Lizaveta van Munsteren

INVITED TALKS & PROJECTS

2024

van Munsteren, L. ‘Psychoanalysis for all: public engagement and educational activity of the Ambulatorium in Vienna 1920-30s’. The European Society for the History of the Human Sciences (ESHHS) conference, University of Essex, June 2024.

van Munsteren, L. ‘Learning from free clinics: psychosocial implications for the psychoanalytic clinic’. Association for Psychosocial Studies and Association for Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society joint conference. St Mary’s University Twickenham, June 2024.

van Munsteren, L. ‘Transitions’, (Panel ‘Psychoanalytic Free Clinics and Care Infrastructures: Practices and Utopias’), ‘Caring Futures: Contradictions, Transformation, and Revolutionary Possibilities’ Conference, The American University of Paris, France, 29 May 2024.

2023

van Munsteren, L. ‘On Psychoanalytic Position Within Patriarchy. An intervention, ‘Money and Psychoanalysis: Economies of Care’ Conference, The Freud Museum, London, 13-14 October 2023. https://www.freud.org.uk/event/in-person-money-and-psychoanalysis-economies-of-care/

van Munsteren, L..‘Stretching the Frame or Stretching History?’, Inside-Outside Community in the Mind and the Mind in the Community, The Consortium for Therapeutic Communities, Birmingham, UK. 18-19 September, 2023. https://therapeuticcommunities.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Inside-Outside-The-Community-in-the-Mind-and-the-Mind-in-the-Community-TCTC-Conference-2023-1.pdf

Abstract

The linear perspective of progress as a formation in time, from something raw and problematic into something solid and coherent, did not pass the historiography of psychoanalysis either. It is quite usual for psychoanalytic histories or handbooks in psychoanalytic or psychodynamic practice, when it comes to the discussion of the frame and ethics of the early days of psychoanalysis, to refer to it as ‘wild’, ‘less developed, or just in its ‘early stages’.

In my presentation, I will discuss how this narrative impacts our understanding of what psychoanalysis is, but also how this linear historiography created conditions that prevented psychoanalysis from being thought of as a useful practice outside of the set ‘frame’ as we know it today. From such a perspective, the early movement of free clinics was presented as an experimental stage, and days have passed since we approached a more developed ‘now’. However, somewhere in building the framework for psychoanalytic practice, a very important detail on the transformative potential of psychoanalytic work got lost.

Looking closer at the development of the frame in the British school of psychoanalysis, in particular, where the focus on transference relationships and the setting are at the core of the psychoanalytic intervention, confined by the walls of the private consulting room, I would like to raise the question: is that the only place we’ve got for psychoanalysis? Drawing on the work of Joseph Berke and his work in Arbours Therapeutic Community, I will think about stretching the psychoanalytic frame for the work with TC residents.
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van Munsteren, L. ‘We have no psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union, and we are very much against it!‘, Imágó Budapest, The Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 7 June 2023.