Why War? A Psychoanalytic Enquiry
In the most recent issue of the London Review of Books, Jacqueline Rose writes of the conflict in Israel/Gaza that there is a need to bring psychoanalytic understanding to the negotiating table. “One thing seems clear. None of this will just disappear if we ignore it. You cannot dream the unconscious away.” (J.Rose, ‘You made me do it’: Jacqueline Rose on violence and its origins, LRB. Vol.45 No.23, 30 November 2023). The Freud Lacan institute (FLi) chooses not to ignore it.
This seminar takes Freud’s letter to Einstein “Why War?” and the essays “Thoughts for the Time on War and Death” and “Civilisation and its Discontents” to consider the psychical propensity for aggression, the disposition to violence and cruelty that hangs over groups, and the forces that render these latent and sublimated, especially at this extremely worrying time of global warring and factionalism. One of the gifts of psychoanalysis is the room it makes for aggressivity as a component feature of subjectivity and the ways this is sublimated. What can psychoanalysis offer at this very sensitive time? For a reading list pertinent to the seminar see www.freudlacaninstitute.com
Why War? A Psychoanalytic Enquiry
Friday, December 8th 18:30-20:30 (Dublin-GMT, by zoom)
John O’Donoghue (APPI, Spirasi)
Jerry Fromm (Austen Riggs Centre)
Anouchka Grose (Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, London)
Jordan Osserman (Univ. of Essex, UK)
Register at Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/why-war-a-psychoanalytic-enquiry-tickets-761518631727?aff=oddtdtcreator