Psychoanalysis & Radical Psychiatry Conference, 15-17th November 2024. A major international conference on the creative boundary-crossing between psychoanalysis and radical psychiatry

Organised by the FREEPSY project in collaboration with the Psychosis Therapy Project.

Register via Eventbrite.

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New article by Ana Tomčić published in Psychoanalysis and History. Psychoanalysis at Hawkspur Camp and other Therapeutic Communities for Antisocial Children and Young People

Psychoanalytically informed therapeutic communities constitute an important, but often forgotten, chapter in the history of applied psychoanalysis. Apart from the original experiments by analysts and educators such as August Aichhorn or Homer Lane, little is known about the vibrant and socially progressive nature of residential communities established during and in the aftermath of the Second World War. This article explores the uses of psychoanalysis in four such communities that worked with antisocial children and young people: the Hawkspur Camp, established in 1936 by David Wills and Marjorie Franklin; the Barns Hostel, a hostel for ‘unmanageable’ child evacuees from Edinburgh and Glasgow, active during the Second World War; the Reynolds House, a residential home for boys leaving approved schools who had no home to return to, started in London in 1963; and the Cotswold Community, a residential school for ‘maladjusted’ children in Wiltshire, transformed into a therapeutic community in 1967. Apart from the modifications of psychoanalytic methods made necessary by this environment, a key question posed by these communities is what constitutes healing social relationships at large, and how psychoanalysis can be instrumental in building and maintaining them.

Hawkspur Camp, image from the Mulberry Bush archive

The article is available at:
https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/pah.2024.0512

The legacy and lives of free clinics in Brazil: Thessa Guimarães talks psychoanalysis at the Brazilian Congress 

If you have been following our research you may have already taken notice of the particular richness of radical and creative efforts coming from our colleagues in Brazil. This Latin American country is one of our research sites and as we conduct interviews,  archival research, travel for ethnographic observations and make connections with analysts and scholars in the region, we are still touched when we realise the level of presence psychoanalytic ideas have in discourse, be it in terms of public health, debates on race or in the political sphere at large. 

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Raluca Soreanu and Julianna Pusztai at the 14th International Sándor Ferenczi Conference in Brazil

Between May 29 and June 1, Raluca Soreanu and Julianna Pusztai will take part in the ISFN conference held in São Paulo, Brazil, on the theme ‘Psychoanalysis between Catastrophe and Creation: Emerging Perspectives’, and they will present their papers to an international audience. 

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FREEPSY at the Association for Psychosocial Studies (APS) and Association for Psychoanalysis Culture and Society (APCS) 2024 Joint Conference 

The FREEPSY research collective is thrilled to announce that we are going to be part of the Association for Psychosocial Studies (APS) and Association for Psychoanalysis Culture and Society (APCS) 2024 Joint Conference, happening on the 17th and 18th of June, 2024, at St Mary’s University Twickenham, in London, UK. 

The field of Psychosocial Studies expanded in the UK over the 2000s and is now an established field of enquiry that combines various disciplines from the humanities, social sciences, arts, philosophy, feminism and decolonial studies, critical theories and, chiefly, psychoanalysis. We now count with important journals, research hubs, publications and, most of all, with a vibrant international community of scholars and practitioners.  An occasion such as the APS & APCS joint conference is an important opportunity to celebrate the creative rigour of our field, exchanging ideas and consolidating connections. 

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43rd Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Human Sciences

Between the 25th and the 28th of June, the FREEPSY team will be joining other historians, clinicians and researchers for the 43rd Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Human Sciences, taking place at the University of Essex.

This year, the conference offers a rich, four-day programme with a truly international array of presenters and topics ranging from the borders of the self, the history of emotions, embodied subjects and internalization all the way to war memory and xenophobia, government and the human sciences and scientific sociability and intimacy. 

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Caring Futures: Contradictions, Transformation and Revolutionary Possibilities 

Between May 29th and 31st, the FREEPSY team will be participating in the Caring Futures Conference in Paris, where we will join other artists, activists and scholars to discuss the transformation and revolutionary potential in historical and current health care practices in order to work out alternative futures for care within different communities

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Reflections on the FREEPSY stream on ‘Mental Health Commons’ at the MCCT 2024

In early April, we were joined by over twenty colleagues from various parts of the world to reflect on the meanings of a ‘mental health commons’, exploring the axes of fantasy, utopia and infrastructure over a series of five panels at the Midlands Conference in Critical Thought (MCCT), in Nottingham, UK. For the first time this year, the organisers of the London Conference in Critical Thought (LCCT) decided to branch out to other parts of the UK. This gave rise to the Midlands Conference. Members of our FREEPSY team had the pleasure to take part in the organisation of the Midlands Conference, to listen to a variety of academic and creative contributions and to get in touch with colleagues from the most diverse fields and backgrounds.

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