INSTÄLLT! Dany Nobus: Group Pathology and the Analysis of the Ego

Group Pathology and the Analysis of the Ego: On the Dissolution of Psychoanalytic Organisations and the Question of Psychoanalytic Training

Some 110 years after the foundation of the International Psychoanalytical Association, it is fair to say that the institutional history of psychoanalysis has been persistently troubled by conflict and dissent. Whereas some of these internal divisions revolved around intellectual disagreements and other schisms were the result of divergences in clinical technique, the fissiparous history of psychoanalytic institutional life has been primarily conditioned by vehement disputes pertaining to the implementation of psychoanalytic training and, more broadly, about the structure of psychoanalytic organisations and the policies governing its training institutes.

In this lecture, we will reflect upon the key questions of training that any psychoanalytic institution needs to address and investigate the extent to which an alternative division of power, based upon Bion’s concept of the ‘leaderless group’ and Lacan’s initial proposals for his École freudienne de Paris, may address some of the seemingly intractable issues of training that many psychoanalytic organisations continue to grapple with.

On stage:
Dany Nobus, professor at Brunel University London, chair of Psychoanalytic Psychology and the History of Ideas, founding scholar at British Psychoanalytic Council, fellow at Freud Museum London
Dr Vanessa Sinclair, psychoanalyst, artist, writer and podcaster

Room:
Katasalen, floor 1