NCSPP is aware that historically psychoanalysis has either excluded or pathologized groups outside of the dominant population in terms of age, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, disability, and size. As an organization, we are committed to bringing awareness to matters of anti-oppression, inequity, inequality, diversity, and inclusion as they pertain to our educational offerings, our theoretical orientation, our community, and the broader world we all inhabit.

Presenters Response:

Janie Riley:
The topic of perversion and its history of misuse as a term that has pathologized certain groups makes it imperative for me to teach on the subject in a way that explicitly discusses our field’s past harmful effects as well as the ways in which our field has contributed to our understanding of perversion as a viable method to address some challenging problems brought into therapy by ourselves and our patients. I strive to teach and write from both an intrapsychic as well as socio-cultural-political perspective to contribute to our field’s grasp of the intertwinement of the two and of the many. I am continuously striving to be aware of the privileges I hold as well as those in which I do not. This practice enables me to work toward an understanding of my personal biases so I am able to recognize them while practicing as a teacher as well as clinician. As a person who identifies as white, I have participated in ongoing dialogues amongst my peers about our personal and collective engagement of whiteness studies, anti-racism, as well as multiple forms of anti-oppression.

Daniel Butler:
This course explicitly addresses how psychoanalytic praxis does and doesn’t address the experiences of marginalized peoples. Rather than analyzing dominant social groups, we’ll examine the violence through which dominant social groups secure their power. Studying social violence won’t be an afterthought; it’s integral to the course material.

Michael Levin:
No participants will be discriminated against on the basis of immutable characteristics or collective identifications in this class. If time permits, we may explore the ways that the recent institutional embrace of identitarian ideology in the psychoanalytic movement can be understood as an ethical and metapsychological perversion of the Enlightenment liberal-humanist tradition in which psychoanalysis emerged and upon which it depends.

Sydney Tan:
At the end of Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan identifies three elements, linked to the analyst’s desire. First, the analyst’s desire is not pure — it is directed toward a particular aim. Second, the analyst’s desire is to obtain the “absolute difference” of the analysand, which inheres in the act of the isolation of the primary signifier. Third, the position of the subject that emerges at the end of analysis is non-phallic, outside the limits of the law and is, as such, “alone” — without a partner in the Other. Lacanian psychoanalysis is oriented toward the singularity of the subject, emphasizing the unique signifiers in the speech of the analysand, and it takes the absolute difference of the analysand from the analyst as the aim of a treatment.