Ana Tomcic, Postdoctoral Researcher in History, discusses the FREEPSY conference held in October 2023, at The Freud Museum London and online.
Money, its circulation and the fantasies constructed around it, have always had a political dimension. At the same time, money is an important aspect of how care is offered and organised. What is considered good enough care, who can benefit from it and who remains excluded? Most people will agree that we are currently traversing a crisis of care. In this context, creative attempts to re-think the connections between money, desire and human relationships acquire a new urgency. Both the desire and the sense of urgency were felt by the organisers of the recent Money and Psychoanalysis: Economies of Care conference, jointly offered by members of the University-of-Essex-based project Free Clinics and a Psychoanalysis for the People: Progressive Histories, Collective Practices and Implications for our times (short FREEPSY) and the Freud Museum, London. Focusing on the historical heritage and contemporary practice of free psychoanalytic clinics across the globe, the conference brought together psychoanalysts, anthropologists, historians and socio-political theorists to discuss the paradoxes of money and to explore alternative, anti-capitalist forms of mental health care provision. In line with the topic and the political goals of the conference, a portion of the earnings was set aside to support the work of contemporary free clinics. To enable wider participation, both in-person and online attendance was made available.
The two mid-October days (the 14th and the 15th of October) bore witness to a vast appetite for similar events, as well as the willingness to follow up the conversations through publications, working-groups and the formation of collectives. Much like the presenters and discussants, the attendees came from a variety of backgrounds, from students and academics to activists and practitioners in various types of free clinics (not just psychoanalytic ones). It is impossible to give a complete outline of the rich and thought-provoking questions raised in the course of the conference. Yet a summary of selected presentations might give the reader a taste of the complex and energetic conversations, collectively produced by both the presenters and the attendees.
The first evening began with presentations from members of the FREEPSY team. The opening paper, by Raluca Soreanu, presented various dimensions of what Soreanu calls “infrastructural thinking,” present within the free-clinics movement. The speaker explored the different ways free clinics have found of “making something with very little.” Though always formed in response to specific historical and political circumstances, free clinics can be said to have created new points of accumulation, principles of circulation and modes of distribution, amounting to new economies of care. Their invention of vouchers, sliding scales, quotas for free or low-cost sessions and rules of conversion – making it possible for all trainees to pay for their education – contain the promise of a different social bond.
The paper was followed by short interventions from three other team members, Ana Minozzo, Lizaveta van Munsteren and myself, which raised various questions that were taken up in discussions throughout the evening. These included the relationship between psychoanalysis and patriarchy (female trainees are still often, we found out, asked if they have a husband to support them while they train), the difficulties faced by immigrant women patients who need to work long hours whilst also caring for their children and frequently face a language barrier in judicial proceedings, the high cost of training and how this goes against the publicly stated goal of making psychoanalysis more diverse, the meaning of “selfless love” (as opposed to selfish or self-serving) in the psychoanalytic relationship, the role of the state in supporting free clinics and the position of the NHS in the provision of free psychoanalytic treatment.
Our presentations were accompanied by a contribution from the Brazilian political theorist Giuseppe Cocco, who began exploring the relationship between the money and the desiring, affective body under post-industrial capitalism. Following Pierre Klossowski’s argument in Living Currency, Cocco argued that the liberal theory of the wage earner (the worker gives away a certain amount of their intellectual, affective and physical energy in exchange for a fee) already contains, within itself, the direct expropriation of the desiring body, which will come into full force in contemporary capitalism. It is interesting to think about the ways in which this expropriation of the affective body takes place in psychoanalysis, when it mimics the exploitative relations present in the rest of society and when it does not. Indeed, this question was posed in several papers at the conference.
Francisco J. González gave us an important intervention into the functioning of the Community Psychoanalysis Track of Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC). He also spoke of ‘transmural psychoanalysis,’ a nomadic psychoanalysis not bound by walls or even a strict sense of institutional belonging, which is also something that comes up in the work of some free or low-cost clinics in the UK (such as the Red Clinic) and in other parts of the world. This type of work clearly engages with the idea of ‘infrastructural thinking,’ as González himself recognised.
Ian Parker, who defines himself as a psychoanalyst and revolutionary Marxist, contrasted the commodification of care under capitalism with the collective yearning for another world that builds on international networks of solidarity. Relying on Marxist theories, he questioned the necessity of money as a “universal equivalent” that situates the analyst and analysand within the capitalist system of exchange. Even today, numerous analysts of various orientations (Lacanian, Freudian and others) try to argue that this relationship is a necessary condition for the provision of care without which the process of recovery would be impossible. But is it? Certainly, free psychoanalytic clinics (contemporary and historical) have responded to this question in more radical ways. Such a response, however, requires us to imagine a world built on different economic possibilities. This question was taken up by clinical practitioners and political theorists from Brazil, where the free clinics movement is currently perhaps at its strongest.
Daniel Feldman, a professor at the Economics Department of the Federal University of Sāo Paulo, encouraged us to imagine just such a different economic reality, where the factor of exchange value would be completely cancelled out in favour of the production of non-commodities, of an economic system that relies exclusively on use value, without the mediation of money. In a world where everything, including health care, education and the human body itself, is turned into a commodity, such a possibility might seem strange at first. However, Feldman reminded us that a similar proposition was first made by Theodor Adorno in the 1950s and that there are no objective obstacles to the gradual building-up of such a non-competitive economy. In fact, our refusal to imagine such an “objective utopia” merely reflects the limitation that the capitalist system has placed on our imaginative faculties.
A further key aspect of the way our imagination gets limited has to do with the vast amounts of denial involved in sustaining the contemporary economic system and this was addressed by Tales Ab’Sáber, a psychoanalyst and coordinator of the Open Clinic of Psychoanalysis at People’s House in Sāo Paulo. Ab’Sáber spoke about the realities created by the circulation of money under capitalism, realities that dominant media narratives often choose to ignore. The presence of money, especially its accumulation in the West, installs in us the normality of consumption citizenship, while the absence of money, also always happening and necessary, means a liquidation of rights and normalized exploitation and extermination of certain social groups and geographical areas. Money confirms what exists and forgets what it destroys. Ab’Sáber sees contemporary free clinics as “points of light in the midst of the obscure world of power and money,” designed to serve and help those that would otherwise be erased and forgotten. Certainly, the testimonies of Brazilian practitioners working in these free clinics do provide a faint (but powerful) glimmer of hope.
A turn towards the analyst’s relationship to money was initiated by Dany Nobus. In a witty and entertaining lecture, Nobus spoke about the meaning money is accorded in psychoanalytic theory, including the famous connection between money and anal eroticism. Nobus noted in passing that the latter interpretation is often applied to the patient, but never to the analyst. This not only proves the analyst’s privileged position within the session (the analyst’s desires are not discussed or questioned), but also the lack of thought given to the analyst’s motives in asking for a certain amount. Nobus criticised the often untransparent ways in which analysts determine their fees, and how, in justifying them, many follow Freud’s lead by saying that what the patient will get from therapy (i.e., the improvement of their mental health) is of a much greater value in comparison. He concluded by reminding the analysts in the audience that, whatever fee they decide to ask for in the end, they need to be able to justify it in ethical terms. Otherwise, the result will be a lack of honesty towards their patients and themselves.
The psychological consequences of socio-material deprivation were addressed in a number of papers, yet perhaps most prominently so by Guilaine Kinouani, the founder of Race Reflections. Kinouani’s paper explored the intersection between material and maternal deprivation. While attachment to parental figures is often explored in the clinic as a matter of course, the psychological impact of material deprivation is mostly left unexamined. According to Kinouani, neglecting histories of poverty, their social causes and psychological consequences is consistent with the logic of individualism and neoliberalism. Focusing on the intersection between maternal care and material wealth, Kinouani presented various scenarios in which these factors did and did not intersect, clearly demonstrating the necessity of looking at both factors in the therapeutic context.
The final panel brought together a fruitful combination of art, activism and reflections on free therapeutic practice (this time non-psychoanalytic). The Bosnian-born artist Ana Čvorović spoke about the personal origins of her work that delves deep into the subjects of childhood, dream, war, emigration and displacement. She also revealed the extent to which her own creative expression was freed up by her experience as an analysand at a low-cost clinic. Her conversation with Barbara Szaniecki, Adjunct Professor at the School of Industrial Design of Rio de Janeiro, revolved around the ways in which we can build collectives that will help individuals to bear their emotional burden, familial, socio-economic and historical. Paul Atkinson, from the Free Psychotherapy Clinic, gave an account of his work at the clinic as well as his experiences as an activist over the past several decades. The words of the three speakers provided a moving and creative closure to a what had been a full and though-provoking evening.
Finally, one must mention the strong contribution of the discussants (Barry Watt, Dorothée Bonigal-Katz, Deanne Bell and Jordan Osserman), who served to open the discussion following each panel, expanding some of the points made, connecting them with their own research and experiences as well as raising a series of provocative and interesting questions. The final discussion of the conference produced many questions – the links between free clinics and activism, the need to put greater stress on the role of the NHS, the desire to include patients into future events as well as the possibility of organising case discussion groups of analysts and psychologists engaged in the work of the free clinics – which pointed to the need for spaces to discuss and think about further actions to be taken in connection with the burning issue of psychoanalysis and social justice.
