The Social in the Psyche:
Section IX Syllabus and Readings
Online Membership discussion: 2014-2015
We have designed this psychosocial syllabus so that we can learn together about how the sociocultural surround is present in our clinical work, on both conscious and unconscious levels. We begin with 2 articles that focus on some of the psychological effects of living in neoliberal US culture, and then move to focus specifically on racialized clinical encounters. Although gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, religion and other cultural identity elements are always intertwined with one another, our last section highlights class, a very under-discussed, even disavowed aspect of psychosocial identity in most of the psychoanalytic literature.
We’ll send out each article a week in advance of the online discussion, each of which will have a moderator and go on for about 2 weeks. We’ll discuss one article per month.
We look forward to exchanging our ideas, observations, feelings and experiences sparked by these articles and hope that they stimulate thinking that deepens the way we work.
The Social in the Psyche
October 30-Nov 13
Nancy Hollander (2014), What’s in the frame? Clinical challenges
in a time of social malaise. Invited paper, Psychoanalytic
Institute of Northern California, San Francisco, January 20th.
November 30-December 14
Lynne Layton (2010) Irrational exuberance. Subjectivity
3(3): 303-322.
Racialized subjectivities in the Clinic
January 5-January 19
Andrew Harlem (2009) Thinking through others: Cultural
psychology and the psychoanalytic treatment of immigrants.
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 14(3):273-288.
January 31-February 14
Jane Hassinger (2014) 21st century living color: Racialized enact-
ment in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
19(4)
Class Matters in/and Psychoanalysis
February 28-March 14
Elizabeth Corpt (2013) Peasant in the analyst’s chair.Reflections,
personal and otherwise, on class and the forming of an
analytic identity. Int. J. Psychoanal. Self Psychol. 8:52-69.
March 31-April 14
Beth Kita (2011) Potential and possibility: Psychodynamic
psychotherapy with incarcerated patients. Clinical Social Work
Journal 39: 9-17.
May 1-May 15
Susan Bodnar (2004) Remember where you come from:
Dissociative process in multicultural individuals. Psychoanal.
Dialogues 14:581-603.
June 1-June 15
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl (2006) Coming of age in New York City:
Two homeless boys. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 75:323-343.
The Psychoanalytic Activist 
[…] The Section also created an online year -long seminar for members that focused on various themes related to psyche and society. We provided monthly discussions of the syllabus articles, and although the participation was not as active as we had hoped, I did receive many individual messages from members thanking our Education Committee for the syllabus and expressing appreciation of its contents. If you did not receive a copy of the syllabus it is located here. […]
[…] and psychoanalysis. By that time in history, there were enough excellent clinical papers to fill a syllabus, papers on race, gender, sexuality, class, and other aspects of culture that consciously and […]