By Diane Swanbrow
News and Information Services
The first of five lectures intended to familiarize the audience with issues to be taken up at an international conference on psychoanalysis in relation to the social sciences and humanities is scheduled for 8 p.m. Sept. 29 in the West Conference Room, Rackham Building.
The free, public lectures on five consecutive Thursdays at 8 p.m., will be delivered by Barnaby B. Barratt, a practicing psychoanalyst and associate professor of family practice, psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University, and Kimberlyn Leary, U-M adjunct assistant professor of psychology.
The topics include the significance of unconscious mental life, the insuperable resistance to self-knowledge, the origin of reason in the erotics of the body, and the place of race and ethnicity.
The lectures are designed to prepare listeners for the conference, “Psychoanalysis Among the Disciplines,” Nov. 4–6 at the Rackham Building. Conference admission is free to members of the public who register by Oct. 15.
“The conference is meant to demonstrate the undiminished intellectual vitality and revelatory power of psychoanalytic thought,” says psychology Prof. George Rosenwald, who organized the conference and lectures. “It is intended to explore the achievements, prospects and problems of interdisciplinary exchange between psychoanalysis and the humanities and social sciences.”
Funding for the preparatory lectures and conference was provided by several U-M units, including the Office of the Vice President for Research, LS&A, the departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies and the Office of International Academic Affairs. Additional funding was provided by the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, the Michigan Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council.
To attend the November conference, contact Rosenwald at the Department of Psychology, 580 Kennedy Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.
