“BPSI READS” is an initiative to facilitate regular conversations within BPSI, the larger psychoanalytic community, and the public on issues of Race, Diversity, and Otherness.
Thank you to everyone who has participated in BPSI READS thus far. Please join us for the next BPSI READS:
Monday, May 17, 2021
7:00-8:00 pm
Special Guest: Celia Brickman, PhD
Part II
Reading: Celia Brickman (2018): Race in Psychoanalysis:
Aboriginal Populations in the Mind
Chapter 4: “Historicizing Consciousness: Time, History and Religion”
In Race in Psychoanalysis, Celia Brickman investigates the racial assumptions implicit in psychoanalysis through an analysis of the concept of primitivity. Freud saw primitivity as a universal feature of the psyche of all humankind. But he also continued to use primitivity in its now-outdated anthropological sense to indicate the lower evolutionary rung supposedly occupied by peoples of color. This ambiguity of the term primitivity – the psychological and the anthropological - meant that Freud’s work quietly perpetuated, while overtly dismantling, its racist implications. This ambiguity allows a racial subtext to linger in psychoanalysis to this day.
For this second (of two) evenings, we'll read the fourth chapter of the book. Chapter 4 places the concept of primitivity within the larger historicizing framework of psychoanalysis, and considers it within Freud’s own social context. The chapter begins by considering the historicizing methods of anthropology, developed as a remedy for earlier evolutionary approaches, together with the critiques they have received. These methods are then compared with the historizing impulse of psychoanalysis through which, as Hans Loewald has written, “man may become a truly historical being.” This is followed by a discussion of Freud’s views on religion, which represented the authority of the past from which psychoanalysis was to release us. Underlying all these concerns is the racially fraught theme of the modern present coming to terms with the primitive past. The chapter concludes by placing Freud’s work in the context of his position as a Jew in fin-de-siècle Vienna.
Celia Brickman, PhD, is an adjunct faculty member at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, clinical associate faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, and practices psychotherapy at the Center for Religion & Psychotherapy of Chicago, where she is scholar-in- residence. She is the author of Race in Psychoanalysis: Aboriginal Populations in the Mind (Routledge, 2018), the first edition of which was nominated for the Gradiva Award for Historical, Cultural and Literary Analysis in psychoanalysis.
We are pleased that Celia will lead our conversation on May 17 - Please join us.
This BPSI READS Drop-in group is for members of the BPSI Community,
and all interested guests.
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Dial by your location: +1 646 558 8656; Meeting ID: 965 6719 3168
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SAVE THE DATE!
Upcoming BPSIREADS
June 28th – Kimberlyn Leary, PhD
As part of BPSI’s Anti-Racism Commitment (Click here for Commitment Memo), the BPSI Resources Web Page intends to make readily available psychoanalytic and interdisciplinary scholarship resources on, Race, Diversity and Otherness, for colleagues and the public. The site is regularly updated with new readings and links suggested by colleagues and the public – click below!
BPSI Resources:
On Race, Diversity, and Otherness
Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Voices
Thank you to everyone who has shared experiences, questions, and ideas for how BPSI can fulfill our commitment to Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We welcome your feedback and input, and contributions to BPSI’s new and ongoing initiatives. You may contribute ideas here.
We hope to see you for the next BPSI READS.
Jim, Catherine, Dan, Jack, and Carole
