Upcoming Event

"Anorexia:
Between Desire for Recognition and the Death Drive"

Domenico Cosenza, Ph.D.

In this lecture we will address the enigma of mental anorexia from the perspective of psychoanalysis. From the beginning, Freud perceived in this syndrome, which predominantly affects young women from puberty onward, two heterogeneous and irreducible structural sides of its manifestation: the hysterical and the melancholic declination. In the hysterical version, a dynamic of anorexia takes shape that accentuates its dialectical-relational, conflictual, communicative side. Conversely, in the melancholic version we are dealing with an autarchic-autistic dynamic, which pushes the subject toward a deadly isolation, disengaged from the relationship with the other. We find this dual face of anorexia, via different formulations, in the history of psychoanalysis, particularly among authors who have dealt with it in their clinical practice. In our lecture we will try to highlight how this dual aspect is not only a way of distinguishing two different structural frameworks of anorexia, but also lays bare an internal tension in the anorexic functioning itself, divided as it is between an attempt to open a channel of intimate contact with the Other, and a self-destructive dynamic animated by the death drive.


Albany Senior Center
846 Masonic Avenue

Saturday, October 14, 2023

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM


DomenicoDomenico Cosenza, Ph.D.Domenico Cosenza, psychologist and psychotherapist, PhD in Psychoanalysis from the University of Paris 8. He is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Milan, Italy. He is an Analyst Member (AME) and past President of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis (SLP) (2013-2016) and member of the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP). He was AE (Analyste de l’Ecole) from May 2017 to May 2020. He was President of the Euro Federation of Psychoanalysis (EFP) from July 2017 to July 2021. He teaches in the Clinical Section of Milan and is frequently invited to teach in other clinical sections in different countries of Europe and America . He also teaches Developmental Psychopathology and Eating Behaviour Psychopathology in the Department of Psychology at Pavia University. He has long experience working in clinical institutions for Eating Disorders in Italy, and is vice-President of the FIDA (Federazione Italiana Disturbi Alimentari, [Italian Federation of Eating Disorders]).   He is the author of several books, among them: Jacques Lacan e il problema della tecnica in psicoanalisi (Roma: Astrolabio, 2003); Jacques Lacan y el problema de la tecnica en psicoanalisis (Madrid: Gredos, 2008); Il muro dell’anoressia (Roma: Astrolabio, 2008; Spanish tr. El muro de la anorexia, Gredos, Madrid 2013; 2 edition Xoroi 2021); La comida y el inconsciente. Psicoanalisis y trastornos alimentarios (Buenos Aires: Tres Haces, 2013; Introducción a la clinica psicoanalitica de la anorexia, bulimia y obesidad, Logos n. 8 (Buenos Aires: Grama, 2014); Le refus dans l’anorexie (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014); Il cibo e l’inconscio psicoanalisi e disturbi alimentari (FrancoAngeli, Milano 2018; ed. Sp. La comida y el inconsciente (nueva ediccion ampliada), NED, Barcelona 2019); Clinica dell’eccesso. Derive pulsionali e soluzioni sintomatiche nella psicopatologia contemporanea (FrancoAngeli, Milano 2022); A Lacanian Reading of Anorexia (Routledge, London 2023).

Future Events

Coming soon


Past Events

Saturday, April 15, 2023

"Psychoanalysis and Opera: Rejoining the Verbal and Non-Verbal"
Steve Goldberg, Dr.,
Lee Rather, Ph.D.,


Saturday, January 21, 2023

""What Should I Call You? Pronouns and the Scene of Address""
Judith Butler, Ph.D.


Saturday, December 3, 2022

"Link Theory and Practice: The Irreducible Effects of Presence"
Israel Katz, M.D.


Saturday, October 1, 2022

"The Structure and Function of Part Objects"
Richard Rusbridger


Saturday, April 30, 2022

"Psychoanalysis: the Contemporary Scene from an Editor's View"
Murray Schwartz


Saturday, February 5, 2022

"Working Backwards: "Backwards Causation"and the Temporality of the Unconscious in Pre-Freudian Dream Theory"
Jake Fraser, Ph.D.


Saturday, December 4, 2021

"The Significance of the Anus in Psychoanalytic Theory"
Benjamin Y. Fong, Ph.D.


Saturday, October 9, 2021

"Love, Hate and Knowledge: the Analyst’s Aesthetic Conflict"
Meg Harris Williams


Saturday, April 24, 2021

"The Analyst's Desire: The Ethical Foundation of Clinical Practice"
Mitchell Wilson, M.D.


Saturday, February 27, 2021

"Freud’s Nietzsche: Eternal Return, Symptomatic Acts and the Gay Apophrades"
Dany Nobus


Saturday, December 12, 2020

"What's uncanny in the Unheimliche?"
Sergio Benvenuto, Ph.D.


Saturday, October 31, 2020

"Roads to the Unconscious: Some Parallels and Divergences between Psychoanalysis and the Writing of Poetry"
John Hart,
Helen Schoenhals Hart,


Saturday, October 10, 2020

"Trans Realism: Psychoanalysis and the Trans Experience"
Patricia Gherovici, Ph.D.,
Grace Lavery, Ph.D.,


Saturday, April 4, 2020

"*POSTPONED* What's uncanny in the Unheimliche?"
Sergio Benvenuto, Ph.D.


Saturday, March 21, 2020

"*POSTPONED* Trans Realism, Psychoanalytic Practice, and the Rhetoric of Technique"
Grace Lavery, Ph.D.


Saturday, January 25, 2020

"Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field"
Dianne Elise, Ph.D.


Saturday, November 23, 2019

"Mama, Mnemo - Reading Kristeva with Montale"
Benjamin Davidson, Ph.D.


Saturday, October 12, 2019

"The Maternal: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film"
Claire Kahane, Ph.D.,
Marilyn Fabe, Ph.D.,


Saturday, April 13, 2019

"Light Rooms: Medium, Mourning and Mania"
Elizabeth Abel, Ph.D.


Saturday, January 26, 2019

"From Freud's Mourning to Mourning Freud"
Madelon Sprengnether, Ph.D.


Saturday, December 1, 2018

"Group Discussion: The Place of the Nonrepresentational and the Nonverbal in Psychoanalysis"
Margot Beattie, Ph.D.,
Israel Katz, MD,


Saturday, October 20, 2018

"Freud's Seduction: Psychoanalysis and California"
Fernando Castrillon, Psy.D.


Saturday, March 3, 2018

"Trans Psychoanalysis and Livable Embodiments"
Patricia Gherovici, Ph.D.


Saturday, January 27, 2018

"The Political Unconscious in Perilous Times"
Judith Butler, Ph.D.,
Lance Dodes, M.D.,
Jill Gentile, Ph.D.


Saturday, October 28, 2017

"Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg: The Dream World of Wagner"
Steven H. Golderg, MD,
Jeanne C. Harasemovitch, LCSW,


Saturday, October 7, 2017

"Incandescent Alphabets: Language and Art in Psychosis"
Annie G. Rogers, Ph.D.


Saturday, May 20, 2017

"Homeland (In)Security: How Feminine Law Might Rescue Democracy, Truth and Free Speech"
Jill Gentile, Ph.D.


Sunday, March 26, 2017

"Enigmatic Mechanisms: Some Reflections on Love, Affect, and Identification in Freud"
Marcus Coelen, Ph.D


Saturday, March 18, 2017

"Refashioning Jouissance/Enjoyment for the Age of the Imaginary"
Juliet Flower MacCannell, Ph.D.


Saturday, January 28, 2017

"Freud and the Frankfurt School"
Martin E. Jay, Ph.D.


Saturday, October 29, 2016

"Thinking About The Future"
Christopher Bollas, Ph.D.


Saturday, September 24, 2016

"Death Drive Dialogue #2"
Henry Markman, MD,
Israel Katz, MD,


Saturday, May 21, 2016

"Psychoanalytic Knowledge"
Peter Hobson, Ph.D.


Saturday, April 23, 2016

"The Alterability of the Memory Trace"
Rosaura Martinez, Ph.D.


Saturday, April 2, 2016

"Conversion Disorder: Freud, religious transformation, Foucault and Agamben"
Jamieson Webster, Ph.D.


Saturday, March 26, 2016

"Surviving Terror: An Interview with Ernst Federn"
Helen Schoenhals Hart, Dr.med.


Saturday, October 17, 2015

"Rosa Luxemburg and Marilyn Monroe: Women in Depressed Times"
Jacqueline Rose


Saturday, May 9, 2015

"Keeping the Other Alive: Counter-trends to the Death Drive"
Judith Butler, Ph.D.


Monday, March 30, 2015

"Cultivating the Foreigner Within: Julia Kristeva and Hannah Arendt on Uncanny Art and Human Relations in the Contemporary World"
Elaine Miller, Ph.D.


Saturday, January 31, 2015

"Enduring Inequality: Racism in America"
Jeffrey Prager, Ph.D.



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