Cfp: "Critical Social Theory: Freud and Lacan for the 21st Century," 7th Annual Social Social Theory Forum, University of Massachusetts, Boston, April 7-8, 2010.

This year’s conference will explore the relationship between psychoanalysis and critical social theory. From its very beginning Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis has walked the border as a kind of fugitive discipline in academia yet one multifarious in its influence on the mainstream. Surely the welter of hostile and critical responses accompanying its trajectory in the history of ideas bears a kind of testimony to its rich intellectual underpinning. In sociology it has had a creative influence on critical theorists such as Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm, and others of the Frankfurt School, and now has engaged feminist theorists, post-structuralists and other sociologists interested in the way in which unconscious processes figure in the construction of hierarchical social relations.

Jacque Lacan’s French reading of Freud comes particularly close to the sociological imagination. His theory of the symbolic order and the linguistic precursors of the unconscious have added additional dimensions to the discourse of social theory. His notion of the decentered and alienated self rooted in the intellectual culture of Emile Durkheim, Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Michel Foucault find its corollaries in the writings of sociologists and philosophers such as George Herbert Mead, Charles Horton Cooley, and Erving Goffman. This year’s Social Theory Forum provides an opportunity for a re-examination and discussion of these fertile intellectual domains for a new cross-disciplinary pursuit of scholarship in social theory. The conference organizers seek papers that employ rigorous analyses and interpretations of the past and present of these intellectual engagements that form the foundation of modern social theory.

Papers in feminist theory, queer theory, literary criticism, social linguistics, conversational analysis, philosophy of mind, etc. that engage and interrogate Freud or Lacan are all welcomed.

The conference will feature both invited and submitted papers and presentations. We welcome submissions from scholars and graduate students in humanities and social sciences and as well as from writers in allied disciplines. We ask that authors submit a one-page abstract as email attachment (MS Word Format) to SocialTheoryAbstracts@libraryofsocialscience.com no later than February 9, 2010. Upon selection and notification of approval by the organizing committee, submitters must send completed presentation paper manuscripts (around 12-15 pages, preferably double-spaced in Times 12 typeface) by March 15, 2010. We are in the process of securing a publishing venue for selected papers. As in prior years, the papers will be peer-reviewed by anonymous referees for possible publication. Details will be announced before the conference.

Hoffman, Leon. "Freud’s Adirondack Vacation." NEW YORK TIMES August 29, 2009.

SIGMUND Freud arrived in Hoboken, N.J., 100 years ago today on his first and only visit to the United States. He came to lecture on psychoanalysis and to receive an honorary degree from Clark University, in Worcester, Mass. It was, he said, “an honorable call,” a mark of his academic success. Freud was then 53 and had been practicing for 23 years. At the time, most doctors here and in Europe still considered mental illness to be caused by “degeneration” of the brain. They assumed that there was little to be done for it beyond physical treatments like diet, exercise, drugs, rest and massage. But a growing awareness that the mind could influence bodily functions was giving rise to debates about the nature of the unconscious mind. G. Stanley Hall, the president of Clark and the first person to earn a doctorate in psychology from Harvard, invited American scientists to hear Freud’s ideas about the unconscious roots of mental illness. William James, the philosopher and psychologist, was among those who attended, as were other prominent academics, like Adolf Meyer, who would become perhaps the most important psychiatric educator in the first half of the 20th century, and Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology. Emma Goldman, the noted radical, who was also there, remarked, “Among the array of professors, looking stiff and important in their caps and gowns, Sigmund Freud, in ordinary attire, unassuming, almost shrinking, stood out like a giant among Pygmies.” Speaking in German and without notes, Freud delivered five lectures covering the basic principles of psychoanalysis: hysteria and the psychoanalytic method, the idea that mental illness could arise from a person’s early experience, the importance of dreams and unconscious mental activity, infantile sexuality and the nature of transference. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/opinion/29hoffman.html?_r=1.

"After Freud Left: Centennial Reflections on his 1909 Visit to the United States," New York Academy of Medicine, October 3-4, 2009.

In 1909, Sigmund Freud made his only visit to the United States. He arrived in New York, spent much time there, and departed from New York. This symposium will meet in New York exactly one hundred years after his arrival back in Vienna to consider what happened to his ideas and his networks in America in the century after he left. Some speakers will consider the setting of 1909. Others will review developments in the next century, for example in American social sciences in general, or in the supposed Americanization of the world. This symposium is strictly historical, looking at the long view. It will NOT take up either current theoretical and clinical controversies or the “Freud Wars” controversies. The purpose, rather, is to stimulate mature reflection. The exact topic of each speaker is still under negotiation, but all of them are thinking in terms of general, significant papers of interest to an informed public. Visit the conference webpage here: http://www.nyam.org/events/?id=448&click.

Cfp: "Freud after Derrida," University of Manitoba, October 6-9, 2010.

Proposals are invited for presentations that engage Freud's work as it continues to inform and provoke research and discussion across the disciplines (e.g., architecture, film, history, literature, philosophy, religion, science), and particularly, as it opens through and “after Derrida.” We welcome consideration of such topics as: temporality, space, technics, responsibility, animality, embodiment, memory, dream, writing, the uncanny, life, death, desire, repetition, law, sovereignty, sexuality, silence, mourning, testimony, the unconscious, repression, identity, family. Proposals should include the following: a title and an abstract of 450-500 words, author's name, brief cv, institutional affiliation, complete contact information, and email address. Graduate students presenting a paper at the conference may be eligible for a travel grant. Those intending to apply for a travel grant should enclose a covering letter with their abstract detailing anticipated travel costs for the conference. Deadline for submission of proposals: September 8, 2009. For information, see the Mosaic website at: www.umanitoba.ca/mosaic. A conference website will be available (and linked to the Mosaic website) by summer 2009. Electronic submissions preferred (Rich Text Format). Please direct enquiries and proposals to: mosaconf@cc.umanitoba.ca. Or, by regular mail, please send to: Freud After Derrida Conference c/o Dr. Dawne McCance, Editor Mosaic: a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature University of Manitoba 208 Tier Building Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada.

Pub: Overskeid, Geir. "Looking for Skinner and Finding Freud." AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST (September 2007).

Abstract: Sigmund Freud and B. F. Skinner are often seen as psychology’s polar opposites. It seems this view is fallacious. Indeed, Freud and Skinner had many things in common, including basic assumptions shaped by positivism and determinism. More important, Skinner took a clear interest in psychoanalysis and wanted to be analyzed but was turned down. His views were influenced by Freud in many areas, such as dream symbolism, metaphor use, and defense mechanisms. Skinner drew direct parallels to Freud in his analyses of conscious versus unconscious control of behavior and of selection by consequences. He agreed with Freud regarding aspects of methodology and analyses of civilization. In his writings on human behavior, Skinner cited Freud more than any other author, and there is much clear evidence of Freud’s impact on Skinner’s thinking. Read the rest here: http://inside.bard.edu/~luka/documents/SkinnerandFreud.pdf.

Cfp: "After Freud Left: Centennial Reflections on his 1909 Visit to the United States," New York Academy of Medicine, October 3-4, 2009.

Leading scholars in the history of psychoanalysis and American intellectual history will reflect on what happened to Sigmund Freud’s ideas in the United States in the century after he left New York following his only visit to the New World, a visit that became an iconic event in American history. The eight main speakers will be: Ernst Falzeder, Universität Innsbruck and Philemon Foundation Elizabeth Lunbeck, Vanderbilt University George Makari, Weill Medical College of Cornell University Louis Menand, Harvard UniversityDorothy Ross, Johns Hopkins University Sonu Shamdasani, Wellcome History of Medicine Unit, University College, London Richard Skues, London Metropolitan University Hale Usak, Universität Innsbruck Invited commentators include: Jean-Christophe Agnew, Yale University James Anderson, Northwestern University Raymond Fancher, York University James Gilbert, University of Maryland More details, including instructions for registration and for reserving a luncheon on Saturday, will be available in the coming months at http://www.nyam.org/events/?id=448&clickk=. Or contact the outside coordinator, John Burnham, at Ohio State University, burnham.2@osu.edu.

Pick, Daniel. "Analysing Adolf." TLS May 21, 2008.

Edmundson, Mark. The Death of Sigmund Freud: Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. Although this book focuses on the antinomies of psychoanalysis and Fascism, it also seeks to present, especially after the Anschluss, what Edmundson calls the “oddly converging lives” of the leaders of these two movements of thought. Sometimes the “convergence” is strained, with the author virtually implying (albeit to good dramatic effect), for instance, that a personal reckoning with the founder of psychoanalysis was on Hitler’s mind as he raised the diplomatic stakes in 1938: on March 14, writes Edmundson, Hitler was “heading to Vienna (and to Freud)”. The more serious and sustained concern of The Death of Sigmund Freud lies elsewhere than in personal crossed paths, and rather in the dire psychic and political processes that Nazism exploited and Freud might help us to think about. A call to obedience and total faith in authority – that of the Führer himself – were central to Nazism. This was also the terrain that Freud opened up in his account of the superego, which he set out in The Ego and the Id in 1923, and which was substantially to transform the discourse of psychoanalysis thereafter. In certain circumstances, a particular type of superego, for instance, cruel, mad and implacable, may seem to be given licence to dominate the entire psyche. Freud’s work, Edmundson passionately argues, has a very strong bearing on politics, including, but not confined to, the specific politics that bedevilled interwar Europe, even if it says little about the contingent historical factors that led to the disasters of modern German history. . . . Read the rest here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3977628.ece.

Liston, Heather C. "Review of Joseph Merlino, et al., eds. FREUD AT 150." METAPYSCHOLOGY ONLINE REVIEWS April 1, 2008.

Merlino, Joseph P., Marilyn S. Jacobs, Judy Ann Kaplan, and K. Lynne Moritz, eds. Freud at 150: Twenty-First Century Essays on a Man of Genius. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. Sigmund Freud was born May 6, 1856. One hundred and fifty years later, on September 15, 2006, the Austrian government sponsored a symposium at its embassy in Washington, D.C., to explore and celebrate the effects this singular man has had on the world in the intervening period. The new book, Freud at 150: 21st Century Essays on a Man of Genius, is largely an outgrowth of that event, and consists of thirty-eight (mostly brief) reflections and analyses by the four editors and twenty-four other distinguished contributors. Relatively light on jargon overall, the book provides a refreshing variety of topics and styles that offer something to the curious newcomer who knows little of Freud's life or work and also to the more experienced student of psychology interested in the most recent interpretations and applications of his work. . . . Although Freud didn't publish The Ego and the Id until 1923, when he was 67 years old, those terms, along with "superego," "projection," and "transference," have long since become household words for nearly all of us, and it is common today for lay people to discuss the Oedipal conflict, sublimation, and the subconscious; and the powerful, warring drives toward sex and death that Freud described as Eros and Thanatos. Anyone who would like to check her understanding of these ideas is advised to read the seven informative and (thankfully) comprehensible chapters by the Viennese college instructor and public relations executive Helmut Strutzmann, who earned his Ph.D. in drama, semiotics, and fine arts. Much of the book, though, goes beyond reviews of Freud's life and principles and does something Freud himself could not do--check the lasting effects of his work some generations down the line. . . . Read the rest here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4158.

Prochnik, George. "Review of REVOLUTION IN MIND: THE CREATION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS by George Makari," NEW YORK TIMES January 20, 2008.

In Revolution in Mind, Makari argues that we’ve been blinded to the cultural reach of psychoanalysis by the magnitude of Freud’s stature and the magnetic pull or repulsion of his personality and theories. In Makari’s view, much contemporary discussion about the relevance of psychoanalysis is based on a false choice: “Freud as everlasting genius, or Freud as relic and fraud.” To Makari, the director of Cornell University’s Institute for the History of Psychiatry, this dichotomy is artificial. Instead, he argues, we should look to the rich, polyphonous context that gave birth to and was influenced by the analytic enterprise: “the culture of Kant; the assumptions of Geisteswissenschaft and a European classical education,” along with “evolutionary biology, positivism and Newtonian physics.” . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/books/review/Prochnik-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin.

Dalrymple, Theodore. "Freud and Us: Review of George Makari's REVOLUTION IN MIND: THE CREATION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS." NEW YORK SUN January 16, 2008.

What, if anything, did Sigmund Freud actually discover? What concrete human knowledge would be lacking if he, or someone very like him, had never lived? With most scientists, the same questions would not be hard to answer. In the case of William Harvey, we might say: He discovered the circulation of the blood. Though philosophers may tell us that all scientific hypotheses are provisional, no one now seriously expects a future scientist to discover that the blood does not, in fact, circulate. Freud also claimed to be a scientist in the strictest sense of the word (though his world outlook was more scientistic than scientific), but all of his supposed discoveries, such as that of the Oedipus complex, were highly speculative. With little independent empirical evidence to support them, his theories were more like inventions than discoveries. No one would take seriously a doctor who concluded from the fact that a young man had broken his leg playing football that playing football was the one and only cause of broken legs; but this was more or less Freud's method. Nevertheless his claims to be a scientist were widely accredited, particularly later in his life. When he sought refuge in Britain after the Anschluss, he was at once awarded the highest scientific honor that the country could bestow, Fellowship of the Royal Society. Ironically, the Society's motto is "Nullius in verba" ("On the word of no one"), which is to say that truth does not inhere in anyone's personal authority, however great it might be. But no one ever used personal authority to more effect than Freud, who was a master of the employment of rhetoric to deflect the need for evidence. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nysun.com/article/69618.

PUB: Dufresne, Todd, ed. AGAINST FREUD: CRITICS TALK BACK. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007.

This work consists of a series of extended interviews with eminent critics of Freud and psychoanalysis in general. Most deal with the minutiae of the development of Freud's ideas, their relationship to his personal motives, and their logical and epistemological status. The question of the extent to which Freud's views were influenced by his biological background is discussed, and they also seek to provide the historical context in which these ideas evolved. A great deal of fascinating material is presented, little known outside the ranks of specialists. For instance, Freud' own accounts of particular cases are compared with those of the patients themselves, bringing out sharp discrepancies. The interviewers were usually skilful in drawing out and challenging the participants, though at times they interrupted the flow of the argument. From this point of view the interview with Frank Sulloway, historian of ideas, seemed to me the most coherent and enlightening one. As one might expect from the title, all are essentially engaged in a demolition job, and one wishes that some voice had been allowed to an attorney for defense. The book evoked in my mind an image of vultures feasting on the corpse of Freud. A particularly tasty morsel was Freud's abandonment of the 'seduction theory', and the question is considered whether Freud was the victim of self-deception or simply a liar. . . . Read the rest here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4020.

Highfield, Roger. "The Science of Dreams: the Results." TELEGRAPH January 8, 2008.

More than a century ago, Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, a milestone work that would inspire generations of scientists to examine the connection between the nebulous, hard-to-define mind and the grey, wrinkled organ that sits between our temples. Freud called our dreams the 'royal road to the unconscious.' His seductive idea was that their content is shaped by experiences early in life, creating the hope that psychoanalysis could use our dreams to reveal our childhood miseries, and thereby cure our inner torment. Today, however, a study of dreams conducted for The Daily Telegraph by Harvard University has come to the inescapable conclusion that Freud put too much emphasis on our formative years. Although dreams are bizarre and otherworldly, they are as likely to be moulded by mundane, humdrum and everyday activities as by life-changing events. . . . Read the whole article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=SJWNEMYD4R04LQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/earth/2008/01/01/scisleep101.xml.

Roth, Michael S. "Review of THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD by Mark Edmundson." LOS ANGELES TIMES September 23, 2007.

More than 150 years after his birth, Sigmund Freud still haunts us. His ideas creep into our language like a symptom, or like an unconscious desire. Sometimes it's all in fun, as when Brian, the thoughtful canine on Fox's Family Guy, wondered with the therapist if his wetting the floor was an act of aggression. Sometimes it's to deepen our engagement with a narrative, as happened to Tony Soprano, in HBO's The Sopranos, when he tried, with the help of his therapist, Dr. Melfi, to understand what it meant to be abandoned by your sister and to inherit the burdens left by your mother. Freud was declared dead in a 2005 cover story in Newsweek; the following year, the magazine ran another piece on the "debunked doctor," declaring him an "inescapable force." Freud just won't disappear, and Mark Edmundson's The Death of Sigmund Freud offers a compelling redescription of why the founder of psychoanalysis retains his relevance today. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-bk-roth23sep23,0,4392115.story?coll=la-books-center

Edmundson, Mark. "Freud and Anna." CHRONICLE September 21, 2007

Why publish a book about Sigmund Freud in 2007, a time when many people — perhaps most — think that Freud is passé? Even a reasonably sympathetic observer is likely to believe that what's best in Freud's work has already been absorbed into the culture. Everyone, this line of thinking runs, now knows what Freud knew about dreams, about the unconscious, about the centrality of sex in human life, about jokes and slips of the tongue, and about a half a dozen or so other consequential matters. Then, of course, there's what his critics think of as the bad side of Freud: contemporary psychologists dismiss him as insufficiently scientific; feminists denounce him as the ultimate patriarch. So why bother now with Sigmund Freud? The answer to this question is at: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=w21j6dg70bpyn7c451bymnjv889k67p3.