WHAT WE ARE UP TO

‘Is Samba therapy too?’

This last 28th of April celebrated the release of our colleague and ally Kwame Yonatan Poli dos Santos’ book in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  Unlike usual psychoanalytic book launches, held at bookshops and academic conferences, Por Um Fio: Uma Escuta das Diásporas Pulsionais (By a Thread: Listening to the Diasporic Drives) was welcomed into the world at one of Rio’s most special venues, to the sound of music, dance, food, children play and chatter. 

Continue reading “ Kwame Yonatan’s Book Launch. ‘Por Um Fio: Uma Escuta das Diásporas Pulsionais’, 2023, Calligraphie “

The theme of this years’ event offers a chance to reflect as individuals, as a group and as a ‘community of communities’ upon what we each bring to the TC and how this collectively shapes it. Do we arrive feeling ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ of the community and why? What are the personal, professional and psychosocial factors involved?

The FREEPSY team will participate this year with the keynote presentation and the panel.

Continue reading “ Inside-Outside. Community in the Mind and the Mind in the Community Conference. 18th -20th September 2023 “

The Society for Social and Critical Psychoanalysis (SSCP) has recently joined the FreePsy Free Clinics Network. This Autumn the SSCP is running an online Introductory Course in Social and Critical Psychoanalysis. Course Lead, Dr Guy Millon and Training Committee Chair, Dr Sally Sales have contributed a guest blog about the upcoming course and the activities that the SSCP is engaged in, including running a low-cost clinic and full psychoanalytic training in the South West of the UK. 

How might we take a critical approach to psychoanalytic thought and practice? In what ways can we ensure that psychoanalysis is grounded in the contemporary social field? In the Society for Social and Critical Psychoanalysis (SSCP) we have a critical and comparative engagement with traditional and contemporary theories and practices of psychoanalysis and the social, political and philosophical discourses that generate and produce them. We have a commitment to exploring how the specificities of race, gender, sexual orientation, class and disabilities shape and form the people who come to clinical work.

Continue reading “ The Society for Social and Critical Psychoanalysis (SSCP) “

What makes a conversation a psychoanalytic encounter? Is it a consulting room? Is it a couch? Perhaps it is a flow of free associations that is thought of in an analytic way? Or is it a work with the transference?

In their presentation at the Ferenczi’s 150^th Anniversary Conference in Budapest, training psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist João Adolfo Nogueira together with his colleague, psychotherapist and psychiatric nurse Luís Miguel Vieira, engage the above questions. Below is a commentary on this presentation, discussing their clinical experience of working in the project ‘Consultations without Walls’, which began in 2019 and is ran by the Manicómio Association, based in Lisbon. There, as they state: “a new paradigm emerges from associating the open space (open space sessions) and art, and building a different therapeutic setting where the unconscious is resymbolized”. 

Continue reading “Therapy in Creative Spaces, by João Adolfo Nogueira and Luís Miguel Vieira “

Please read, respond and share!

Dear colleagues,

We are the members of the FREEPSY research project team, based at the University of Essex, UK. 

You are receiving this letter and invitation to answer a few questions because you might be someone who works (or worked) in free or low-cost psychoanalytic clinics. We will use your responses to the questions in the form below to put together a Free Clinics Network, which we hope will be relevant to both patients and psychoanalysts globally, aiming to promote shared practices among clinicians and to widen access to psychoanalytic treatment. Ultimately, our aim is to make visible a rich free psychoanalytic clinics tradition and to build a network of psychoanalysts interested in the social mission of psychoanalysis. 

Continue reading “FREEPSY OPEN LETTER: THE FREE CLINICS NETWORK“

Symposium and book launch of ‘Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe’, with authors Raluca Soreanu, Jakob Staberg, Jenny Willner, at The Freud Museum, on July 7, 6pm to 8:30pm.

A symposium and book launch dedicated to the volume Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe (Leuven University Press, 2023), by Raluca Soreanu, Jakob Staberg, and Jenny Willner. To mark Sándor Ferenczi’s 150th birthday, on July 7 the three authors will be in conversation with cultural theorists, psychoanalysts and the audience on Ferenczi’s contemporary relevance for psychoanalysis and social theory. We will celebrate Ferenczi’s birthday, while thinking through his enduring voice. This event will also mark the acquisition of the Sandor Ferenczi’s Archives at the Freud Museum.

With the participation and commentaries by: Lisa Baraitser, Antal Bókay, Ana Minozzo and Ana Tomcic.

Continue reading “Ferenczi Dialogues at The Freud Museum London “

On Saturday, May 27th 2023, 3pm and 6pm, London, the Psychosis Therapy Project and USEMI Racial Trauma Clinic are organising the launch of COMADRES, a free therapeutic service for Latin-American Womxn in London, in alliance with FREEPSY, and with psychoanalyst Patricia Gherovici as guest speaker. 

COMADRES is a free clinic for Latin-American Womxn in London, with a specialist team of Spanish and Portuguese speaking therapists. The launch brings together mental health professionals, grassroots organisations, and members of the Latin-American community to celebrate COMADRES. There is an increased demand for therapeutic support in the Latin-American community. In response to this, COMADRES offers free support to women with experiences of trauma, violence, and migration across London. Socio-economic precarity, domestic abuse, language and immigration hurdles are other common features in the experiences of the women they target.

Continue reading “COMADRES Launch Event: A Free Clinic for Latin-American Womxn in London“

Our postdoctoral researcher Ana Minozzo will be taking part in this open series hosted by a Brazilian research lab. She will run the session on ‘Schizoanalysis and Feminism’ on Monday, 24th of April, at 7pm Brasília time and 11pm BST,  online.

Continue reading “‘Schizoanalysis and Feminism’ online seminar, Monday, 24th of April run by Ana Minozzo“

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. 

Continue reading “International Sándor Ferenczi Network: Raluca Soreanu in conversation with Adrienne Harris, Jakob Staberg and Jenny Willner“

Commentary for the launch of the special issue 24(3) of Psychoanalysis & History of December 2022, on ‘Psychoanalysis for the People: Free Clinics and the Social Mission of Psychoanalysis’, The Freud Museum, February 25th 2023

Continue reading “‘Untelling’ the History of Psychoanalysis by Matt ffytche“