• Events and Public Courses
  • The Missed Encounter Between Psychoanalysis and the Black Radical Tradition

    Saturday, December 16  |  1:00 pm – 3:00 pm

    2 CE credits are available for this event.

    Co-sponsored by the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (CMPS) and the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis (BGSP)

    Click here to sign up!

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    This event is a hybrid format and will be offered on Zoom as well as in-person at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies at 16 W 10th St, New York, NY 10011.

    Part of BGSP’s Department of Continuing Education Events’ Fall 2023 speaker series, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Race, Racism and Culture
    Series Coordinator:  Allen Chukwuhdi

    Daniel Jose Gaztambide, PysD 

    Discussant: Sadeq Rahimi, PhD 

    The avant-garde French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan is oft-cited as claiming that Karl Marx “invented” the notion of the symptom. This presentation aims to be equally provocative in describing how the Black Marxist W.E.B. Du Bois may well have “invented” the notion of the unconscious as such. This provocation aims to draw attention to a “missed encounter” between this pivotal figure of the Black Radical Tradition and the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. By drawing on primary sources and the available historical record, this presentation outlines the parallels between Freud and Du Bois’ lives, and how their experiences led them to surprisingly similar conclusions about the nature of subjectivity, the intersection between psyche and society and the intimate fusion between race and class. In tracing Du Bois’s often unrecognized “psychoanalytic” insights and Freud’s often missed commentary on racism and the psyche, we find ourselves at the doorstep of Freud and Du Bois’s “most disputatious heir,” the Martiniquan Revolutionary psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. In Fanon’s clinical papers and decolonial texts we find psychoanalysis and the Black Radical Tradition engaged in not so much a dialogue as a reckoning. From this reckoning emerges not just a decolonial psychoanalytic theory, but a decolonial psychoanalytic technique. Case examples will be used to illustrate the clinical applications of this history for today’s practitioners. 
     
    Daniel José Gaztambide, PsyD, is the author of the book A People’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology (2019), and is currently working on his second book on psychoanalytic technique from a decolonial point of view. Dr. Gaztambide is the recipient of a Mellon Foundation Fellowship and a Miranda Family Fellowship to support his analytic training and research, as well as the recipient of a 2021 presidential citation for his work with the American Psychological Association’s Taskforce on Strategies for the Eradication of Racism, Discrimination, and Hate. He is in analytic training at the NYU Post-Doctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and is an active artist and member of the Puerto Rican Poetry Troupe, the ‘Titere Poets’. He was featured in the documentary Psychoanalysis in El Barrio.  

    Sadeq Rahimi, MSc, PhD, is a professor, researcher, and clinician. He is a faculty member in the Culture and Psychoanalysis Program at BGSP, lecturer and research associate in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a psychotherapist in private practice. He received his PhD in Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University, followed by postdoctoral fellowships in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and in Middle Eastern Studies at the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Dr. Rahimi’s research and publications have focused on culture and subjectivity, including schizophrenia and culture, political subjectivity, radicalization, and virtual subjectivity.  Two books are:  Meaning, Madness and Political Subjectivity, (2015) and The Hauntology of Everyday Life, (2021). 

    General admission: $40

    Students: free

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    Objectives:

    Participants will be able to:

    1.  Identify how racism (and other isms) function as a psychological compensation both politically and in clinical work

    2.  Verbalize how the psychoanalytic and ‘Black Radical Traditions’ converge in Frantz Fanon’s work.   
    3.  Develop skills to facilitate organic conversations about identity and culture with patients.

    Questions? email continuinged@bgsp.edu or call (617) 277 – 3915

    BGSP is authorized to provide CEs for:  Psychologists (all levels), Social Workers, Counselors 

    Full refund available if you cancel one week prior to the event. If you have any questions, email info@bgsp.edu.

    Offering CEs for:  Psychologists (all levels), Social Workers, Mental Health Counselors

    Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. BGSP maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

    Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 5676. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

    Application for social work continuing education credits is being submitted. Please contact us at ContinuingEd@BGSP.edu for the status of social work CE accreditation.

    For information on continuing education credits for nurses, social workers, or marriage and family counseling, call 617-277-3915.

    Direct inquiries may be made regarding the accreditation status by NECHE to the administrative staff of the institution. Individuals may also contact: New England Commission on Higher Education, 3 Burlington Woods Drive, Ste 100, Burlington, MA 01803-4514, 781-425-7785 or email: info@neche.org

    The Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis is accredited by the New England Commission on Higher Education. 

    Direct inquiries may be made regarding the accreditation status by NECHE to the administrative staff of the institution. Individuals may also contact: New England Commission on Higher Education, 3 Burlington Woods Drive, Ste 100, Burlington, MA 01803-4514, 781-425-7785 or email: info@neche.org