Psychoanalysis for the People: Free Clinics and the Social Mission of Psychoanalysis
This conference starts from the premise that the more recent progressive histories of psychoanalysis remain little known among therapeutic practitioners. They are rarely written about in the professional literature or taught on trainings. Yet there is a rich tradition of psychoanalytic theory and practice which engages with the realities of social inequality based on class, gender, poverty, racism, and other forms of marginalisation. We aim to explore and recognise these socially-minded psychoanalytic practices, drawing on the experience of psychoanalysts working in free and low cost clinics in very different contexts, from Latin America, Africa, North America and Europe, through to the UK National Health Service. We ask what “psychoanalysis for the people” might mean in our times, more than 100 years after Freud’s famous speech.
