Psychoanalytic Synthesis and Innovation in Times of Upheaval
presented by the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute
GREGORY S. RIZZOLO, PhD
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INTERPRETANT IN THE FIELD OF SPEECH
FRIDAY, MAY 9th at 7:30PM
with Michael Rothman, PhD, Moderator
Seating for this and all Colloquium events are on a first come, first serve basis.
ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
In his classic paper, The function and the field of language and speech in psychoanalysis (1953), Lacan wrote that psychoanalysis had abandoned its original interest in speech. This concern, which has animated the Lacanian tradition for nearly 75 years, has found more recent expression in an empirically-oriented sector of American psychoanalysis. Litowitz (2011) argues that the turn to infant observation in America has led to an emphasis on visual-behavioral evidence over aural-oral data. The Lacanian tradition links the retreat from language with the rise of countertransference as a vehicle of insight in the Anglo-American schools. The danger, as Fink (2010) emphasizes, is that we might fall into “me-centered attention” instead of listening to language. There is, however, another way to think about countertransference, one that suggests an alternative approach to speech, grounded neither in Lacan, nor in Saussure, but in Charles Peirce’s theory of signs. The author argues that when we use the countertransference, we are engaging a dynamic interpretant, often an indexical icon, to register the force and effect of a communication. Far from abandoning speech, we find ourselves immersed in the work of signification. The author illustrates this approach through my reading of the recent case of Eliot (Busch, 2014).
1.5 CEs are available for attending this presentation.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Gregory S. Rizzolo, PhD, is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA) and a faculty member at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. His work has appeared in Psychoanalytic Psychology, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, and The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA), among others. In 2017, he received the JAPA Prize for the best paper of the year in the journal. He is the author of The Critique of Regression (Routledge, 2019).
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Michael Rothman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. A graduate of the Psychoanalytic Training Program at the William Alanson White Institute, he also completed a specialization in Couples and Family Therapy at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Dr. Rothman serves as co-Editor of the Book Review for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where he teaches psychoanalytic theory and is a clinical supervisor.