New book: Psychoanalysis and the University

Dear Psyche on Campus subscribers and other readers of the blog,

I’m very pleased to announce the publication of my new book, Psychoanalysis and the University: Resistance and Renewal from Freud to the Present, which will be officially released later this month by Routledge Press. I hope that readers of all kinds—including psychoanalytic clinicians and thinkers, university teachers and administrators, and undergraduates and graduate students—will be interested in what it has to say.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As readers of this blog know, psychoanalysis gives us our most complete and nuanced account of what it means to be human—including what it means to create and transmit knowledge from one person and one generation to the next. Psychoanalysis and the University charts the past and present vicissitudes of the relation between psychoanalysis and education, emphasizing the urgent contemporary need for colleges and universities to expand and enhance the place of psychoanalysis in both their curricula and their campus healthcare settings.

The relation between psychoanalysis and the university has always been characterized by various forms of resistance and renewal—perpetuating and, in recent decades especially, exacerbating the challenges faced by educators and clinicians who hope to expand the place of psychoanalysis in higher education. As I argue in the book’s Introduction, the precariousness of both psychoanalysis and the university makes this a particularly auspicious moment for overcoming mutual resistances, and one aim of Psychoanalysis and the University is to suggest ways in which their respective prospects for survival could be reciprocally enhanced. In my view, twenty-first-century universities need to do more to recognize their essential role in communicating the importance of psychoanalysis for understanding intrapsychic and psychosocial phenomena both within and beyond the classroom, just as the field of psychoanalysis needs to reassert its necessity, not only as a mode of treatment but also as the richest theoretical account of our subjectivation and intersubjectivity. My book’s most fundamental argument is that the perpetual marginalization of psychoanalysis in higher education is about much more than the suppression (by academic psychology, most notably) of a single field of knowledge—that it in fact amounts to a defensive refutation of the determinations of unconscious experience in all aspects of human affairs.

While Psychoanalysis and the University is addressed primarily to readers in the US, the UK, and other English-speaking countries, the systems of higher education in numerous non-anglophone countries, as well, share many of the same challenges and opportunities—thanks not least to the long, circumglobal history of the relation between psychoanalysis and education, as Chapter 1 demonstrates.

Following that broad historical overview, Chapter 2 (“Psychoanalysis and the Curriculum”) describes and evaluates psychoanalytic content in higher education over the past several decades. Where and how is psychoanalysis being taught in our colleges and universities? What sorts of departments and programs most often tend to include psychoanalytic content in their courses, and of what does that content consist? Who are the principal psychoanalytic thinkers students are asked to read? What would an expansion of psychoanalytic curricula look like from the perspective of different areas of study, and how might such enhancements be implemented and justified in light of the crises we now face?

Chapter 3 (“Psychoanalysis Among the Disciplines”) considers the ways in which universities “discipline” knowledge and whether psychoanalysis itself is—or should be—treated as a distinct discipline, with its own institutional infrastructure. Where do psychoanalytic studies already have such an infrastructure, and how are these programs faring, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels? Is psychoanalysis inherently interdisciplinary, and, if so, with how many different disciplines does it—or could it—interact? To what extent—and in what sense—is psychoanalytic research empirical? And how does it balance the empirical and the theoretical or speculative? What are the descriptive, heuristic, and epistemological roles played by psychoanalysis in different areas of research and teaching? And how might the enhancement of psychoanalytic education help mitigate or even reverse the effects of increasing standardization, accountability metrics, and other forms of naïve empiricism regarding the assessment of instructional quality and learning outcomes?

Scenes of instruction and learning are the particular focus of Chapter 4 (“Psychoanalysis and Pedagogy”), which describes and evaluates the activities of teaching and learning from a psychoanalytic perspective. How might the individual experiences of teachers and students, as well as the collective experience of the classroom group, be better understood in psychodynamic terms? How might such experiences be even better facilitated by actively incorporating certain psychoanalytic concepts and techniques into existing pedagogical practices? Of primary significance to such questions are the mutually informing phenomena of transference and countertransference—the often powerful emotional currents that flow, unconsciously, between teachers and students, as well as between students themselves, in classrooms, office-hours, labs, and other educational settings. What are the advantages as well as the dangers of the emotional attachments, erotic feelings and fantasies, and forms of mistrust, love, anger, emulation, and jealousy that tend to remain unavowed and therefore unaddressed in the pedagogical situation? The pursuit of knowledge itself has its own affective dimensions that tend not to be openly discussed as part of the learning process. But what if they were? How might psychoanalysis help teachers and students make better use of their “passion” (or “hatred” or “boredom,” etc.) for a particular object of study or entire field of inquiry?

The considerable cost—in time as well as money—of both psychoanalytic treatment and higher education prompts the very reasonable question: “Are they worth it?” Will either one make life better? Would an enhanced relation between the two yield further, unanticipated advantages? Chapter 5 (“Psychoanalysis, the University, and the Professions”) addresses these questions of value with respect to both psychological well-being and professional achievement, suggesting ways in which higher education could better prepare students for a variety of careers by augmenting the curricular and pedagogical roles of psychoanalysis on campus. It describes various post-graduate possibilities for students of psychoanalysis and explains how advantageous a psychoanalytically informed education can be in the pursuit and development of many different sorts of professions and careers. This chapter also addresses the often conflicting claims of metapsychological theory and caregiving practice in psychoanalytic training, while also considering how psychoanalysis could enhance the university’s own pastoral role—not only by improving the quality of campus-based mental healthcare, but also by developing the capacities of all students for compassionate self-understanding and ethical relations with others.

Finally, the book’s Appendix offers some further practical information for educators, including: a database of syllabi from various courses taught by academics and clinicians in a multitude of fields; information about professional psychoanalytic organizations with demonstrated interest in psychoanalytic education; and a supplemental list of sources not already cited in the Bibliography.

Psychoanalysis and the University is being published as part of the Routledge series, “Psychoanalysis in a New Key,” under the general editorship of Donnel Stern, and I’m deeply grateful to Don for giving my book such a wonderful home.

I’m also tremendously grateful to Jack Drescher, Sander Gilman, Lynne Layton, Emma Lieber, Andrew Solomon, and Eli Zaretsky, who were among the book’s first readers. Here is what each of them has to say about it:

“Can psychoanalysis ever be part of modern university curricula in ways other academic disciplines take for granted? According to Max Cavitch, psychoanalysis is inseparable from all university activities, even when not recognized as a distinct discipline. Neither activity, psychoanalysis nor higher education, is merely about transmitting facts; both rely upon the power of relationships to impart knowledge to students and teachers alike. So what, to paraphrase D. W. Winnicott, might a “pedagogical holding environment” look like? After presenting a detailed history of psychoanalytic pedagogy since Freud, Psychoanalysis and the University offers educators and psychoanalytically-oriented clinicians some thoughtful suggestions to answer that question.”
Jack Drescher, M.D., training and supervising analyst, William Alanson White Institute

“Must we now have a psychoanalysis ‘in ruins’ for a university ‘in ruins’? Max Cavitch makes a compelling argument that now is the moment to rethink what has long been a conflict about where and who should be involved in the training of psychoanalysts and how such training can begin to reshape the very notion of an academic pedagogy within professional as well as liberal arts settings. The right book for the right moment.”
Sander L. Gilman, distinguished professor emeritus of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and professor of psychiatry emeritus, Emory University

“Max Cavitch is the champion psychoanalysis needs to break down barriers between psychoanalytic institutes and the university. Critiquing the utilitarian trend of knowledge acquisition in the contemporary neoliberal university, Cavitch argues that the university’s disavowal of the unconscious is one clear key to its impoverished state. His psychoanalytic sensibility widens our very understandings of what knowledge is and what it is for. Cavitch makes a compelling case for how, in his words, teaching with rather than about psychoanalysis can powerfully transform any classroom, no matter the discipline.”
Lynne Layton, psychoanalyst; assistant clinical professor of psychology, Harvard Medical School; author of Toward a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes

“This book will be essential for anyone invested in the histories and futures of both education and psychoanalysis (which, to my mind, should be all of us). Fluidly weaving historical and contemporary sources on the complex, fraught, and fertile relationship between psychoanalysis and teaching, Cavitch’s account not only provides a lucid overview of the inter-implication of the two fields, but also offers an intervention on current thinking about the production and uses of knowledge. As the twenty-first century university finds itself in crisis; as new generations of students work to change our cultural relationship to questions of authority, identity, responsibility, and truth; and as psychoanalysis has reemerged on the contemporary scene in conversation with these shifts, this book should serve as an orienting point as we re-think what it means to learn how to live.”
Emma Lieber, psychoanalyst; part-time assistant professor of literary studies, Eugene Lang College, The New School; author of The Writing Cure and editor of The Queerness of Childhood: Essays from the Other Side of the Looking Glass

“In an era when psychoanalysis has been systematically devalued, Max Cavitch’s book comes as a revelation: that psychoanalysis is a tool not only for understanding the inner lives of individual subjects, but also for understanding our relationship to the outside world and its nuances. Within universities, psychoanalysis has been attacked as too obscure usefully to inform teaching, criticism, humanism. Yet this apparent uselessness is the very point: that insight has inherent value even when it does not have implications, and that in losing track of that notion, we lose track of education itself. Written from the standpoint of profound knowledge, deep experience, and meticulous research, this book stands as a persuasive defense of psychoanalysis in pedagogy, and establishes that the stripping away of psychoanalytic principles from university curricula has been a regressive step reflective of our yearning for simplicity in the face of an ever more complex reality. Cavitch ultimately proves that this represents not an escalation into clarity, but a descent into sophistry and chaos, a failure of education to understand or prepare students for the intricate convolutions of the world they constitute or the one they will inhabit.”
Andrew Solomon, professor of clinical psychology, Columbia University Medical Center; lecturer in psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine; author of Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity and The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

“In its early years, psychoanalysis benefited from being excluded from a restrictive and conservative university culture. Today, the university has become open to many forms of thought, but at the same time it is in a crisis of its own. Max Cavitch brings these two histories together, with unexpected and illuminating consequences.”
Eli Zaretsky, professor of history, New School for Social Research, author of Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural history of Psychoanalysis

The book’s “ship date” is April 23, but orders for both print and electronic copies can already be placed at the Routledge Web site where, during the month of April, there is a 20% discount:

And from April 1 until September 30, use this discount code for the same discount:


 
Psychoanalysis and the University is also available at Amazon.
 

Max Cavitch, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English and Co-director of Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also edits the APsA award-winning blog, Psyche on Campus. He is the author of American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), Psychoanalysis and the University: Resistance and Renewal from Freud to the Present (Routledge, 2025), and Ashes: A History of Thought and Substance (forthcoming from Punctum Books). He is also the editor of Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days (Oxford University Press, 2023), co-editor (with Brian Connolly) of Situation Critical! Critique, Theory, and Early American Studies (Duke University Press, 2024), and co-translator (with Noura Wedell and Paul Grant) of Jean Louis Schefer’s The Ordinary Man of Cinema [L’Homme ordinaire du cinema] (MIT Press, 2016). Currently, he is the Fulbright-Freud Visiting Lecturer of Psychoanalysis at the Sigmund Freud Museum and the University of Vienna, where he is completing his next book, Fido and Psyche: Dogs In and Around Psychoanalysis, 1871 to the Present: An Illustrated History.

 

Special announcement of a film-release: “Speaking of Home: An Intimate Exchange on Israel-Palestine”

The following press release comes to us from our friends at ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action and will be of special interest to readers of Psyche on Campus. This hour-long film–free to view at ROOM‘s Web site–captures an extraordinarily moving and exigent dialogue between two psychoanalysts: one Palestinian and one Israeli.

In the aftermath of October 7, 2023, Dr. Karim Dajani and Dr. Eyal Rozmarin embarked on a series of epistolary exchanges and conversations about Israel-Palestine, about their personal histories, about the relation between unconscious processes and political realities, and ultimately about friendship. In the film, moderated by ROOM’s Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Hattie Myers, Dajani and Rozmarin offer us a glimpse into the challenges, misunderstandings, and rewards of their sometimes agonizing, often tender, and always compelling relationship.

Many of us will surely be sharing this film with our colleagues, friends, and students and discussing it in various settings throughout the coming year and beyond.

–Max Cavitch


ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action releases the film Speaking of Home: An Intimate Exchange on Israel-Palestine

Monday November 21, 2024. ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action has released a recording of a conversation between psychoanalysts Eyal Rozmarin (Israeli) and Karim Dajani (Palestinian), moderated by ROOM’s Editor-in-Chief, Hattie Myers. With an urgent focus on Israel-Palestine, these two psychoanalysts engage in a powerful and tender conversation showing how unconscious process underlies political-cultural realities and individual misunderstandings.

This conversation was recorded at the “Psychology & the Other” conference hosted by Boston College and Northeastern University in London on July 14, 2024. It is available to view at analytic-room.com/speakingofhome.

Since 2017, ROOM has been publishing essays, poetry, art, letters, memoir, and creative nonfiction using psychoanalysis as a lens for social discourse. This year, ROOM has published an ongoing correspondence between Dajani and Rozmarin. Their final letters will be published in ROOM 2.25, set to be released in March 2025.

About the analysts:

Karim G. Dajani, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist and a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. He specializes in working with issues related to cultural dislocation and displacement. He sits on the editorial board of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. His recent works include a special issue dedicated to the social unconscious and an upcoming chapter on race and ethnicity in contemporary psychoanalytic theories and praxis that will appear in the next edition of the Textbook on Psychoanalysis.

Eyal Rozmarin, PhD, is a psychoanalyst and writer who teaches at the William Alanson White Institute and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. He writes at the intersection of the psychological and the sociopolitical, about subjects, collectives, and the forces that pull them together and drive them apart. He is co-editor of the book series Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis and sits on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. His forthcoming book is called Belonging and Its Discontents.

About ROOM:
ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action is an award-winning interdisciplinary magazine and an international forum for mental health professionals, poets, artists, and activists to engage in community building and transformation. ROOM sheds light on the effects our cultural and political realities have on our inner worlds and the impact our psychology has on society.

For more information, visit https://analytic-room.com.

 

 

 

 

Dear Psyche on Campus subscribers and other readers,

Psyche on Campus has been on hiatus for a few months while I’ve been finishing a new book, Psychoanalysis and the University: Resistance and Renewal from Freud to the Present, which will be published by Routledge in 2025. (More about that as the publication date approaches.) The blog is getting back up to speed with some terrific posts lined up for publication soon.

Meanwhile, here are four timely announcements sure to be of interest to many of you:

First up, on June 2 (that’s this coming Sunday!)

Consider tuning in to the free, online conference on “Psychodynamic Psychology in Academia: A Call to Action.” The panels and discussions will take place between 11:00am and 2:15pm (EST). To register (again, it’s free to all!), visit https://forms.gle/yXqoxFGAECcFh75MA.

Calling all undergraduate writers and their instructors!

Submissions are due by September 30, 2024, for the American Psychoanalytic Association’s annual Undergraduate Essay Prize. This $500 prize will be awarded to an undergraduate essay which engages psychoanalytic ideas in relation to a focused question, in any academic discipline. Essays must be submitted by the instructor (just one submission per instructor, please). For complete details and submission instructions, visit https://apsa.org/fellowships-awards/undergraduate-essay-prize/.

Scholars and clinician writers take note!

The journal Re:visit~ Humanities & Medicine in Dialogue is now accepting article submissions of 6,000-8,000 words—in either English or German—for its next open section issue. The submission deadline is November 30, 2024. Re:visit publishes critical and (self-)reflexive writing about concepts and questions that place medicine (including mental health and mental healthcare policy) and the humanities in dialogue with one another. Theoretical, historical, and clinical/empirical approaches are all welcome. For complete details and submission instructions, (re)visit https://journal-revisit.org/jr/index.

Calling all readers!

If you’re a reader of Psyche on Campus then you almost certainly have something to say about psychoanalysis and undergraduate education, whether as a teacher, student, clinician, or administrator—maybe something you’d like to share? Psyche on Campus is especially eager to hear from those of you who are psychoanalytic training institute affiliates, candidates, faculty, and/or administrators, as well as from clinicians in private practice and those of you who are active in APsA, Division 39, IPA, etc. What are your views on the importance of teaching psychoanalysis at the undergraduate level? How important to you is it that new generations of college students have more and better opportunities to learn about psychoanalysis? What sorts of benefits might result from expanding the scope of undergraduate psychoanalytic education? What about the possibility of independent analytic institutes joining forces with universities? Any and all points of view are welcome. Send your short (800-1200 words) post or pitch your idea to me at cavitch@upenn.edu.

Reminder: APsA Student Externship application deadline is coming up soon!

     

Applications are now being accepted for student externships to the American Psychoanalytic Association’s 2024 Annual Meeting, at the Hilton Midtown in New York City, February 6-11, 2024.

 Eligibility: College Juniors and Seniors (not limited to any major or minor) and Graduate Students (in any field) with an interest in psychoanalysis.

 This externship provides a unique opportunity to discover the world of psychoanalysis in all its aspects: as a theory of mind, as a method of interpretation across the disciplines, and as a clinical practice. 8-10 students will be chosen to attend the Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, February 6-11, 2024, at the Hilton Midtown in New York City. Registration fees and hotel rooms will be covered for all externship winners, who will also receive  stipends for transportation, food, and extern-mentor events.

Students will be able to attend all parts of the scientific program, such as plenary presentations, featured panels, and smaller discussion groups and workshops on an extraordinary array of topics including gender and sexuality, addictions, child and adolescent analysis, ethics, psychoanalysis in the social sciences and humanities, research and empirical studies, etc. Students will also be assigned mentors to assist in registration and to serve as guides during the meetings.

Application requirements:

    1. Current resume
    2. Unofficial Transcript
    3. One academic recommendation
    4. A 2-page essay responding to the question: “How do you imagine psychoanalysis might impact your field of study?” (maximum 750 words)

Application deadline: November 11, 2023. Include all four required elements in a single email to be sent to Dr. Susan Donner at sldonnermd@gmail.com.

 Questions? Ask Dr. Susan Donner at sldonnermd@gmail.com.

 For more on the externship experience, read program alumna Esha Bhandari’s blog post, “Child’s Play at APsaA: Discovering Psychoanalytic Play Therapy,” linked here: https://web.sas.upenn.edu/psycheoncampus/2022/02/18/childs-play-at-apsaa-discovering-psychoanalytic-play-therapy/

Reminder: APsA Undergraduate Essay Prize deadline fast approaching!

To be eligible, papers must have been written within the past year, either in an undergraduate course or independently under an instructor’s supervision, at a college or university within the United States.  Papers must be 12 to 20 pages long and must not have been published (or submitted for publication) elsewhere.

For more information: https://apsa.org/fellowships-awards/undergraduate-essay-prize/

And good luck to all the applicants! 

Remember, too (or, if you’re an instructor, please alert your students), that here at Psyche on Campus we’re always eager to hear from undergraduates studying psychoanalysis–anywhere where in the world!–who have a good pitch for a blog-post.  Simply email your pitch (or a completed post of approximately 800-1200 words) to cavitch@upenn.edu to be considered for possible publication!

Psyche on Campus Wins APsaA 2022 Journalism Award

I’m delighted to share the news that Psyche on Campus is the recipient of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s 2022 Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Sincere thanks to the blog’s many contributors, who share in APsaA’s recognition for helping to sustain and enrich what the award citation calls “a public forum for teaching about psychoanalysis in the college classroom and beyond–to an interdisciplinary audience of over 10,000 readers in over two dozen countries–and demonstrating the breadth and value of the psychoanalytic perspective today.”

Sincere thanks as well to the blog’s many readers–more of whom, I hope, will become contributors themselves!

Announcement: APsaA Conference Externship Program

Calling all undergraduate juniors and seniors and graduate students…in all disciplines!

Applications are now being accepted for an expenses-paid externship to the next Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA): January 31 – February 5, 2023
Hilton Midtown Hotel, New York City

Professors: Let your students know about this fantastic opportunity!

Application deadline: November 10, 2022.

Please open this pdf document for further details and application instructions:
APsaA 2023 Externship

Teaching 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 Psychoanalysis and Teaching 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ Psychoanalysis; or, Contemporary Undergraduate Psychoanalytic Education and the Future of Transferential Pedagogy

by Max Cavitch

Launched three years ago, the “Psyche on Campus” blog has continued to be extremely fortunate in its contributors—including academics, clinicians, and students from many colleges and universities in the U.S. and the U.K.—and extremely fortunate in its readers. In fact, the blog now has well over 10,000 readers in dozens of different countries. And in 2022, for the second year in a row, “Psyche on Campus” has been selected by FeedSpot as one of the “15 Best Psychoanalysis Blogs and Websites.” Posts continue to be published every 6-10 weeks, and readers can anticipate forthcoming posts by Jane Abrams, Gila Ashtor, Rachel Conrad, Brian Connolly, Marcia Dobson, and Nicholas Ray, among others. (If you have an idea for a post of your own, please let me know!) And our “Syllabus Archive” continues to grow. (Again, relevant syllabi from your own courses are very welcome!)

Continue reading “Teaching 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 Psychoanalysis and Teaching 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ Psychoanalysis; or, Contemporary Undergraduate Psychoanalytic Education and the Future of Transferential Pedagogy”

“Psyche on Campus” Named One of the Top Ten Psychoanalysis Blogs to Follow in 2021!

Thanks to our thousands of readers and subscribers around the world, “Psyche on Campus” has been chosen as one of the “Top 10 Psychoanalysis Blogs You Must Follow in 2021” by Feedspot. You can see the full list here: https://blog.feedspot.com/psychoanalysis_blogs/

Subscribing to the blog is free–just click the “Subscribe” button in the bottom right corner of your screen.

And remember: If you have an idea for a post of your own, just let us know by writing to: cavitch@english.upenn.edu.

 

Race and Psychoanalysis: Some Resources for Undergraduate Education and Counseling

by Max Cavitch

Note: There are terrific posts by Kelli Fuery, Michael McAndrew, H.N., and others awaiting publication—please be on the lookout for them in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, given our extraordinary present circumstances and—as educators, students, and clinicians—our need to adapt to them as we prepare for an uncertain new academic year, it seems important to jump the queue with this selected bibliography of resources—to which readers are welcome and encouraged to contribute in the “Comment” section.

Many of us will be spending the summer preparing to resume teaching in a world transformed, not only by Covid-19, but also by the revitalized struggle against systemic assaults on black bodies and minds. The psychic fallout of state-sponsored violence—including racially motivated police brutality and the extrajudicial murder of black men, women, and transgender folk—has scarcely begun to be calculated, much less adequately addressed, by the psychoanalytic community. How might those of us who teach psychoanalysis at the undergraduate level, or provide psychodynamic therapy to college students, do a better job of centering black lives—and matters of race even more broadly—in our classrooms and counseling facilities?

Continue reading “Race and Psychoanalysis: Some Resources for Undergraduate Education and Counseling”