On Saturday, April 1st 2023, at 5pm London time and 12pm New York time, the International Sándor Ferenczi Network (ISFN) will host a conversation dedicated to the recently published book Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe (Leuven University Press, 2023). The authors, Raluca Soreanu, Jakob Staberg, and Jenny Willner, will be in conversation with Adrienne Harris.
Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe presents the contribution of Sándor Ferenczi to a psychoanalytic theory of trauma and discusses the philosophical, political and clinical implications of Ferenczi’s thinking. Ferenczi’s work pluralises the notion of catastrophe, as being both destructive and a turning point. Ferenczi Dialogues addresses Ferenczi’s work in terms of thinking in times of crises, by considering contemporary situations in constellation with various scenes from the past: the outbreak of the First World War, the crisis of psychoanalysis as an institution, the crisis-ridden relation between Ferenczi and Freud, the rise of Fascism and National Socialism, and the impending exile of the founding members of the psychoanalytic movement. Against this backdrop, the authors discuss insurgent insights in Ferenczi’s theory and situate his legacy within a broad interdisciplinary landscape. Ultimately, the Ferenczi that we encounter in these pages is a Ferenczi of our times, ridden with questions about how to encounter the Other in an ethical manner.
The authors are in dialogue with one another, within three sets of triangular exchanges around the idea of catastrophe. Each set combines different disciplinary angles and methods: clinical psychoanalysis, history of science, literary theory, and philosophy. The first part explores the complex relation between Ferenczi and Freud, departing from a scene of missed encounter. It develops a Deleuzian reflection of the theoretical positions of Ferenczi and Freud, as it crystallised in the transference that developed between them. The second part presents a new reading of Thalassa. By analysing Ferenczi’s popular scientific sources it challenges the notion that Ferenczian ‘bioanalysis’ sought for a biological foundation for psychoanalysis: In a historical moment of danger, Thalassaintervenes in the ideologically charged debates over evolutionist thought. The third part examines Ferenczi’s ‘metapsychology of fragmented psyches’. For Ferenczi the catastrophe is not a single, unitary event, but a ‘scene’, where several elements hold together and interact. Proposing a phenomenological reading of the creativity of psychic fragments, the book discusses ten distinct ‘moments’ of the scene of trauma.
The authors will be in conversation with Adrienne Harris, who also wrote the preface of the book.
About the contributors:
Raluca Soreanu is a psychoanalyst, member of the Círculo Psicanalítico do Rio de Janeiro, and Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies at the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. Her work sits at the intersection of psychosocial studies, psychoanalysis, social theory and medical humanities. She has a particular interest in the social, political and cultural applications of psychoanalysis. She is the author of Working-through Collective Wounds: Trauma, Denial, Recognition in the Brazilian Uprising (Palgrave, 2018). Between 2022 and 2027, she is leading an interdisciplinary research project FREEPSY: Free Clinics and a Psychoanalysis for the People: Progressive Histories, Collective Practices, Implications for Our Times (UKRI Frontier Research Grant). She is an Academic Associate of the Freud Museum London and Editor of the Studies in the Psychosocial series at Palgrave.
Jakob Staberg is a practising psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, and a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He is an assistant professor for Comparative Literature and lecturer in Aesthetics at Södertörn University, south of Stockholm. Staberg is working in the field of aesthetics, literature, and psychoanalytic theory. He received his PhD in 2002 at Stockholm University. In 2009, Staberg published the monograph Sjukdomens estetik [The Aesthetics of Illness]. Staberg is currently working on a project that seeks to rethink the genealogy of psychoanalysis. In particular, he has devoted himself to the relationship between Freud and Ferenczi from the perspective of the problem of transference and as it is expressed in dream interpretation. He has published on this topic in the journal Psyche. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und ihre Anwendungen 5(74), 2020.
Jenny Willner is an assistant professor for Comparative Literature at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Her research is located at the intersection between literary theory, history of science, and psychoanalytic theory. She studied German Literature and Philosophy in Berlin and New York and earned her PhD at Freie Universität Berlin with the study Wortgewalt. Peter Weiss und die deutsche Sprache (Konstanz UP, 2014). In 2018, she organised the workshop Sándor Ferenczi. Interdisciplinary Approachesat the Center for Advanced Studies in Munich. Currently, she is completing her second monograph, which discusses the political dimension of phylogenetic speculation in Ferenczi and Freud. She has published on this topic in Psyche. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und ihre Anwendungen 11(74), 2020, in RISS. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse 94, 2020, and in Psychoanalysis and History 24(2), 2022.
Adrienne Harris, Ph.D., is Faculty and Supervisor at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is on the faculty and is a supervisor at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. Adrienne is an Editor at Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. In 2012, she, Lewis Aron, and Jeremy Safran established the Sándor Ferenczi Center at the New School University. In collaboration with Lew Aron, Eyal Rozmarin and Steven Kuchuck, Adrienne co-edits the Book Series Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis, a series now with over 100 published volumes. She is an editor of the IPA e-journal Psychoanalysistoday.com, which is developing cross cultural communications among the five language groups in the IPA. She has written on topics in gender and development, analytic subjectivity and self-care, primitive states and the analytic community in the shadow of the First World War. Her current work is on analytic subjectivity, on intersectional models of gender and sexuality, and on ghosts.
Join us on the day!
1 April 2023
5pm-7pm London Time
12pm-2pm New York Time
Online Event via Zoom
More information on how to register to this online event is found here.
