Psychoanalysis and social violence

Professor Stephen Frosh will present this public lecture.

Psychoanalysis has always been concerned with violence, both theoretically and as a consequence of its engagement with personal and social hurt.

In violent contexts, particularly those involving state violence, psychoanalysis can be haunted by the impact of past and present destructiveness in ways that creep into clinical work as well as institutional practices. This presentation explores the relationship between psychoanalysis and state violence through an example of a psychoanalytic relationship that founders on a history of violence that has personal and social ramifications.

He will argue that the story of this psychoanalytic encounter reveals the workings of an affiliation towards violence in psychoanalysis itself, and also references how political violence blocks acknowledgement, reparation and justice. Frosh is Pro-Vice-Master and Professor in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. He has a background in academic and clinical psychology and was Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic, London, throughout the 1990s.

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