The theory of epistemic trust as an interdisciplinary tool: thinking about attachment, violence and the history of childhood. Interdisciplinary Seminar with Dr Chloe Campbell

Abstract

This paper will explore how the theory of epistemic trust - that is, trust in the authenticity and personal relevance of interpersonally transmitted knowledge - might make a contribution to thinking about the relationship between individual subjectivity, cultural variation, and historical change.

The lack of an explanatory tool that can connect these different ways of making sense of human experience is what drives many interdisciplinary conflicts, whether between psychology and anthropology, or between attachment and psychoanalysis, or between history and psychoanalysis.

The paper will consider how the idea of epistemic trust might make a contribution to thinking about the history of childhood. Can it serve as an explanatory mechanism for the way in which individual minds drive broad cultural change in family life and attitudes towards childhood?

Speaker biography

Dr Chloe Campbell is a Research Fellow at the Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London.