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RACE INPSYCHOANAYTIC THEORY AND PRACTICE: FREUD’S “PRIMITIVISM,” WINNICOTT’S “RUTHLESSNESS,” AND FANON’S “LACTIFICATION” Instructors: Annie Lee Jones Ph.D. and Steven Knoblauch Ph.D.The course will offer the following unique dimensions. It is taught by a black female psychoanalyst and a white male psychoanalyst. With the readings and discussions, the course attempts to build on, but move beyond, several current discourses around race and the social construction of the unconscious. In particular, traditional models of maturation and pathology based on triadic and dyadic dynamics are historicized to illuminate racial influences, often silenced against a background of gendered Eurocentrism.Emphasis is placed on “reflexive skepticism” and “critical pluralism” as defined and explicated by Aron (2017) and developed in the work of critical racial theorists such as Brickman and Fanon.A unique exploration is offered for how psychoanalytic practice can be myopically shaped by unconsciously carried racism as seen through innovative readings of Winnicott’s and Fanon’s linking of ruthlessness, violence and vitality, particularly, under conditions reproducing colonial oppression. WEEK 1 - An overview of the course is provided as briefly outlined above, emphasizing an attempt to create new perspectives on the interaction of race and class for psychoanalytic theory and practice through close textual readings and shared clinical experience. We begin with sections of the already classic text by Celia Brickman, originally published in 2003 and updated in 2018, highlighting 19th and 20th century theories concerning anthropology and biology that influenced the way Freud absorbed assumptions of primitivity concerning non-European cultures into his theory and practice of psychoanalysis.ReadingsBrickman, C. Race in Psychoanalysis: Aboriginal Populations in Mind. Routledge, New York. 2018. Forward (pp. x-xiii)Preface to the new edition (pp. xiv-xviii)Introduction (pp 1-12)Chapter 2 Psychoanalysis and the colonial imagination: evolutionary thought in Freud’s texts (58-94)Chapter 5 Race and primitivity in the clinical encounter (pp. 196-219)Learning Objective #1: After participating in this class, students will be able to describe the racial assumptions underlying the anthropological model of recapitulation between ontogeny and phylogeny as they reemerged in Freud’s model of development for psychoanalysis and may still be carried in our own subjective encounters whether we identify as black or white.WEEK 2 - This next reading places emphasis on the generally unrecognized impact of the eugenics movement on the foundational assumptions upon which the disciplines of psychology and psychoanalysis have been based. ReadingsYakushko, O, (2017), Open Letter in Regard to Inclusion of Eugenicists without Recognition of Racism and Xenophobia in the last 125 year - Wally of History of American Psychological Association Convention (August, 2017, Washington, DC)Learning Objective #2: After participating in this class, students will be able to describe the 2 false assumptions that created the problematic acceptance of hierarchical binaries privileging secondary over primary process first racialized in the eugenics movements that preceded the development of psychology and psychoanalysis and narrate ways in which they still carry these assumptions.WEEK 3 - This week we focus on Fanon’s early attempts to bring his readers (assumed to be mostly white) into his experience and critique of those Western theories with which he was professionalized. The significance of this for a psychoanalytic understanding of the impact of a colonized subject’s experience of race and class is a major focusing question beginning with the effects of language and the body.ReadingFanon, F. (1952, 2008), Black Skin, White Masks. Introduction, Chapter One: The Black Man and Language, Chapter Two :The Woman of Color and the White Man, Chapter Three: The Man of Color and the White Woman pp. 1-63.Learning Objective #3: After participating in this class, students will be able to present Fanon’s argument for how language and body are racialized in European derived science to create a category of primitivity/inferiority for non-European races.WEEK 4 - This class will build on the focus of the preceding class with particular emphasis on the racialized effects of power and the scopic impact of stereotyping and scapegoating on unconscious processes. The significance of these perspectives for transference/countertransference experience in the clinical interaction will bring a clinical focus to these theoretical perspectives.Reading Fanon, F. (1952, 2008) Black Skin, White Masks. Chapter Four: The So-Called Dependency Complex of the Colonized, Chapter Five: The Lived Experience of the Black Man. pp. 64-119.Learning Objective #4: After participating in this class, students will be able to describe at least one example of racial stereotyping and one example of racial scapegoating illustrated in Fanon’s text and compare these examples to their own transference and countertransference experiences as either persons of color or not.WEEK 5 - In recognition of the difficulty grasping Fanon’s nuanced points and references introduced in the texts of the previous weeks, we will read and discuss the first part of Lewis Gorden’s reading of Black Skin, White Masks. This reading deepens an understanding of Fanon’s references to the theory and literature that influenced his writing of the text. It further catalyzes a series of clinical considerations for recognizing the unconscious effects of race and class in a psychoanalytic encounter. ReadingGordon, L. R. (Summer 2005), Through the Zone of Nonbeing: A reading of Black Skin, White Masks in Celebration of Fanon’s Eightieth Birthday, The C.L.R. James Journal 11, no 1:1-20.Learning Objective #5: After participating in this class, students will be able toidentify at least 2 examples from literature cited by Fanon illustrative of his concept of lactification which they can also identify in their own clinical experience.WEEK 6 - In this week’s reading and discussion we will focus on Fanon’s synthesis of his sociogenic reading of the structural effects of racism and his Western training as a psychiatrist with particular attention to assumptions around normativity and pathology. The clinical implications of his observations for psychoanalytic practice will serve as a jumping off point for present day implications relating to transference/countertransference issues.ReadingFanon, F. (1952, 2008) Black Skin, White Masks. Chapter Six: The Black Man and Psychopathology. pp120-184.Learning Objective #6: After participating in this class, students will be able to describe and compare at least 2 clinical examples of racialized trauma offered by Fanon with parallel examples in their own transference/countertransference experience.WEEK 7 - In this week’s reading we combine the final chapter of Fanon’s text with the second part of Gordon’s textual reading of Fanon to catalyze important questions concerning possibilities and difficulties with theories and strategies for recognition as currently theorized in psychoanalysis. ReadingsFanon, F. (1952, 2008) Black Skin, White Masks,Chapter Seven: The Black Man and Recognition, Chapter Eight: By Way of Conclusion. pp. 185-202.Gordon, L. R. (Summer 2005), Through the Zone of Nonbeing: A reading of Black Skin, White Masks in Celebration of Fanon’s Eightieth Birthday, The C.L.R. James Journal 11, no 1:20-27.Learning Objective #7: After participating in this class, students will be able to compare and contrast Fanon’s conceptualization of recognition with contemporary theoretical perspectives, particularly, that of Jessica Benjamin.WEEK 8 - As a bridge to reading sections of The Wretched of The Earth, we will begin to discuss the first of 2 papers by Derek Hook. “Fanon and the Psychoanalysis of Racism” will serve as a jumping off point for a reconsideration of how Fanon’s major contributions serve as a significant critique of psychoanalysis as it is now practiced, amputated from most of the considerations of race and class that Fanon argues are implicit in all clinical encounters for both analyst and analysand. What is the significance of leaving out the social for an effective psychoanalytic practice in today’s socio-political environment? Hook reviews a variety of Fanon’s concepts as post-colonial revisions of Freud and Jung to include the phobogenic object model for how alienation and pathology are contextually shaped by conditions of social power and the paranoid projective processes necessary to shore up white power in response to desire. Particular emphasis is on explicating how whiteness as a cultural ideal of power shapes the desire of a colonized black subjectivity and how the racial stereotype around sexuality makes the Other a threat. Hook emphasizes how Fanon’s model highlights how the psychological repeats, reiterates and reinforces the political which, then, becomes the most effective point of urgency for psychological change.ReadingHook, D. (2004), Fanon and the psychoanalysis of racism [Online]. London, UK: LSE Research Online: Retrieved from HYPERLINK ". Ise.ac.uk/2567.Learning Objective #8: After participating in this class, students will be able to compare and contrast concepts from Freud and Jung characterized by Fanon as “ontogenetic,” with Fanon’s “sociodiagnostic” alternative conceptualization and its iimplcations for racialized assumptions in psychoanalysis.WEEK 9 - In this class we will read a second Hook text in which the author reads Bhabha’s extension of Fanon’s work on Othering by emphasizing a basic ambivalence at the level of identification and discourse alike. His understanding avoids the pitfalls of psychological reductionism and keeps open the possibility of articulating the narcissistic and aggressive tensions between fantasy and external social structures. His analysis brings into question Western theoretical and clinical visions founded on racially stereotyping processes that do not engage the other in the fullness of contradictory experience and diversity, but rather perpetuate a reducing of difference to the stark contrasts of a Manichean dichotomy as emphasized by Fanon. The clear implications for a critique of current psychoanalytic theory and practice will be explored.ReadingsHook. D. (2005), The racial stereotype, colonial discourse, fetishism, and racism. The Psychoanalytic Review. 92(5): 701-734.Learning Objective #9: After participating in this class, students will be able to construct Fanon’s Manichean model of racism and demonstrate how Bahba’s theory of ambivalence at the levels of identification and discourse, reflects narcissistic and aggressive tensions between fantasy and external social structures as illustrative of Fanon’s model.WEEK 10 - In this class, we will turn to Fanon’s chapter in The Wretched of the Earth in order to begin to consider his unique perspective on the conscious and unconscious meanings of violence when examined from a sociogenic lens. In addition to his classic chapter, we will read Homi Bahba’s Forward and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Preface to the text. This will be the first of 2 classes dedicated to a close reading and consideration of this re-reading of violence from the perspective of African psychoanalysis. ReadingsFanon, F. (1963, 2004), The Wretched of the Earth. Forward: Framing Fanon, by Homi K. Bhabba pp. vii-xlii, Preface, by Jean-Paul Sartre pp. xliii-xii, Chapter I: On Violence pp. 1-62.Learning Objective #10: After participating in this class, students will be able to give at least 2 examples of how Fanon constructs individual and collective violence within a sociogenic lens and compare these constructions with explanations emerging from a conflict model currently used in psychoanalysis.WEEK 11 - In this week’s class we will read a series of clinical vignettes that Fanon offered in The Wretched of the Earth demonstrating the emotional and physical trauma of colonial conflict for both the colonized and the colonizer. Our discussion will focus on how these illustrations resonate and/or map onto the current subtle race and class arrangements in which we find ourselves with others with particular emphasis on how registrations of race and class construct the clinical encounter.ReadingFanon, F. (1963, 2004), The Wretched of the Earth. Chapter V. Colonial War and Mental Disorders. pp. 181-233.Learning Objective #11: After participating in this class, students will be able to compare at least one of Fanon’s examples of racially based trauma illustrative of victimization and at least one of Fanon’s examples of racially based trauma illustrative of guilt and remorse in the perpetrator of violence with examples coming from their own clinical experience.WEEK 12 - In this week’s class we will read 2 papers by contemporary clinicians from South Africa offering different and unique lenses for understanding and encountering violence in the experience of patients and as, re-enacted, in the clinical interaction. These new perspectives link Fanon’s thinking directly with psychoanalytic practice. ReadingsLong, W. (2017) Essence or experience? A new direction for African psychology, Theory and Psychology, Vol. 27(3) 293-312.Swartz, S. (2018), “Counter-Recognition in Decolonial Struggle, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 28: 520-527.Learning Objective #12: After participating in this class, students will be able to describe at least 2 illustrations of the use of Winnicott’s concept of ruthlessness to account for racialized violence occurring in examples of their own clinical experience.WEEK 13 - This week continues an exploration of violence with 2 papers linking conceptualizations of violence from Fanon and Africans with current thinking reflected in North American writing and with reference to 2 clinical illustrations.ReadingsGump, J. P. (2010), Reality Matters: The Trauma on African American Subjectivity. Psychoal. Psychol., 27(1): 42-54.Jones, A. L. & Obourn, M. (2014), Object fear: The national dissociation of race and racism in the era of Obama. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, suppl. Special Issue: African Americans and; Basingstoke Vol. 9, Iss. 4, 392-412.Learning Objective #13: After participating in this class, students will be able use Fanon’s sociogenic theory to describe how the unique history of African American slavery haunts contemporary experience both in and outside of the consulting room for both persons of color and others.WEEK 14 - This week offers a careful analysis of the subjective and intersubjective presence of white privilege in the clinical interaction with a focus on the subjectivities of both Black and White patients and analysts. How this is carried unconsciously and uncritically as a structure of colonial discourse is explored with clinical vignettes illustrating the trauma and violence as these forms of experience have been theorized and discussed in week 12 and in the work of previously read authors. Readings Gump, J. (2014), Discovery and Repair: Discussion of the Article by Lynne Jacobs. Psychoanlalytic Inquiry. 34:759-765. Knoblauch S. (in press) Fanon’s Vision for Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice. Psychoanal. Dial. Learning Objective #14: After participating in this class, students will be be able to narrate the colonial discourse of white privilege in at least one example of problems with recognition and/or mis-recognition coming either from texts previously read or their own clinical experience.WEEK #15 - In the first of these reading the author builds on the object relational idea of Searles and Belittler along with ideas from Black critical theory including those of Mbembe to argue that the violence of racialization works in and through clinical and national settings. The setting is theorized in terms of phantasmic and phantomatic dimensions. The second reading argues the value of understanding being as being placed, emphasizing the necessity of material and historical setting for any ontological formation. The third reading explores the ruptures and violences of setting. The fourth reading argues that visceral belonging be considered a problem insofar as it is tethered to a setting that constitutively excludes blackness and queerness in structurally precise ways. ReadingsButler, D. (2019), Racialized violence and the violence of the setting. Studies in Gender and Psychoanalysis. 20(3): 146-158.Gonzalez, F. (2019), Necessary disruptions: A discussion of Daniel Butler’s “Racialized bodies and the violence of the setting.” Studies in Gender and Psychoanalysis. 20(3):159-164.Swartz, S. (2019), A mingling of ghosts: A response to Daniel Butler’s “Racialized Bodies and the violence of the setting.” Studies in Gender and Psychoanalysis. 20(3): 165-170.Butler, D. (2019), Setting (on) fire: Reply to discussion Studies in Gender and Psychoanalysis. 20(3): 171-176.Learning Objective #15: After completing this class, students will be able to describe at least 3 considerations that conceptualizing setting with the concepts of phantasmatic and phantomatic have for the clinical interaction.

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