An evening with Jonathan Sklar and Jay Frankel. Chaired by Christopher Fortune.

Location: room 7000, SFU Harbour Centre.

This event is co-sponsored by the Western Branch Psychoanalytic Society.

Chair: Christopher Fortune is a historian of psychoanalysis who focuses on the work of Sandor Ferenczi. He has lectured and published internationally, writing papers, chapters, reviews and interviews for scholarly and popular journals, as well as editing a book of Ferenczi’s letters. He is an Associate of the Institute for the Humanities.

"Psychoanalysis, Analytic Societies and the European Unconscious"

In this paper, I address how one might develop states of freedom in analysis and in the analyst from the tangles of unconsciousness that exist in one’s unconscious mind, within the society that trained one, and from the unspoken depths of our European culture. How can one think about trauma in the individual without thinking of it in generational terms? In a similar way, the cultural heritage that formed the backdrop to the development of psychoanalysis from within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its aftermath has its own value, transmitting unconscious imprints on analytic societies. What are the interfaces between personal and historical trauma and in particular, the interface with unconscious processes? What we can grasp of the innermost life of the patient and of the world he or she lives in, and by which he or she is so profoundly affected is also a part of a broader history and specific culture? Totalitarian regimes in the 20th century have, of course, had a massive impact on Europe including analytic societies, which I will argue is ongoing. How can the mind take a measure of history, when history will submit neither to the reason of the world nor to the mind that confronts it?

Dr. Jonathan Sklar MBBS. FRCPsych
Training and Supervising Analyst of the British Psychoanalytic Society.
Trained in psychotherapy at the Tavistock Institute, London.
Consultant Psychotherapist Cambridge 1984-96.
Private analytic practice full time.
Regularly teaching in East Europe, Chicago and South Africa.

Book: "Landscapes of the Dark: History, Trauma, Psychoanalysis," Karnac, London, 2011.

"Authoritarianism as an Illness of Societies, With a View Towards Treatment"

My talk is about how Ferenczi’s model of child abuse within the family, in many respects, matches the abuse of power on the larger scale of authoritarian societies, and can thus provide a useful model for thinking about what happens in such societies––from more flagrant regimes to “soft” authoritarianisms like US consumer capitalism. I rely on an expanded version of Ferenczi’s conceptualization of identification with the aggressor to explain people’s sometimes-eager compliance with their own oppression. I focus especially on the stifling of personal, independent thinking and on shame––both of these components of identification with the aggressor are central in thwarting the capacity for personal autonomy in the family and in the larger society. I also look at how oppressive leaders maximize these developments in order to maintain control over their populations. I then look to psychoanalytic models of treating individuals’ narcissistic disorders––an appropriate characterization of authoritarian societies––to illuminate how well intentioned leaders may move a fearful population toward democracy and away from authoritarian temptations, and how citizens themselves may discover a capacity to resist authoritarian oppression.

Jay Frankel, a psychologist and psychoanalyst, is an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor, and Clinical Consultant, in the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis; Professor of Critical Theory and the Arts at the School of Visual Arts; and Faculty at both the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, and the Trauma Treatment Training Program of the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, all in New York City. He is on the Editorial Board of the journal "Psychoanalytic Dialogues," is the author of more than two dozen professional journal articles and book chapters, and numerous lectures and conference presentations, on topics including trauma, identification, play, the analytic relationship, the work of Sándor Ferenczi, and psychoanalysis and politics, and is co-author of the book "Relational Child Psychotherapy" (2002, Other Press).