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Abstract
From Freud's early work on hysteria and his account of the hysterical symptom as a representation of libidinal conflict, psychoanalysis has maintained a consistent interest in the human capacity to register how one thing may stand for another through symbolic structures and forms which can be identified and used in the consulting room. A concern with different forms of symbolising and of symbols themselves and what they make available to the human subject is central to all psychoanalytic theories. But these issues are by no means confined to psychoanalysis and have always been central to the human sciences and the humanities.The increased resort to questions of symbolisation so evident in contemporary psychoanalytic accounts derives from rather different theories of where symbols originate, their possible universality, and the psychological capacities on which they depend.
This conference brings together a range of scholars from the academy and the clinic to debate the continuing utility of a concept that seems indispensable but risks a serious loss of meaning through its over frequent invocation.
The papers will outline the specificity of different understandings across a range of theories and research to encourage discussion of how respective histories and emphases enable investigation of this concept's current fields of use. How diverse bodies of knowledge deploy 'symbolisation' should produce a more precise, more detailed understanding of the symbolic function.
Confirmed Keynote Speakers Include
Patricia Moran (University of Limerick, Ireland)
"There Are Always Two Deaths": Jean Rhys's Haunted Imaginary
Zeynep Bulut (Kings College London, UK)
Words, Sounds, Affects: Formation of Nonsense
Jan Kubik (University College London, UK)
Performing the Symbolisation of Political Chutzpah: Putin, Trump, and Kaczynski
Ken Robinson (British Psychoanalytical Society, UK)
Representation, Symbols and the Unconscious
Riccardo Steiner (British Psychoanalytical Society, UK)
Kleinian Approach to Symbolisation: A Brief Historical Sketch
Rachel Chaplin (British Psychoanalytical Society, UK)
The Creation of the Symbolising Mind: An Approach from the Independent Tradition
Lionel Bailly (University College London, UK)
Reflecting Beings
Mary Target (British Psychoanalytical Society, University College London, UK)
The Concept of Mentalization in Relation to Symbolisation
Chairs
Lesley Caldwell (University College London, UK), and Sharon Morris (Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, UK)
Respondent
Timothy Mathews (University College London, UK)