Free Clinics and a Psychoanalysis for the People: Progressive Histories, Collective Practices, Implications for our Times
On February 26, 2026, FREEPSY presented at the at the Archiving from Below series of the MayDay Rooms in London.
In this session, two researchers from Freepsy, Julianna Pusztai and Ewan O’Neill discussed the historical findings from free clinics, grassroots psychoanalytic groups and the future of memory.
March 30th 2026, 6-7:30pm GMT, Online
In 2025, the FREEPSY research team created an online database of more than 250 free psychoanalytic clinics around the world. We started to connect the free clinics through online meetings in different languages.
Building a raft of/for the Free Clinics Network
Free psychoanalytic clinics around the world have created rich visual languages through their online and social media presences, speaking to the clinics’ orientations towards structures of power, theory, and potential patients and collaborators. In February 2026, the FREEPSY research team gathered in Islington, London, together with network facilitator Susana Caló, research assistant Harriet Mossop and designer Hugo Coria, to listen collectively to this visual language. As preparation, we downloaded social media and web images from a selection of the 250 clinics. With the recent FREEPSY newsletter The Transgender Issue in mind, we selected a ‘cut’ of around 400 images from 14[1] clinics in different countries that have a visible orientation towards LGBTQIA+ patients.
Continue reading “FREEPSY Visual Cartography Workshop:”We are delighted to announce the publication of Black Oedipus by Rita Segato, newly translated from Spanish by Ramsey McGlazer and published by 1968 Press as part of the Important Little Books in Psychoanalysis series. On 10 February, we celebrated the book’s launch with an evening symposium hosted by Freud Museum, bringing together the author, translator, and an extraordinary group of scholars, writers, and psychoanalysts for a rich and urgent conversation.
We are happy to announce the launch of A Dictionary of Money and Psychoanalysis.
Support maintaining PPS at Essex as an independent department.
Online Conference, September 5th and 6th 2026
We would like to invite all those interested in the work of Sabina Spielrein and early women analysts to contribute to the upcoming conference organised by one of our FREEPSY team members and other colleagues at the University of Essex. The conference explores the extraordinary thinking of Sabina Spielrein, developing her pioneering legacy in the world of psychoanalysis and beyond.
14-week course with Dr. Klara Naszkowska & Dr. Ana Tomčić
The course will focus on Sabina Spielrein, Margarethe Hilferding, Ludwika Karpińska-Woyczyńska, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, Lou Andreas Salomé, Judith Kestenberg, Vilma Kovacs, Clara Happel, Helene Deutsch, Barbara Low, Eugenia Sokolnicka, Alberta Szalita, among other women pioneers of psychoanalysis.
Continue reading “EARLY WOMEN PSYCHOANALYSTS”Ana Tomčić uses the case of the modernist writer and film critic Bryher to discuss how psychoanalysis viewed trans identities and trans trainees in the 1920s and 1930s.
They were the child of a shipping magnate and one of the richest people in the UK. Roughly since the age of four, and possibly before that, they expressed a deep wish to be a boy. They grew up on “boys’” novels and adventure tales. They developed a taste for literature and history, partly because the gender fluidity of ancient societies and Elizabethan theatre allowed for more expansiveness than the world in which they were forced to inhabit: the turn-of-the-century upper-middle-class British society. Just after World War I, they fell in love with the American poet Hilda Doolittle. During their decades-long relationship, they formed a household with their friend and occasional partner Kenneth Macpherson, a bisexual man. Bryher and Macpherson formally adopted H.D.’s daughter Perdita. By today’s standards, the trio were a queer, polyamorous family raising a child. They also made films together, founded the influential, progressive film magazine Close Up and profoundly influenced each other’s writing. However, the group of queer writers and filmmakers shared another common interest: psychoanalysis.
Continue reading “Psychoanalysis and Gender Fluidity in the 1920s: the Case of Bryher”Grupo Diversidad at Hospital Ameghino in Buenos Aires.
In the landscape of global mental health, the pioneering work emerging from Buenos Aires’s Hospital CSM N° 3 “Arturo Ameghino” offers a vital model for psychoanalytic practice in the field of diversity. The recent official establishment of the “Área Diversidad” in December 2024 represents a significant institutional milestone, yet it is the culmination of a years-long, pre-existing clinical commitment. A dedicated group of clinicians has long been forging a path of specialized accompaniment for the LGBTTIQA+ community, with a particular focus on transgender and non-binary children, adolescents, and adults. Their work demonstrates how psychoanalytic theory, when critically engaged, can be mobilized to provide affirming and nuanced care, challenging the historical pathologization of diverse gender and sexual experiences.
What makes this initiative particularly instructive for an international audience is its deeply embedded methodology. The clinicians operate not in an institutional vacuum but within a vibrant ecosystem of care, maintaining close collaboration with city-wide health networks and community activists. This dialogue between clinic, community, and public health policy enriches their practice, allowing them to refine an approach that is both theoretically robust and socially responsive. By sharing their journey from a grassroots collective to an officially sanctioned area, these colleagues from Buenos Aires provide a powerful blueprint. They teach us how to build bridges, challenge institutional inertia, and pioneer a contemporary, ethical psychoanalysis that holds the singular subject at its core—a lesson of profound importance for colleagues worldwide.
*This text was written in collaboration by Cecilia Montenegro, a member of the Diversity Group of CSM No. 3 Ameghino, and Alba Rueda. Alba Rueda is an Argentine trans activist and politician, and a prominent defender of the human rights of LGBTIQ+ people from the Global South. She served as Undersecretary for Diversity Policies in the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity (2020–2022), and later as Argentina’s Special Representative on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade, and Worship.
Continue reading “Trans Experiences and Testimonies. On the Importance of Recovering Marginalised Knowledge. Cecilia Montenegro Alba Rueda”