|
March,
2002
May,
2002
June,
2002
September,
2002
|
September
2002 Joint
Presentation With Michigan Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology Drawn
to the Asylum: In Search of Missing Parts (on
the way to a possible conversation)
A
lecture with an audio-visual slide presentation
Paper
Presentation
by
Judith E. Vida, M.D.
About
Dr. Vida
Academy
Introductory Remarks
by Terri I. Egan, Ph.D.
| ABOUT
THE CONFERENCE
As
human beings, we make use of the tools of our surround as we engage
ourselves in “the stuff of life”. Taking up whatever is available to
us (art, music, literature, action, conversation, etc) we find ways to
construct and express those ideas and emotions, beliefs and values,
pleasures and angst which reside in our innermost being— the very ‘marrow’
from which our psyche derives its shape.
Academy
members hold the belief that the arts, humanities and anthropic studies
(as opposed to medicine and its language of pathology, disease,
treatment and cure) provide a natural home for expression of, and
inquiry into, the very “stuff “ that constitutes life and its
living. With this in mind, we are interested to hear from Dr. Vida about
how/why she looks to art and the artist’s experience and devices
to inform a larger understanding of the human condition, including her
own.
Dr.
Vida’s ideas enrich our study of the psychoanalytic arts which
involves a free associative way of thinking, listening and learning that
considers everyday-life decisions, behaviors, actions and feelings to be
creative and meaning-filled forms of “conversation” with self and
with others. The art of bringing this personal collage of human
expression to language requires abandoning reliance upon theoretical,
diagnostic and medical frameworks that limit, impede, and literally have nothing to do with
a psychoanalytic conversation that creates room (as Yeats puts it) to
“think in the marrow bone”. Such a conversation would depend on a
“learned ignorance” that must wait for the emergence of a savoir
that arrives out of an inner necessity known only to the individual, and
which expresses itself in a form which embodies that person’s
meanings. In such a process, perhaps certain missing (unworded) parts of
a personal story can become known and understood in ways that might be
useful to that person.
Offering
alternatives to the Procrustean bed of medical thinking as a way of
addressing problems
in living, the Academy seeks to preserve a space wherein private
meanings can be talked about and explored rather than pathologized. In
such a space, each person can be viewed as an artist whose
private , subjective reality has painted itself onto a canvas of
assumptions, patterns, beliefs and "ways of being" that simply
arrive with the person, and are NOT assumed in advance to be either
known/shared by the therapist, or in need of being changed.
What
implications might such possibilities hold for psychotherapy? for
psychoanalysis? and for a psychoanalytic conversation in search of wording in
some missing parts?
| In
keeping with the Academy’s vision and version of
psychoanalysis
as a creative, intellectual discipline dedicated to the
understanding of the psyche, we welcome Dr. Judith Vida and her
discussion of some differences between “art” and “Art”,
in the context of her encounter with a collection of works of
art made by residents of European psychiatric institutions over
the course of 40 years.
To study, learn from, and speak
about the art-ful ways in which people construct,
interpret, and (re)present their own subjective reality stands
in stark contrast to teaching pre-established methodology and
rules of interpretation, whether that be in an art studio, an
art gallery, or in a psychoanalytic consulting room.
Dr. Vida’s paper suggests
that every spontaneous act of creativity is an act that creates
meaning and presents its creator’s specific world in a real process
that is to be distinguished from romanticized ideas about art,
including art therapy. |
|
June
2002
Speaking
in the Borrowed Language: Mental
Health as an Agent of Cultural Oppression
|
ABOUT
THE CONFERENCE
Psychotherapy
and psychoanalysis have been "applied" to myriad peoples and
cultures, with reportedly demonstrable success in ameliorating problems
and effecting change. However, important questions arise when these
theories and methods are "applied" in cultures that do not
share their fundamental assumptions. In these situations the
"mental health treatment" may be seen as an attempt to
superimpose one's own preferred, custom(ary) "ways of being"
over that which is indigenous to (an)other with little regard for what
gets lost, if not destroyed in the process.
Drawing from his experience as a
psychologist working with the sovereign Yakama Indian Nation, Dr. Walker
will share with us his observations of a dominant culture's efforts to
change, modernize, medicate and otherwise 'colonize' the life experience
of Native Americans. He will also speak to the enormous cost involved in
vocalizing resistance to the pathologizing of differences between people
as well as the personal growth he has experienced in opening himself to
learning from his clients. Such a process necessarily has involved
modifying and at times discarding his own long held premises, and
engaging in a way of thinking and practicing that would, previously,
have been unimaginable to him.
Members of the Academy will consider
professional parallels in which a culturally dominant biomedical story
for the addressing of human problems in living is increasingly silencing
the voices of those therapists and clients who are interested in
understanding and exploring personal meanings. This biomedical story has
infiltrated our entire culture, requiring that nearly all manner of
communication unique to the individual be viewed through the lens of
diagnostic and statistical manuals, and that specific, dictated
"treatments" be prescribed in accordance with these specific
and dictated "disorders." Individuals coming for
"treatment" are consequently viewed through this lens that
pathologizes them, trapping them in a diagnostic system of thought that
attempts to medicate and/or indoctrinate a more congenial adaptation to
the dominant culture's way of thinking, feeling and behaving.
The Academy stands for an alternative to this:
What if it is possible to preserve a
space where private meanings of the individual can be explored rather
than pathologized?
What if the individual's way of
making sense of the world and his/her own personal history is
respected, understood, entered into and given mutual voice?
What if each person is viewed as a
“culture” unto him/herself, whose private subjective reality has
cultivated fundamental assumptions, patterns, beliefs and "ways
of being" that simply arrive with him or her, and are NOT assumed
in advance to be either known,/shared by the therapist, or in need of
being changed?
What implications might such
possibilities hold for psychotherapy? for psychoanalysis? and for
"mental health treatment" as an agent of oppression? Can there
be an "intercultural space" in the consulting room without
overt or covert subjugation, indoctrination or domination?
|
May
2002
Joint
Presentation With Michigan Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology
Psychoanalytic
Perspectives on Film: Paranoiac Visions and Neo-realities in the Recent
Cinema Paper
Presentation by David L. Downing, Psy.D.
Academy
Introductory Remarks by Linda J. Young
|
ABOUT
THE CONFERENCE
This conference is one of a series
sponsored by the Academy for the Study of the
Psychoanalytic Arts, which demonstrates how artistic forms of self-expression
evidenced in various mediums such as film, have something important
to offer to the study and under- standing of psychoanalysis. If we assume
that all individuals are creative writers, directors and actors in
their own screen plays of everyday life, then questions arise as to
how we as clinicians are to witness, understand and ultimately
participate in these screenplays.
Academy members believe that creative and idiographic expressions of individuals'
unique strivings are best honored and understood in realms which
offer a non-medical perspective and exist outside of the semiotic matrix
of meaning which the health care industry produces. Within the healthcare
industry people are evaluated according to standardized norms of
development and viewed through lenses which color everything
within their purview in terms of sickness and health. Such lenses
are themselves comprised of pre-conceived notions and theoretical
assumptions which speak the language of diagnosis, pathology, and
illness --all of which serve to narrate and edit in particular
ways, the stories which people bring to us. Anything outside of
the perceived norm is viewed as deviant or symptomatic of
underlying illness that needs to be cured or otherwise obliterated.
As such, these notions and assumptions might be viewed as "influencing
machines" of sorts, especially as they are used to fuel the bureaucratic,
governmental and professional rules and regulations determining so
many aspects of clinical practice including guidelines and standards
of care and practice.
BUT...
What if the clinician chooses to not participate in the healthcare
" influencing machine" but rather, attempts to focus on
what is to be seen and understood through the already existing
experiential and meaning-making lens of the individual? What if
the clinician dares to travel outside of the traditional moorings
of a society which views the individual from a biomedical and
bioethical perspective and chooses not to participate in the semiotic
'influencing" nomenclature of disease and medicine? Is it
possible to create a language which enables us to speak outside
of such a system of thought, thereby respecting and exploring the
meanings to be found in the unique, idiosyncratic, creative
productions of everyday life?
The Academy believes in such
possibilities and invites anyone interested, to attend our programs and participate in the ongoing development of this exciting
dialogue.
|
March
2002 Annual
Academy Membership Meeting
Psychoanalytic
Narratives: Writing
the Self into Contemporary Cultural Phenomena
Paper
Presentation by Ian Parker, Ph.D.
|