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Psychosocial Studies Research Seminar

When: —
Venue: Birkbeck 28 Russell Square

No booking required

Research Seminar, 4th March, 2.00-3.30pm.

Dreyfus Room, 28 Russell Square     All Welcome.

 

Claudia Lapping, IoE, University of London, UK

 

Astonishing moments: Towards a better understanding of free associative methods as sites of transference in empirical research

This talk will explore the uses of transference and free association in the production of research data in Psychosocial Studies. Drawing on Laplanche’s notion of the analyst as a provocation for the transference and Lacan’s understanding of the analyst as cause of desire, we map transference as a condition for free association and theorise an ‘enigma of participation’ in research. I will explore these ideas through a discussion of two instances from recent research interviews that suggest how free associative methods can produce moments of astonishment, or speech that ‘hits home’ (Lacan), during the process of research. I will propose that free associative interviews can be understood as sites of transference that offer insights into the (im)possiblities of subjective change, and that using such approaches can help us to glimpse the unconscious in social and political discourse.

Respondent: Raluca Soreanu, Birkbeck

Orphic Moments: Transference and Psychosocial Vignettes

In this intervention, I explore working with psychosocial vignettes, in the context of ‘difficult’ sites of ethnographic research. I look at situations of protest, when collectives can be seen as both creative and traumatically wounded. I articulate a quality of social action that refers to socialities of radical mutuality, socialities of connection, socialities of psychic resonance, putting bodies and body parts in new forms of contact and new juxtapositions. I call this Orphic sociality, drawing on Sándor Ferenczi’s idea of the Orpha fragment of the psyche, which captures a particular kind of traumatic ‘wisdom’. I reflect on the issue of transference in collective Orphic moments, and on writing psychosocial vignettes from the experience of such Orphic moments.

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