Prof Stephen Frosh

Overview

Biography

Stephen Frosh has worked at Birkbeck from 1979, first in the School of Psychology and since 2008 in the Department of Psychosocial Studies, of which he was a founding member and first Head of Department. From 1982 until 2000 he worked part time at Birkbeck and part time as a clinical psychologist in the NHS. Throughout the 1990s he was Consultant Clinical Psychologist and (from 1996) Vice Dean in the Child and Family Department of the Tavistock Clinic, London. His academic interests are in the applications of psychoanalysis to social issues; gender, culture and ‘race’; and psychosocial studies. He was Pro-Vice-Master of Birkbeck from 2003 to 2017, first with responsibility for Learning and Teaching, then for Research and then for Internationalisation.

Highlights

• Recent book: Those Who Come After: Postmemory, Acknowledgement and Forgiveness (Palgrave, 2019).

Qualifications

• PhD, Birkbeck, University of London, 1984
• MPhil, Institute of Psychiatry, 1979
• BA, University of Susses, 1976

Administrative responsibilities

• Programme Director: MA Psychoanalytic Studies
• Academic Board Governor of Birkbeck

Visiting posts

• Visiting Professor, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa,
• Visiting Professor, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil,

Professional memberships

• Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences

• Academic Associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society

• Founding Member, Association of Psychosocial Studies

• Honorary Member, Institute of Group Analysis

Research

Research interests

• Psychosocial studies; psychoanalysis

Research overview

My academic work has focused on helping to establish the new discipline of psychosocial studies, especially through considering the psychological, social and cultural applications of psychoanalytic theory. My writing pays particular attention to issues of gender and identity and of their relationship to developments in social life, and more recently to questions of otherness and racist hate. Work on masculinities, child sexual abuse, antisemitism, postmodernism, family therapy and psychoanalytic theory has all derived from these central themes. Several books in the last few years reflect different aspects of my research. Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic (2010) explores the impact psychoanalysis has had on social and cultural theory and research. It has chapters that deal with literature, social identities, ethics, politics and psychosocial studies and argues that psychoanalysis continues to contribute importantly to critical social and psychosocial studies, but only for as long as it can remain open to critique itself. For and Against Psychoanalysis, which appeared in a second edition in 2006, has received wide recognition as a major contribution to debates on the standing of psychoanalysis. An earlier book presenting the social implications of psychoanalytic theory, The Politics of Psychoanalysis, was published in a completely revised second edition in 1999. Hate and the Jewish Science (2005) explores the legacies of Jewish identity and antisemitism within psychoanalysis, including an examination of the psychoanalytic movement in Germany during and after the Nazi period as well as a critical study of psychoanalytic theories of antisemitism. After Words (2002) is a collection of essays on masculinity, psychotherapy and discursive psychology; and Key Concepts in Psychoanalysis is a more introductory work (for the British Library) including concise essays on some major psychoanalytic ideas. My short book Feelings, published in March 2011, presents a psychoanalytic perspective on how feelings are created, expressed and denied. A book aimed at students wishing to understand some of the complexities of psychoanalytic thinking, A Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory, was published by Palgrave in May 2012; this was followed up by an introductory biographical text on Freud, Simply Freud, published as an eBook in 2018 and in hard copyin 2019. A series I am co-editing for Palgrave, Studies in the Psychosocial, was launched at the beginning of 2013 with my own book, Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly Transmissions. This uses the idea of haunting to explore how identities, beliefs, intimacies and hatreds are transmitted across generations and between people. It deals with the secrets that pass down the generations, the ‘pull’ of the past, and the communication from one person to another of affects, thoughts and impulses. My latest book, Those Who Come After: Postmemory, Acknowledgement and Forgiveness, was published in 2019 and follows on from Hauntings in exploring the legacies of violence and suffering, especially in relation to questions of witnessing and forgiveness. I have recently edited a collection of essays by past and current PhD students, published in 2019 as New Voices in Psychosocial Studies.
I have also been involved in empirical research from within the new field of psychosocial studies. Young Masculinities (2002, jointly with Ann Phoenix and Rob Pattman) describes a research project with teenage boys in London schools, focusing on the issues facing these boys in their families, peer contexts and schools. Critical Narrative Analysis (2004, with Peter Emerson – revised edition 2009) provides an account of this mode of qualitative research, applied here particularly to research with sexually abusive boys. Many of my PhD students have used the methodology we developed in this book. I have recently been involved in two different research projects. One was with colleagues in the University of São Paulo, exploring the impact on psychoanalysis of the Brazilian dictatorship of the late twentieth century. The other was an ethnographic study of 'lived religious ethics' in a Jewish community in London

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

22

My PhD students work in theoretical and empirical aspects of psychosocial studies. I have supervised (mostly jointly with colleagues, in line with the supervision model of the Department of Psychosocial Studies) over 50 students through to successful completion of their PhDs

Current doctoral researchers

• CLAU DI GIANFRANCESCO

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2021 onwards

• ELENI GKIVISI

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2021 onwards

• GUILAINE KINOUANI

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2021 onwards

• YU QIAN

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2020 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  The nation building and the national identity crisis in China: A case study of Hong Kong 2019 through an interdisciplinary lens of philosophy and psychoanalysis

• ZARA HAGHPANAH-SHIRWAN

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2021 onwards

• BILL BENNETT

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Feb 2020 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  The ontology of the imaginary in early Benedictine monastic culture

• EOIN FULLAM

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2020 onwards

• KATARINA NESTOR

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Sep 2019 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  Accounting for the Body: Tracing the Feminist Archives of Ana Mendieta 1992-2016

• RACHEL KUPPERMAN

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Sep 2019 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  `Mum¿s Army¿: a psychosocial exploration of the construction of maternal labour and its effects on the lived experience of Teaching Assistants in primary education

  Description:

  This research analyses the lived experience of Teaching Assistants working in primary mainstream schools in the UK. It seeks to analyse the discourses and knowledge practices informing and influencing the work of Teaching Assistant using a feminist- psychoanalytic lens that provides a wider framework when seeking to understand the dynamics involved in such work. In particular, it focuses on the notion of 'maternal labour' and the invisibility of any work that is perceived (whether consciously or unconsciously) as such.

• TOM FIELDER

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2020 onwards

Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

• LIZAVETA VAN MUNSTEREN

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2018

  Title of thesis:

  The Vicissitudes of Psychoanalysis in Soviet Russia, 1930-1980

  Awarded:

  2023

• ANTHONY NICHOLLS

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2016

  Title of thesis:

  Contemporary Anglo-Jewish Masculinity

  Awarded:

  2022

• ANA MINOZZO

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2016

  Title of thesis:

  Anxiety as vibration: In search of a creative clinic through anxiety

  Awarded:

  2021

• LENITA TÖRNING

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2015

  Title of thesis:

  Building Bridges, Negotiating Boundaries: Young Christians’, Jews’ and Muslims’ experiences of interfaith work in the UK

  Awarded:

  2021

• JULIA MINULESCU

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2014

  Title of thesis:

  The monster within: between the onset and resolution of the oedipal crisis

  Awarded:

  2019

• MARIA VYRGIOTI

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2014

  Title of thesis:

  The Cannibal Trope: A Psychological Critique of Psychoanalysis’ Colonial Fantasies

  Awarded:

  2019

• CHENYANG WANG

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2014

  Title of thesis:

  Subjectivity in-between Times An Exploration of the Notion of Time in Jacques Lacan’s Work

  Awarded:

  2018

• FELIPE KUZUHARA

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor

  Awarded:

  2018

• EROL SAGLAM

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2013

  Awarded:

  2017

• MAGDA SCHMUKALLA

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2013

  Awarded:

  2017

• FILIZ CELIK

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2020

  Awarded:

  2015

Teaching

I am currently Programme Director of the MA Psychoanalytic Studies. I teach on the Core Modules of the MA Psychoanalytic Studies and supervise masters students.

Teaching modules

• Psychoanalysis and Culture (SSPA078S7)
• Independent Research Module (SSPA085D7)
• Psychoanalysis and Social Theory (SSPA092S5)
• Concepts in Psychoanalysis (SSPA103S7)

Publications