Past Events

THE INSTITUTE FOR REDISCOVERING PSYCHOANALYSIS
is pleased to share an archive of past events.

Basic and Advanced Principles of Psychoanalytically Informed Psychotherapy

This one-day workshop presents a functionalist approach to treatment, which is a powerful mode of psychotherapy, (and which prepares the patient for a fully psychoanalytic process). Past workshops:

  • April 18th, Cape Town

All too often, even those psychotherapists who think about their work psychoanalytically, become preoccupied with the content of whatever the patient expresses, rather than the ― unconscious ― function of the patient’s expressions. All too easily, the treatment may degenerate into a procedure of coaching or counseling.

The first part of this seminar (from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm) will focus on principles of psychotherapeutic intervention (what to say to the patient, how and when). It will demonstrate functionalist principles that maximize the effectiveness of therapeutic interpretations, both by conceptualizing every psychic event in terms of their internal value as compromise formations, and by appreciating resistances as having positive value for healing.

This first part of the seminar is open to any practicing clinician.

Fee: R1,000 (R800 for registered students and psychoanalytic trainees).

The second part of the seminar (from 2 pm to 4 pm) is only for those practitioners who wish either to move a psychotherapeutic procedure toward a psychoanalytic process, or to begin a psychoanalytic treatment de novo. That is, its principles are designed for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic trainees (whether formally candidates at an Institute or not). Participation in the first part of the seminar is prerequisite.

Fee: R1,400 (R1,200 for individuals currently in psychoanalysis at x3+ weekly)

If you are interested, write as soon as possible to: Register@RediscoveringPsychoanalysis.org

About the Facilitator: Dr Barnaby B Barratt has been an IPA Training Analyst since 1996. Among other books and papers, he is author of the award-winning trilogy: What is Psychoanalysis? (2013), Radical Psychoanalysis (2016), and Beyond Psychotherapy (2019); all published by Routledge. His next book, Free Association, is due to be released in mid-2026.

Annual series of zoom webinars

January 29th, On the Psychodynamics of Political Polarization

When political landscapes engender fear and loathing, as they are doing so conspicuously today, individuals who were previously liberal and open-minded become more extreme and dogmatic in their views, as well as more rejecting and hateful toward whatever is the ‘other.’ In this conversation, a panel of psychoanalysts and political observers will explore the intrapsychic aspects of these processes of polarization.

February 26th, On Coming Out in Psychoanalysis

With Dr Sam Guzzardi (this year’s winner of the IPA’s prestigious Tiresias Award) as a discussant, two Candidates in psychoanalytic training offer their perspectives on the affects of homophobia and heteronormativity in the procedures and challenges of the culture prevailing in many psychoanalytic institutions, as well as in many precepts of psychoanalytic theorizing.

March 26th, On Dignity, Evil, and Love

Professor Lewis Gordon has given this talk to standing ovations throughout the USA. Professor Gordon’s work in Africana philosophy, racism, post-coloniality, and existentialism is internationally famous. In this talk he covers existential challenges of great relevance to the human condition today. He will be in conversation with Dr Barnaby B Barratt.

To register for the entire series of Conversations, please make payment to:

  • Institute for Rediscovering Psychoanalysis
  • ABSA Bank Account ― 4117 2735 52
  • Clearing Code ― 632005
  • Swift (BIC) Code ― ABSAZAJJ

Rand 400 for African and Asian residents

(Rand 300 for registered students and psychoanalytic trainees)

Euros or USD 30 for all non-African or Asian residents.

(Euros or USD 25 for registered students and psychoanalytic trainees)

Then please be sure to send your name, email address, and proof of payment to: Register@RediscoveringPsychoanalysis.org

By email, registered individuals will receive a zoom-link on the day of each Conversation.

 

If you have ideas or wishes for future Psychoanalytic Conversations, please contact the Institute at Info@RediscoveringPsychoanalysis.org

The Institutes list of contacts is restricted, so we ask of those interested to circulate information about these events to any individuals who might wish to participate.

 

Against the Current

The Institute for Rediscovering Psychoanalysis is pleased to announce its “Against the Current…” series of Zoom talks, commencing this coming Thursday and continuing until the end of the 2025 year. They will be presented Thursdays at 7:00 pm South African time (ending promptly at 8:30 pm). The following have been completed:

  • June 26th The History, Philosophy and Confusions of Ego Psychology
  • August 28th The History, Philosophy and Confusions of Object-Relations
  • September 25th The History, Philosophy and Confusions of Social-Relational Therapies
  • October 30th The History, Philosophy and Confusions of Lacanianism
  • November 27th The History, Philosophy and Confusions of Neuropsychoanalysis

Duration: 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm (South Africa)

Fee: R500 for the entire series.

Facilitator: Barnaby B Barratt

The fee for the series is to be paid to the bank account of the Institute for Rediscovering Psychoanalysis (there is no reduced fee for attendance of less that the entire series).

ABSA Bank account: 411 727 3552

SWIFT code: ABSAZAJJ

Please be sure to send your name and email address, with proof of payment, to Info@RediscoveringPsychoanalysis.org

Individuals for whom R500 is a burdensome obligation are invited to write a note directly to the Secretary of the Institute at this same email address.

Those individuals who already paid R250 (for a previous talk this year) should only pay an additional R250 for this series.

Registrants (and the Institute must have your name and email address in advance) will be sent a Zoom link by email on the morning of each talk.

These talks are very introductory and — hopefully — free of jargon, so all members of the public are welcome to attend.

Erotic Bodies in and out of Treatment

In-person Workshop: Saturday 06, September, 2025

Presented by Barnaby B. Barratt

Sponsored by ‘GRASP’ and the Institute for Rediscovering Psychoanalysis

This workshop is a daylong exploration of what it means to live in a body and is intended for professionals actively involved in any form of healing practice.

In The Dubliners, James Joyce describes the “Painful Case” of Mr. Duffy who “lived a short distance from his body.” Much of the time, many of us ― and most of our patients ― are quite accustomed to life at such a spatiotemporal distance. Overtly or covertly, this disconnection of our lived-experience from the sensuality of our embodiment almost invariably has deleterious consequences.

Both experientially and theoretically, this workshop will explore how, when and where, we become ungrounded, and will review ways in which such disconnectedness can be healed.

Space is limited and registration is by invitation. To attend please contact Info@RediscoveringPsychoanalysis.org if interested.

Duration: 9:00 am to 16:00 pm (South Africa)

Logistics: Please arrive between 8:30 and 8:45 am to ensure a punctual start at 9 am ― Please note that no one will be admitted to the workshop after 8:45 sharp (the reason for this is to establish an energetic container without intrusion or interruption).

There will be three 2-hour sessions: 9 to 11 am; 11:30 am to 1:30 pm; and 2 to 4 pm.

Participants will be asked to observe silence in the breaks between sessions.

Social interaction is welcomed after 4:30 pm.

Requisites: Please bring blanket(s) and a cushion, so that you can lie comfortably (hopefully it will be warm enough to use the lawn); also bring a blindfold. Wear loose clothing, with layers according to weather, and light shoes (or none).

Healthy light snacks and a light lunch will be served. Please refrain from drinking alcohol the night before the workshop, and from caffeine or other stimulants on the morning of the workshop.

Preparatory Reading:
“Free-associating with the Bodymind.” International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 22: 161-175, 2013. DOI:10.1080/0803706X.2012.729860. Available on Pep-Web.

Also recommended: Susan Raffo’s Liberated to the Bone: Histories, Bodies, Futures (2022, AK Press); and The Emergence of Somatic Psychology and Bodymind Therapy (2010, Palgrave Macmillan).

For further recommendations: See www.RediscoveringPsychoanalysis.org/Recommended-Reading/

Artificial Intelligence as the Fourth Great Blow to Human Narcissism

Paper: Saturday 02, August, 2025

Presented as part of the panel titled “The Fate of Anchoring in a World of Artificial Intelligence,” Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association in Lisbon.

On Psychoanalytic Evangelism in Non-European Cultures: Assessing the Export of Psychoanalytic Theorizing as a Neo-colonialist Enterprise?

Paper presented as part of a Zoom seminar: Wednesday 09, April, 2025

This paper by Barnaby B Barratt is sponsored by the Psychoanalysis and Politics community of thinking that has been active since 2010 (under the leadership of Professor Lene Austed). It is part of this year’s series of talks on “Crises.”

Synopsis of Barratt’s paper:
The International Psychoanalytic Association seems ready to announce its recognition of a ‘Fourth Region’ composed of training institutes in Asia. It is thus timely to take further an assessment of the implications of exporting psychoanalytic thinking to the non-Eurocentric cultures of Africa and Asia. In this paper, the potential universality of psychoanalytic methods and techniques will not be addressed, but rather the extant theoretical frameworks that are labelled as ‘psychoanalysis’ (and I will not address issues specific to the indigenous cultures of South America). Critical questions will be raised about the fundamental assumptions inscribed within theories as diverse as ego-psychology, object-relations (including Kleinianism), interpersonal and self-psychology, neuropsychoanalysis, and Lacanianism. These assumptions emerge from the analytico-referential or logical-empiricist masterdiscourse that has underpinned modern thinking across the North Atlantic since the so-called European Renaissance and the rise of transnational capitalism. Three interlinked axes of ideological critique will be sketched: (1) Theorizing that equates domination, including technological accomplishment, with the process of knowing truthfully; (2) Theorizing that encodes aspirations of personal mastery that are actually an impossibility; (3) Theorizing that espouses both a dichotomous epistemology of rational/irrational and a binary ontology that expunges the dynamic issues of psychic energy.

Duration: 20:00 pm to 22:00 pm (South Africa)

Fee: 39 Euros A moderated fee is available for South Africans (contact Info@RediscoveringPsychoanalysis.org for details)

For more information: www.psa-pol.org/crises/

Free-associative discourse opens the patient’s discourse to what is otherwise than that which can be translated into a text.

Radical Psychoanalysis

Psychic reality is necessarily defined in terms of the particular person’s psychological processes; it comprises ‘all that is real for the subject.’ It is an interiority of persona experiences and understandings, a ‘Innenwelt’ as Freud sometimes called it.

Psychic Reality and Psychoanalytic Knowing

Consciousness is always falsified and falsifying … Not in the sense that some other configuration of consciousness might be ‘true’ but in the sense that consciousness by its productivity always occludes to itself that it excludes ― forecloses or ‘builds over’ ― something else that is ‘in but not of’ its own constitution as consciousness.

Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse

If we listen to free-associative discourse, we discover the repressed unconscious, and moreover the repressive (and suppressive) functioning of consciousness is only elucidated by listening to the sequential flow of its own free-associations, which Freud also called the train of ‘chaining of thought.’

What is Psychoanalysis?

The [deceptive] self-certainty of the reflective ‘I’ of self-consciousness is ‘attacked’ by the discourse of free-association. The subject can only come to understand its own constitution and momentum by allowing itself to fall into ― Freud’s notion of freier Einfall ― the flow that indicates the inherency of its own perceptual deferral or displacement from itself.

Beyond Psychotherapy

These considerations [about the essential role of the psychoanalyst] enable us to appreciate how self-analysis is ultimately impossible, and why the [absenting-] presence of an interlocutor ― indeed, the special presence of the psychoanalyst’s participation in this asymmetrical or lopsided ‘dialogical monologue’ ― is fundamentally necessary to the initiation and maintenance of a genuinely psychoanalytic process.

Radical Psychoanalysis

Free-associative discourse epitomizes the promise of the postmodern era; methodically deconstructive yet strangely curative, it promises and an emancipatory mobilization of the transmutative subject-as-process and of its truthfulness-as-process. Such discourse moves ‘through and against’ all identitarianism ― the Hellenic harmony of unification, the Hebraic separation and difference bound by rationality and obligation to ‘law, and the Christic-Islamic fulfillment or reconciliation in the hopeful image of ultimate salvation.

Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse

What free-associative discourse exhibits goes beyond the procedures by which representations may be combined and permutated in all sorts of metaphorically and metonymically novel formations. Rather, as I have indicated, such discourse opens the speaking subject to the fluxes, flows, fluidities, vibrations, and undulations of desire and this exhibits an alternative dimension of the subject’s being-in-the-world in a way that is perpetually enigmatic and extraordinary.

What is Psychoanalysis?

The fear of free-associative discourse is due to the way in which it relinquishes ‘making-sense’ and facilitates a special sort of listening to the enigmatic messaging of our embodied experience. This messaging presents itself as the incessant motion and commotion of erotic energies within us, and perhaps also around us ― that is a semiotic field we sense only as being chaotically ‘guided’ by inchoate and enigmatic pathways of pleasure (Lust) and unpleasure (Unlust).

Beyond Psychotherapy

Psychoanalytic treatment, as the arc of free-associative discourse, is undoubtedly an existential journey, honouring awareness, presence, and freedom by re-aligning the subject with the erotic ethicality of our embodiment.

What is Psychoanalysis?

The psychoanalyst and patient are in a flesh-and-blood encounter, a libidinally alive and highly charged relationship that is comprehensible to neither of them. Yet it is solely the psychoanalyst who has to take ethical responsibility for the way in which the strange occurrences experienced by the patient are to be addressed. This responsibility is implemented by the psychoanalyst’s facilitation of the patient’s free-associative journey.

Radical Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis seeks the momentum of its process in logical and rhetorical cacorhythms, misprisions, and discrepancies, in the pursuit of an ‘excess’ [of meaningfulness] that is alienated or estranged within, of an ‘essence’ that is nonessentially essential.

Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse

One very remarkable feature of Freud’s assertion that free-association is required for psychoanalysis to occur is that he continued to insist upon this fundamental point even after 1914, when the focus of his labours was on the construction of theoretical edifices ― conceptual systematizations ― by which psychotherapeutic procedures [as contrasted with psychoanalytic processes] may be governed.

Beyond Psychotherapy

An understanding of the world is conditioned by the inner order and disorder of the one who understands.

Psychic Reality and Psychoanalytic Knowing

…the very momentum of free-associative discourse ensures an articulation of the desire of embodied experience, which ― although never completed ― ensures the liveliness of the subject’s life, through the embrace of its castratedness and deathfulness.

What is Psychoanalysis?

[The commitment of free-associative speaking and listening] is the key to psychoanalytic healing, to its truthfulness and to the significance of asserting that freeing the subject from suffering is the unique aim of psychoanalysis and that such freeing involves a shifting of the subject of self-consciousness from the stases of alienation into the mobilization of estrangement.

Radical Psychoanalysis

Consciousness can never master its ‘dynamic unconscious’ but steadfastly believes that it might master ‘all that is the case.’

Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse

A major misunderstanding is the assumption that the sole purpose of free-associative speaking is as a ‘data-gathering’ means toward an interpretive end.

Beyond Psychotherapy

Free-associative discourse enables us ― compels us ― to reconsider the fundaments of time, consciousness, and sexuality, including our assumptions about the nature of repetition, about the locus of our pleasure, and about the ‘sexual body’ in relation to stasis.

Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse

The emphasis of radical psychoanalysis is that its praxis is not about arriving at substantive interpretations about psychic life. Rather it is about re-animating psychic life free-associatively, freeing its truthfulness from repetition-compulsivity by listening anew to the energies of desire.

Beyond Psychotherapy

Psychoanalytic negativity as a discourse that reflects upon and interrogates the ideology of false-consciousness, requires us to reorient radically our thinking and conduct with respect to the fundamental questions of reality, subject, and science.

Psychic Reality and Psychoanalytic Knowing

Free-associative speaking must be understood as involving a special mode of receptivity that I call ‘free-associative’ listening.

Beyond Psychotherapy

To have genuine insight into Freud’s revolutionary discovery, which is the significance of free-associative method, one must enter psychoanalytic discourse. The essence of such access is to surrender to become a patient whose commitment is to think and speak aloud whatever ‘comes to mind,’ whose fate is invariably and necessarily to resist this mandate…

Radical Psychoanalysis

The very ‘absenting-presence’ of the psychoanalyst unsettles the hegemony of the narratological-imperative … and secures the passage of free-associative speaking…

Beyond Psychotherapy

Only free-associative discourse can transport the subject along the pathway of this liberatory directionality [that dislodges the repetition compulsivity of the ‘I’], but surrendering to the freedom that this discourse offers places our egotism at risk. It is a matter of personal risk, of daring.

What is Psychoanalysis?