2nd Living Theory Conference
3rd-4th December 2022 - Online
"Feel it in Your Bones"
A Language for the Indescribable
This year we wish to focus, think and discuss together in depth. For that, we will concentrate on the recent work of Howard Levine on unconscious intra- and intersubjective processes and their interpretation. Throughout the one and half days of the conference, Howard will present three unpublished papers. These papers will be commented by Ofra Eshel, Dominique Scarfone and Carlos Farate and discussed by the audience. The three papers are:
On the Genesis of Interpretation in a Changing Landscape
A Metapsychology of the Unrepresented
On the Necessity of Failure
The papers are awaiting publication and will not be published by the Free Association Lisbon before the Conference. But there is a suggested reading list to lay the groundwork and catalyze associations for the discussion. You can download it here.
The Argument
There are limits to our capacity to directly know the psychic experience of ourselves and our patients:
“… no one can ever know what happens in the analytic session, the thing-in-itself, O; we can only speak of what the analyst or patient feels happens, know what the participants say happens, or the emotional state engendered by the verbalization of analyst or patient in the listener.” (Bion 1965, p. 33).*
Psychic reality, which was once believed to be exactly and fully ‘knowable’ via empirical observation is now recognized to be only ‘represented’ or indicated – i.e., partially intuited and constructed - by unconscious intra- and intersubjective processes and it is these processes that partially determine the terms which representations assume when they are given shape. |