAR)

• No video available.

June 5: Colonialism and the Family

• Frantz Fanon (1959) “The Algerian Family,” from A Dying Colonialism

• ––––— (1952) “The Lived Experience of the Black Man,” from Black Skin, White Masks

• Presentation: Lara Sheehi, PsyD (Professional Psychology Program, George Washington University)

• Video available here.

June 19: Object Relations: The Mother-Child Dyad

• D. W. Winnicott (1960) “The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship,” from The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment

• Melanie Klein (1961) Narrative of A Child Analysis (selections)

• Presentation: M. Fakhry Davids, MSc (London Clinic of Psychoanalysis)

• Video available here.

July 3: Object Relations: The Group

• W. R. Bion (1970) “The Mystic and the Group,” from Attention and Interpretation

• Presentation: Fred Moten, PhD (Department of Performance Studies, New York University)

• Video available here.

Part Two: Capitalism and the Revolutionary Horizon

July 17: Class and the Family

• Friedrich Engels (1884) The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (selections)

• Wally Seccombe (1993) Weathering the Storm (selections)

• Presentation: Gabriel Winant, PhD (Department of History, University of Chicago)

• Video available here.

July 31: Social Reproduction and Rebellion

• Alexandra Kollontai (1920) “Communism and the Family”

• Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James (1972) “The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community”

• Presentation: M. E. O’Brien, PhD, LMSW

• Video available here.

August 14: Black Feminisms

• Angela Y. Davis (1972) “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves”

• Hortense J. Spillers (1987) “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book”

• Tiffany Lethabo King (2018) “Black ‘Feminisms’ and Pessimism: Abolishing Moynihan’s Negro Family”

• Presentation: Che Gossett, PhD (Post Doc, Center for Contemporary Critical Thought at Columbia University)

• Video only available for registered participants.

August 28: Family Abolition (I)

• Madeline Lane-McKinley (2018) “The Idea of Children”

• Sophie Lewis (2022) Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation

• Presentation: Sophie Lewis, PhD

• Video available here.

September 11: Family Abolition (II)

• Kathi Weeks (2021) “Abolition of the Family: The Most Infamous Feminist Proposal"

• M. E. O’Brien (2019) “To Abolish the Family: The Working-Class Family and Gender Liberation in Capitalist Development”

• Presentation: Madeline Lane-McKinley, PhD (University of California at Santa Cruz)

• Video available here.

Part Three: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Theory

September 25: Family as Haven?

• Christopher Lasch (1977) “Authority and the Family,” from Haven in a Heartless World

• Juliet Mitchell (2013) “Siblings: Thinking Theory”

• Presentation: Hannah Zeavin, PhD (Department of History, University of California at Berkeley)

• Video available here.

October 9: Psychoanalysis and The Politics of the Family

• Daniel Tutt (2022) Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Family (selections).

• Presentation: Daniel Tutt, PhD (Department of Philosophy, George Washington University)

October 23: The Mystic Family

• Fred Moten (2019) “The Mystic Group”

• Presentation: R. A. Judy, PhD (Department of Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Pittsburgh)

November 6: Family Romances (II)

• Jacqueline Rose (2018) Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty (selections)

• Ken Corbett (2001) “The Non-Traditional Family Romance”

• Presentation: Alex Colston, MA

November 20: Psychoanalysis, Race, and the Family

• Hortense J. Spillers (1996) “‘All the Things You Could Be by Now, If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother’: Psychoanalysis and Race”

• Presentation: Poulomi Saha, PhD (Department of English, University of California at Berkeley)