Episodes
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In this episode of the New Psychoanalytic Spaces sub-series, Sophie Mendelsohn responds to questions about the work of the Collectif de Pantin she founded in 2018 and continues to operate in Pantin, a diverse Paris suburb, with a focus on interrogating race in the analytic experience and on observing the effects of taking race, as well as coloniality and postcoloniality, into account in clinical and social contexts. Sophie Mendelsohn reflects on problems of articulating clinical experience to the social and political in Lacanian psychoanalytic institutions in France since 1967, as well as on the notion and necessity of a concrete universal.
Sophie Mendelsohn has a private psychoanalytic practice in Paris, and she is the author of Vagabondes (Arachnéen, 2015), as well as of many essays. With Livio Boni she has coedited La vie psychique du racisme (La Découverte, 2021) and, most recently, Psychanalyse du reste du monde. Géo-histoire d'une subversion (La Découverte, 2023).
Collectif de Pantin website:
https://www.collectifdepantin.org/
Thanks to Kellen Corrallo for editorial assistance with the audio file. -
This episode’s interview is with Derek Hook, who studies and practices psychoanalysis and is Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University. He is the author of Six Moments in Lacan, among many other works and important edited volumes on Lacan’s Écrits and Lacan and Race, among others. To respond to the prompt for this series of Penumbr(a)cast, on a life-changing or at least impactful artwork, following Freud’s powerful experience with Michelangelo’s Moses sculpture, Dr. Hook points to an image from photojournalism in 1994, where three members of a neo-Nazi group in South Africa are arrested and killed at the end of apartheid during the Bophuthatswana crisis. Hook's experience with this image prompts a fascinating discussion on his trajectory discovering psychoanalysis, white privilege, racism, and embodiment, and to his recent work of reading Lacan in conversation with Afropessimism.
Many thanks as always to Kellen Corrallo for his work on sound editing.
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In this episode, Fabrice Bourlez, who teaches aesthetics (ENSBA) and practices psychoanalysis in Paris, speaks about his exploration of concepts of tact and elasticity in his practice, and in his reading of Freud, Ferenczi, and Lacan, as well as of Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, and queer theory. The author of Pulsions pasoliniennes (Pasolinean Drives) and of Queer psychanalyse: clinique mineure et déconstructions du genre (Queer Psychoanalysis: Minor Clinic and Deconstructions of Gender) discusses the importance of sustaining a conversation across queer politics and the metapsychology and technique of psychoanalysis in the 21st century, as part of awakening ethics and listening in a minor mode.
Amelia Gayle reads the English translation in this recording. Interview translated from French by Cynthia Mitchell. Thanks to Kellen Corrallo for his editorial work. -
In this episode, Fabrice Bourlez, who teaches aesthetics (ENSBA) and practices psychoanalysis in Paris, speaks about his exploration of concepts of tact and elasticity in his practice, and in his reading of Freud, Ferenczi, and Lacan, as well as of Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, and queer theory. The author of Pulsions pasoliniennes (Pasolinean Drives) and of Queer psychanalyse: clinique mineure et déconstructions du genre (Queer Psychoanalysis: Minor Clinic and Deconstructions of Gender) discusses the importance of sustaining a conversation across queer politics and the metapsychology and technique of psychoanalysis in the 21st century, as part of awakening ethics and listening in a minor mode.
Psychanalyste et professeur à l'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (ENSBA), Fabrice Bourlez parle dans cet épisode de son travail avec les concepts de tact et d'élasticité dans son travail clinique et dans sa lecture de Freud, de Ferenczi et de Lacan, aussi bien que dans la lecture d'écrivains tels que Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, et de la théorie queer.
L'auteur de Pulsions pasoliniennes et de Queer psychanalyse: clinique mineure et déconstructions du genre souligne l'importance de soutenir, au 21ème siècle, une conversation de la politique queer avec la métapsychologie et la technique de la psychanalyse. Il s'agit, suggère-t-il, d'une tactique pour réveiller une éthique et une entente en mode mineur.
Merci à Kellen Corrallo pour son travail avec le fichier audio. -
In this episode, Dr. Stephen Sternbach (Harvard Medical School; Cambridge Health Alliance; member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and of the École freudienne du Québec) speaks of his journey into psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and also literature as a space to explore the encounter with the Real. Sternbach discusses the changing relationship to psychoanalysis in psychiatric education and practice over the past decades in the United States. He touches on the concept of the defect in language in Willy Apollon's metapsychology, and concludes by sharing his aesthetic experience with a Wordsworth poem.
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This episode's interview with Ankhi Mukherjee focuses on her recent book, Unseen City: The Psychic Lives of the Urban Poor. It discusses Mukherjee's research on Freud's free clinics and their afterlives in different cities and projects that make psychoanalytic interventions in marginalized communities. We discuss the roles literary criticism can play in the work of these clinics, as well as the urgent need for spaces for subjectivity that are not limited to economic elites and that extend beyond the couch.
Many thanks to Kellen Corrallo for editorial work on the episode. -
This episode features an interview with Anne Emmanuelle Berger, Professor Emerita of the Centre d'études féminines et de genre at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes-St. Denis, founder of the CNRS research lab for Gender and Sexuality Studies LEGS, and affiliated Romance Studies Professor at Cornell University. Berger shares her thoughts on the status and implications of reading and writing, the links between deconstruction and psychoanalysis, and their current political relevance and challenges, and she shares her aesthetic experience of Maria Callas' interpretation of Gluck's French version of the 1774 aria "Eurydice," which lead her to reflect about loss, grief, love, and addressing an absent Other beyond the limits of gender.
References in this episode:
Colloquium "Qui a peur de la déconstruction?"
https://institut-du-genre.fr/actualites/qui-a-peur-de-la-deconstruction/#:~:text=Colloque%20organis%C3%A9%20du%2019%20au,les%20sciences%20et%20la%20culture%20%C2%BB.
France culture interview with Anne Berger on the colloquium:
https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/avec-philosophie/que-reste-t-il-a-deconstruire-4307698
Anne Emmanuelle Berger, "Reading and its Discontents" OLR 44.2 (2021)
Many thanks to Kellen Corrallo for his editorial assistance.
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This episode is an interview with Juliet Flower MacCannell, Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and English at UC Irvine, and author of The Hysteric’s Guide To The Future Female Subject (2000), The Regime of the Brother (1991), Figuring Lacan: Criticism and the Cultural Unconscious (1986 and 2014, reprinted), and with Dean MacCannell The Time of the Sign (1982), as well as of many essays.
This third experiment in inviting the interviewee to discuss a work of art that profoundly moved them engages with James Joyce's story "The Dead," first published in 1914 in Dubliners. The episode focuses on the problems of sexual difference and woman that MacCannell examined in her books at the turn of the 21st century, thinking about how they resonate today.
Recent essays by MacCannell mentioned in this episode:
'Sexual (In)difference in Late Capitalism: "Freeing Us from Sex"' in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Sexualities From Feminism to Trans*. Edited by Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkholer."Why Culture? A psychoanalytic speculation," in Reibung und Reizung. Psychoanalyse, Kultur und deren Wissenschaft Insa Härtel (Hg.) https://textem-verlag.de/media/publication-images/9783864852374_leseprobe_01.pdf
Many thanks to Amelia Gayle and Kellen Corrallo for helping to make this episode happen. -
This interview with Jean-Michel Rabaté invites us to explore connections between psychoanalysis and multiple fascinating instances of modernism (from Rimbaud to Jarry to Proust and Gide to Kafka) and avant-garde art (surrealism and dadaism). The political and analytic power of laughter, horror, irreverence, and scandal come to the foreground in discussions about the affective dimension of art-viewing and reading literature. Rabaté thinks about the death drive in relation to writing, discusses intriguing moments from his recent books, his own response to Lacan's seminars, and his unique experiences with and reactions to artworks. The interview concludes with Rabaté's presentation of the effects of Marcel Duchamp's piece Avoir l'apprenti dans le soleil:
https://www.wikiart.org/en/marcel-duchamp/to-have-the-apprentice-in-the-sun-1914
Many thanks to Kellen Corrallo and Rachit Anand for their editorial assistance. -
In this episode, psychoanalyst and German/Jewish literature professorJeffrey Librett speaks of the structure of the address that psychoanalysis subverts. This structure in the social link sets limits on what can be said to and recognized by someone else. There is therefore a structural failure in communication. But even one's private thoughts are limited by this structure. Transference in psychoanalysis, as Librett understands it, lifts repression to welcome speech about what is left out of reality and shared language, and opens the possibility of articulating and sustaining something of the unconscious subject in the social link.
Many thanks to Kellen Corrallo and Charlotte Zhang for their editorial work on this episode. -
´This special episode of Penumbr(a)cast - The Other Scene features a conversation with Dr. Patricia Noboa Ortega, cofounder of the Clínica Legal Psicológica in Puerto Rico, a clinic that provides legal and communal support to marginalized communities deeply affected by hurricane María in 2017, as well as individual psychoanalytic listening for members of these communities. The interview considers what enables the clinic to bring to these sites elements from psychoanalysis after Lacan, and specifically from the teachings of GIFRIC, the Quebec group whose work is discussed in other episodes of this podcast.
Many thanks to Bianca Messinger and Omar Brown for their editorial assistance. -
This special episode of Penumbr(a)cast - The Other Scene features a conversation with Dr. Patricia Noboa Ortega, cofounder of the Clínica Legal Psicologica in Puerto Rico, a clinic that provides legal and communal support to marginalized communities deeply affected by hurricane María in 2017, as well as individual psychoanalytic listening for members of these communities. The interview considers what enables the clinic to bring to these sites elements from psychoanalysis after Lacan, and specifically from the teachings of GIFRIC, the Quebec group whose work is discussed in other episodes of this podcast.
Many thanks to Marietta Fernández for reading the English translation of Patricia's words in the interview, and to Bianca Messinger for the translation from the original sound file. Thanks to Abhipsa Chakraborty Omar Brown for editorial assistance.
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This episode starts a series of Penumbr(a)cast - The Other Scene devoted to exploring the effects of art and literature on a subject. The interview with Tim Dean, explores his work as a thinker and writer, his thoughts on the critic Leo Bersani, and his response to the poem Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Special thanks to Luke Heister and Omar Brown for their editorial assistance with this episode. -
This episode discusses a contemporary use of the term castration, introduced by Freud. Cantin distinguishes between imaginary, symbolic, and real castration in relation to different moments of the human individual life and to the psychoanalytic cure, highlighting the relevance of castration as a work that liberates subjects from the cultural montage of sexuality that hijacks unconscious desire. The second half of the episode specifically explores the experiences and difficulties women face with regard to taking responsibility for their desire.
Special thanks to Tracy McNulty for recording the translated interview with me, to Amelia Gayle for working on the translation from French to English, and Omar Brown, Luke Heister, and Abhipsa Chakraborty for their editorial work on this episode!
Find Lucie Cantin’s work here:“The Drive, the Untreatable Quest of Desire” — differences
“The Borderline, or the Impossibility of Producing a Negotiable Form in the Social Bond for the Return of the Censored” — Konturen
“Femininity: From passion to an ethics of the impossible” — Topoi
After Lacan: Clinical Practice and the Subject of the Unconscious — Willy Apollon, Danielle Bergeron, Lucie Cantin (SUNY Press 2002)
References mentioned:
“The Mirror Stage” — Lacan
“Psychoanalysis Terminable and Interminable” — Freud
Gaga: Five Foot Two (2017)
“The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen” — Olympe de Gouges
Here Women Don’t Dream — Rana Ahmad
Follow the Center for Psychoanalysis and Culture on Facebook
Read Penumbr(a), a new journal of psychoanalysis and modernity: https://www.penumbrajournal.org/
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This episode (in two parts) discusses a contemporary use of the term castration, introduced by Freud. Cantin distinguishes between imaginary, symbolic, and real castration in relation to different moments of the human individual life and to the psychoanalytic cure, highlighting the relevance of castration as a work that liberates subjects from the cultural montage of sexuality that hijacks unconscious desire. Part 2 specifically explores the experiences and difficulties women face with regard to taking responsibility for their desire.
Grand "merci" à Denis Morin, for his help with the transcription, and to Kellen Corrallo for editing the audio files for this recording in French! -
This episode (in two parts) discusses a contemporary use of the term castration, introduced by Freud. Cantin distinguishes between imaginary, symbolic, and real castration in relation to different moments of the human individual life and to the psychoanalytic cure, highlighting the relevance of castration as a work that liberates subjects from the cultural montage of sexuality that hijacks unconscious desire.
Grand "merci" à Denis Morin, for his help with the transcription, and to Kellen Corrallo for editing the audio files for this recording in French! -
This episode discusses psychosis as a psychic structure and psychoanalytic work with experiences of psychosis and extreme states. It draws on Bret Fimiani's recent Psychosis and Extreme States - An Ethic for Treatment (Palgrave 2021) to distinguish a psychoanalytic approach to the experience of psychosis, and to explore the perspectives of the psychotic subject in analytic treatment and of the analyst sustaining transference with psychotic subjects. Thanks to Omar Brown and Claire Tranchino for helping to edit this episode.
Find Bret Fimiani’s work here:Psychosis and Extreme States (2021) (Palgrave Lacan Series)
References mentioned in this episode:The Schreber Case — Freud
Hearing Voices Network
History Beyond Trauma — Francoise Davoine & Jean-Max Gaudillere
Follow the Center for Psychoanalysis and Culture on Facebook
Read Penumbr(a), a new journal of psychoanalysis and modernity: penumbrajournal.org/
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Second half of the conversation with Bret Fimiani on psychosis in the psychoanalytic clinic.
Find Bret Fimiani’s work here:Psychosis and Extreme States (2021) (Palgrave Lacan Series)
References mentioned in this episode:
The Schreber Case — Freud
Hearing Voices Network
History Beyond Trauma — Francoise Davoine & Jean-Max Gaudillere
Follow the Center for Psychoanalysis and Culture on Facebook
Read Penumbr(a), a new journal of psychoanalysis and modernity: penumbrajournal.org/
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This episode discusses the concept of the unconscious as the result of an experience under transference, understood in terms of the effects of the analyst's own experience of undergoing analysis. The episode also discusses what is at stake in feminine jouissance, non-neurotic psychic structures, the beautiful, and it concludes with a reflection on time.
Thanks to Steven Miller for reading the English translation for this version of the episode.
Find Willy Apollon’s work here:Le vaudou, un espace pour les voix [Voodoo: a Space for Voices] (Éditions Galilée, 1976)
“Psychoanalysis and the Freudian Rupture” — differences(2017)
“The Limit: a Fundamental Question for the Subject in the Human Experience” — Konturen(2010)
“Four seasons in femininity orfour men in a woman's life” — Topoi(1993)
After Lacan - ed. Robert Hughes and Karen Moron (SUNY Press, 2002)
Lacan on Psychosis - ed. Apollon, Danielle Bergeron, Lucie Cantin (Routledge, 2018)
Co-founder, Gifric - Groupe interdisciplinaire freudien de recherche et d’intervention clinique
Co-founder, The 388 - a psychoanalytic treatment center for psychotic adults
References mentioned in this episode:
“The Unconscious” - Freud
“To Have Done With the Judgement of God” — Artaud
“How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs” — Deleuze & Guattari
Follow the Center for Psychoanalysis and Culture on Facebook
Read Penumbr(a), a new journal of psychoanalysis and modernity: penumbrajournal.org/
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This episode discusses the concept of the unconscious as the result of an experience under transference, understood in terms of the effects of the analyst's own experience of undergoing analysis. The episode also discusses what is at stake in feminine jouissance, non-neurotic psychic structures, the beautiful, and it concludes with a reflection on time.
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