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In times as ambivalent as these—ambivalent to the second power—let us tackle ambivalence two times. Hate, Freud said, is older than love; and the two are not originally opposites. The genealogy of love-hating (or hate-loving) one another requires careful work—of speculation, deduction, reading, psychoanalyzing—to know better the shape of its late constructions and their destiny. Some psychoanalysts worry that the articulation of ambivalence is being foreclosed, while felt deeply in the our bodies, especially in sexual relationships. Is this why it returns with violence in political life—a country or world split and divided against itself? Is this splitting what, in fact, defines ambivalence whose figure is being lost to an ideal whose unity excludes out of necessity? In these two events, we will explore ambivalence, first, in what patients tell us from the couch, and second, through a reading seminar on Freud looking beyond love and hate towards the very establishment of the object of desire in identification and annihilation.
In our first event on ambivalence, we will turn to Carol Owens and Stephanie Swales’ new book, Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch. Psychoanalysis has claimed, since Freud, that to be in two minds about something or someone is characteristic of human subjectivity. The authors trace the concept of ambivalence in order to question how the contemporary subject deals with its ambivalence. They argue that experiences of ambivalence are, in present-day cultural life, increasingly excised or foreclosed, and that this foreclosure has symptomatic effects at the individual as well as social level; examining ambivalence as it is at work in mourning, in matters of sexuality, and in our enjoyment under neoliberalism and capitalism. Above all, the authors consider how today’s ambivalent subject relates to the racially, religiously, culturally, or sexually different neighbor as a result of the current societal dictate of complete tolerance of the other, especially the ambivalence about one’s own jouissance which is at the very roots of xenophobia.
After a presentation by Owens and Swales, psychoanalysts Patricia Gherovici and David Lichtenstein will discuss the task of listening to ambivalence from the couch.
Presented by Das Unbehagen and the Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute at The New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College. Â
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Patricia Gherovici is a psychoanalyst and analytic supervisor and recipient of the 2020 Sigourney Award. She is co-founder and director of the Philadelphia Lacan Group and Associate Faculty, Psychoanalytic Studies Minor, University of Pennsylvania (PSYS), Honorary Member at IPTAR the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in New York City,  and Founding Member of Das Unbehagen. Her books include The Puerto Rican Syndrome, (2003) winner of the Gradiva Award and the Boyer Prize,  Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism (2010) and Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference (2017). She has published with Manya Steinkoler two edited volumes, Lacan On Madness: Madness Yes You Can't (2015) and Lacan, Psychoanalysis and Comedy, (2016) and, with Chris Christian, Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious, (2019) Gradiva Award for best edited collection and the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize.
David Lichtenstein is a psychoanalyst in NYC. Faculty member at the NYU Post Doc. Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, CUNY Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, The New School University, and IPTAR, NY He is co-editor of the recent book The Lacan Tradition (Routledge, 2018) and teaches an independent course entitled:  The Clinical Implications of the Work of Jacques Lacan; Founding Editor, DIVISION/Review: A Quarterly Psychoanalytic Forum, Co-Founder of Apres-Coup Psychoanalytic Association, and a participant at Das Unbehagen.
Carol Owens is a psychoanalyst in Dublin, Ireland. She edited The Letter: Perspectives in Lacanian Psychoanalysis (2003–2008), Lacanian Psychoanalysis with Babies, Children and Adolescents: Further Notes on the Child (with Farrelly Quinn, Routledge, 2017) and Studying Lacan’s Seminars IV and V: From Lack to Desire (with Nadezhda Almqvist, Routledge, 2019). She is the series editor for the newly established Routledge series, Studying Lacan’s Seminars.
Stephanie Swales is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Dallas, a practicing psychoanalyst, a licensed clinical psychologist, and a clinical supervisor located in Dallas, Texas. She has authored two books: Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch (Routledge, 2019), co-authored with Carol Owens, and Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject (Routledge, 2012). She is the founder of the Dallas/Fort Worth area Lacan Study Group, serves as Secretary for the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (APA’s Division 24), and serves on the executive boards of the Dallas Postgraduate Program in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy as well as the Dallas Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology.
This event is part of The New School's Gender & Sexualities Studies Institute's 2021 Gender Matters Symposium. You can browse other events here.
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The purpose of this symposium is to gather all New School faculty working on gender and sexuality studies in order to share ideas and visions for the new Gender & Sexualities Studies Institute while building bridges between the different divisions and schools. By facilitating discussions between faculty and bringing in external keynote speakers, we aim to nurture a vibrant GSSI community internally but also build connections and bridges with the outside world, joining efforts to promote existing gender and sexualities studies.
Committed to amplifying diverse voices, The New School offers more than a thousand public programs and events each year, providing fresh perspectives and unique learning opportunities. These lectures, exhibitions, concerts, and performances feature prominent and emerging artists, activists, and thought leaders.
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