CBEES Advanced Seminar with Ulrika Björk, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Södertörn University

Speaker: Ulrika Björk, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Södertörn University
Discussant: TBA

Abstract:
In 1979 an international symposium on the unconscious was held in Tbilisi. The event was monumental, as psychoanalysis had been forbidden in the Soviet Union since the 1930s. Ivan Pavlov’s theories dominated Russian psychiatry until the 1960s, and the leading name within psychology was Lev Vygotsky (Kagan 1998, Vasilyeva 2000). The democratic reforms in the 1980s changed not only the economic and political conditions but had consequences for the psychological scene as well. The President’s Decree of 1996 proclaimed the necessity to revive psychoanalysis in Russia. The prefix “re“ is crucial here, suggesting that what is at stake is a retrospective return, rather than an original moment (cf. Oliver 1994). Indeed, the psychological landscape was radically different in the first decades of the century. Sigmund Freud’s Traumdeutung (1900) was translated into Russian in 1904, followed by a vast publication of psychoanalytic literature. Civil war in post-revolutionary Russia defined the problems of childhood, and psychoanalysts profiled themselves in child psychotherapy.

The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the political significance of psychoanalysis with the early twentieth century Russian situation as a case in point. French philosopher and psychoanalyst Cynthia Fleury has argued for the mutual dependency between psychoanalysis, with its ethical ideal of freedom and individuation, and the democratic constitutional state, where the individuation of political subjects is of central concern (Fleury 2011, 2018). Drawing on modern sociology (Durkheim) and classic psychoanalysis (Jung, et al), Fleury views individuation as a process of subjectivation, where the dialectic relation between the individual and the collective is fundamental. My discussion aims primarily to deepen the understanding of individuation by turning to the work of early twentieth century Russian psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942). With the prospect of contributing to the contemporary debate on the political significance of psychoanalysis, the seminar will initiate a reconstruction of Spielrein’s theory of individuation in articles and lectures on child psychoanalysis and developmental psychology written between 1916 and 1923 (Spielrein 1987; cf Noth 2014).

About the speaker:
Ulrika Björk, senior lecturer in philosophy, defended her dissertation at the University of Helsinki in 2009, on subjectivity and literary expression in Simone de Beauvoir’s writings (“Poetics of Subjectivity: Existence and Expressivity in Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy”). Her post-doctoral research has mainly concerned Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy. Ulrika Björk has edited “Kropp, kön och andrahet. Tolv essäer i feministisk filosofi” (Daidalos 2010, with Lisa Folkmarson Käll) and ”Konsten att handla – konsten att tänka. Hannah Arendt om det politiska” (Axl Books 2011, with Anders Burman), and published articles within phenomenology, French philosophy of existence and feminist philosophy. Since 2016 she organizes the Seminar in continental feminist philosophy in Stockholm (with Lisa Folkmarson Käll). The seminar alternates between Södertörn University and Stockholm University External link, opens in new window.

The seminar will be held via ZOOM: External link, opens in new window.

Meeting ID: 672 5313 7760
Passcode: 006252