Berkeley Psychoanalytic Society
Exploring the Unconscious: Arts, Science and the Humanities
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Homeland (In)Security: How Feminine Law Might Rescue Democracy, Truth and Free Speech
Saturday, May 20, 2017 @ 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
The presidential election and inauguration, and their aftermath, have exposed cracks in the foundations of our democracy. Assaults on the rule of law, free speech, equality, freedom and truth have revealed deep rifts and tensions in American society. Domestic pressures, globalization, and mestastasizing conflicts produce closer and closer encounters with the Other and lead to further polarization.
Our conversation with the author of “Feminine Law, Freud, Free Speech and the Voice of Desire” (Karnac 2016) considers how psychoanalysts might enter the discourse. Does our clinical experience give us insight into the nature of freedom, in particular, the freedom of expression guarenteed in our Bill of Rights? Does psychoanalysis provide the tools to open a space for genuine encounter with both ordinary and extraordinary hatred and violence? What insights and guidelines might a “feminine law” offer us?
SPEAKER
Jill Gentile, Ph.D. is faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis where she co-chairs the Independent track. She is also a supervisor and faculty member at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity. Dr. Gentile is a corresponding editor of "Contemporary Psychoanalysis", on the editorial boards of "Psychoanalysis, Self and Context" (formerly the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology) and The Candidate Journal (advisory). She is the author of numerous scholarly essays on personal agency, desire, and symbolic life. Her book, "Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire" with M. Macrone (Karnac, 2016) examines the mutual relevance between psychoanalysis and democracy through the lenses of free speech and gender.