Islamic Psychoanalysis / Psychoanalytic Islam

University of Manchester, 26th-27th June 2017

Registration. Registration for the conference is open.
Click on this link for details for the Islamic Psychoanalysis / Psychoanalytic Islam conference in Manchester (correct as of 13 June 2017). We have rooms in University of Manchester booked ready for the event, and this means that we will limit numbers attending. Please register sooner rather than later to secure a place at the conference. The cost will be £85.00 (£35.00 for fully paid up members of the College of Psychoanalysts and for trainees, £25.00 for the retired/unwaged/students). To register please make a bank transfer to ‘The College of Psychoanalysts (UK)’, account number 41482566, sort code 09 06 66, IBAN: GB27ABBY09066641482566, BIC: ABBYGB2LANB. Please notify us that you have made the transfer by email to cpukconference@gmail.com

There are still a few bursaries available for postgraduate students, funded by School of Environment, Education and Development and by Arts Methods at Manchester, for which students should contact us by email describing how their research connects with themes of the conference and how attendance at the conference may benefit their research at: cpukconference@gmail.com

Details of the three keynotes open to the public are on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/events/971891016219656/
This international conference brings together scholars – including in critical psychology, cultural studies and political theory – and practitioners of psychoanalytic and group-analytic approaches to psychotherapy and counselling. We will explore the relationship between the clinic and culture in the contemporary world focusing on the challenge that Islam poses for psychoanalytic theory and practice, and the response of psychoanalysts to Islamic theory and practice. The conference locates this critical project in the context of a series of historical transformations in the development of Freudian and post-Freudian work, transformations that continue to underpin psychoanalytic debate. The first stage began with a question about the role of Judaism and Jewish history in the formation of Freud’s own work and dialogue with his followers and co-researchers in central Europe. The second continues with a question over the supposed Christianisation of psychoanalysis after Freud and the secularisation of the practice in the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition in the West. The third stage follows a time of the globalisation and fragmentation of the psychoanalytic movement, resistance to colonisation and post-colonial critique, and is one in which we might either conceive of the end of psychoanalysis or its renewal with Islam. In each case the crucial questions concern the form of each rather than the content of their ideas about reality.

  • In place of attempts to render Islam amenable to psychoanalytic interpretation, how might we understand the significance of Islam for psychoanalysis today?
  • What might an ‘Islamic psychoanalysis’ look like that accompanies and questions the forms of psychoanalysis that developed in the West?
  • What might a ‘psychoanalytic Islam’ look like that speaks for while perhaps even transforming the forms of truth that Islam produces?
  • What are the lessons of the encounter between psychoanalysis and Islam for clinical practice and cultural critique in and beyond the West?
  • What bearing does this debate have on the identity of those positioned as ‘Muslims’ or ‘psychoanalysts’ in times of Islamophobia and professionalisation?

We will be publishing a number of papers from the conference.
Suggested reading: Online resources
Asad, Brown, Butler and Mahmood: ‘Is Critique Secular?’
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/84q9c6ft.pdf
Mura: ‘Islamism revisited’
http://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/islamism-revisited-a-lacanian-discourse-critique/
Please contact us if you have other suggestions and links for online resources