Ecopsychoanalysis : Deconstructing the “Human” in favor of entangled subjectivites

Katie Gentile

Friday Mar 11, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM, 3 sessions until Mar 25

As we work from our homes, seeing patients, supervisees and our own analysts only on screens, it is clear the outside world, that psychoanalysis historically has deemed outside of the dyad, has completely changed our practice. In 1960 Harold Searles opined that psychoanalysis ignores the environment at our own peril. Failing to shift the discourse, he repeated this plea in 1972 with his paper on climate change. Now almost 50 years later, this paper is helping to fuel a number of theorists to explore the human within the world. Achille Mbembe recently declared that humans must engage in a process to "radically decenter" in order to be "born together again." This class will attempt this decentering by exploring interdisciplinary writings on subjectivity as being-with environment. Reading posthumanism, new materialisms, indigenous studies, anti-Blackness and critical race theories alongside of psychoanalytic theory, we will deconstruct what Bruno Latour calls "the great divide," how the Western notion of the human as separate from the environment has thread through psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic authors like Joseph Dodd, Donna Orange, and Harold Searles, will be read with transdisciplinary theorists like Stacy Alaimo, Patricia Clough, Zakiyya Iman Jackson, Jin Haritaworn, Denise Ferreira da Silva, and Kathryn Yusoff, to name only a few.

CE Credits offered: 4.5

Course Objectives

After completing this course participants will be able to:

1. develop a working knowledge of how the nonhuman has been conceptualized in psychoanalytic theory and treatment;
2. learn to apply psychoanalytic ideas of apathy to clinical work around the more-than-human;
3. develop tools to interrogate empathy and its uses in the clinical space.
4. be able to critically examine the history of psychoanalytic notions of subjectivity within historical contexts and identify ways many populations of people and the nonhuman have been considered “sub”human;
5. consider the foundation of notions of the “unconscious” and how it reflects cultural biases;
6. learn to identify anxieties around the climate crisis within the clinical space.
7. analyze their own biases about the nonhuman and how these shape their clinical approaches and the material on which they chose to focus;
8. develop skills to examine their own biases for or against including the environment in the clinical space;
9. critique the history of the category of “the animal” and how it has shaped what is considered “human subjectivity” within psychoanalysis.
10. be better able to listen for climate anxiety in the clinical space;
11. identify ways to incorporate analyses of extinction anxieties into clinical work and find anchors in expanding notions of the human.
12. identify and critique the ways environmental crisis can leave communities vulnerable to exploitation and how psychoanalysis can interrupt or condone it

pincsf.org/events – 415-288-4050 — 530 Bush St, Suite 700, SF CA USA — pincsf@gmail.com

The Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC) is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. PINC maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Visit pincsf.org/policies for policies and disclaimers.