Psychoanalytic Synthesis and Innovation in Times of Upheaval
presented by the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute
DONNEL STERN, PhD
Thinking Where We Are Not: Interpellation, Dissociative Enactment, and the Social
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28th, 7:30-9:30PM
Presented in person, on location at the Institute
20 West 74th Street (between Central Park West & Columbus Avenue)
Seating for this and all Colloquium events are on a first come, first serve basis.
ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
In the interest of integrating the social and the individual in psychoanalysis, the author examines the relation of interpellation and enactment. Interpellation is a way of conceptualizing the creation of subjectivity via individual participation in the ideological tropes of power. Enactment is our psychoanalytic way of referring to unconscious participation in relatedness. In interpellation, one person is “hailed” by another in a way that inducts the person so addressed, without the awareness of either party, into a relational pattern that includes both. The author argues that we can see the same process in dissociative enactment. Clinical process is illuminated by the recognition of the continuity of the social and the individual that is modeled by the relation of these two dissociative processes. New meaning–the formulation of unformulated experience–comes about unbidden, sometimes slipping the traces of ideology. Paraphrasing an aphorism from Lacan: We think where we are not.
1.5 CEs are available for attending this presentation.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Donnel Stern, PhD, is Training and Supervising Analyst, and Faculty at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City; and Adjunct Clinical Professor and Clinical Consultant, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is founder and editor of the Psychoanalysis in a New Key book series from Routledge, which has 90 titles in print. He is former Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He has published five books, the most recent of which has just appeared, On Coming into Possession of Oneself: Transformations of the Interpersonal Field. He has also co-edited four books about the theory and practice of interpersonal psychoanalysis. Dr. Stern is in private practice in New York City.