with
Howard Levine, Ofra Eshel, Riccardo Lombardi
Joshua Durban, Anne Alvarez, Avner Bergstein
Judy K. Eekhoff, Robert Caper, Leopoldo Bleger
Sebastian Thrul, Steven Jaron
Teresa Abreu & Csongor Juhos
FREE ASSOCIATION LISBON
VIBRATORIUM
Unconscious Literacy - On finding the unconscious today.
Iuri Conceição invites Danielle Knafo
April, 30, Thursday
20-21h Lisbon time, 3-4PM EST
Online
Free entrance upon registration
Becoming a skilled psychoanalytic practitioner requires more than theoretical knowledge and supervised clinical hours. Psychoanalyst, Dr. Danielle Knafo argues that three specific experiences offer early career therapists unparalleled access to the workings of the unconscious: working with individuals in psychotic states, engaging therapeutically with children, and cultivating a serious appreciation for the arts. Each pathway illuminates unconscious processes in distinctive ways. Psychosis renders primary process thinking transparent, allowing direct observation of primitive defenses and object relations. Child work reveals unconscious content in its most natural and undefended form, demonstrating the healing power of symbolic communication. Aesthetic engagement develops the receptive capacity, symbolic literacy, and tolerance for ambiguity essential to analytic listening. Together, these experiences cultivate what I term "unconscious literacy"—a fluency in the multiple languages through which the unconscious speaks—and prepare analysts for the full complexity of deep clinical work.
Danielle Knafo, PhD is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, a professor and author. Currently she is faculty and supervisor at NYU’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and Adelphi’s Postgraduate Programs. Dr. Knafo is a popular lecturer and prolific writer. She has written 10 books and dozens of articles and art essays. Her areas of expertise are: art and creativity, trauma and psychosis, sex and gender, and, recently, technology and AI. Just a few titles demonstrate her range and interdisciplinary approach: Egon Schiele: The Creation of a Self; In Her own Image: Women’s Self-Representation in Twentieth-Century Art; Living with Terror: Working with Trauma; Dancing with the Unconscious: The Art of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalysis of Art; The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Art and Psychoanalysis; The New Sexual Landscape and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Her most recent book is From Breakdown to Breakthrough: Psychoanalytic Treatment of Psychosis. She conducts writing groups for psychoanalysts and serves as an independent writing consultant. Dr Knafo maintains a private practice in Manhattan and Great Neck, New York.
Iuri Conceição, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts. He currently works in private practice and teaches the courses “History and systems of psychology”, and “The biological basis of behavior” for clinical psychology doctorate programs. He has a doctoral degree in clinical psychology from Cal Lutheran, California; a master’s degree in psychoanalysis, history, and culture, from Birkbeck – University in London; a master’s degree in philosophy from the Nova university of Lisbon, Portugal; and a master’s degree in clinical psychology from the ISPA – Institute of Applied Psychology, in Lisbon, Portugal. He participates actively in several international groups that discuss and organize events related with topics in transcultural psychology and psychotherapy. His interests are the history of the self, and he is a strong advocate for the re-enchantment of psychology and the importance of the philosophical concept of "the good life" for contemporary subjectivity. Dr Iuri is a member of the Corpo Freudiano in the US and the blog editor for the Free Association Lisbon.
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