| Workshop Description This workshop will explore what are often described as three phases of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic project, focused each on the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. The ISR represent three different areas of the psyche, three interrelated zones of subject formation. Each will be explicated using “race,” processes of subjective racial formation, as case studies. This will entail placing Lacan directly in dialogue with the work of Frantz Fanon. In his discussions of the mirror stage, the master-slave dialectic, the white man’s gaze, and the “Negro” as a “phobogenic object” that stimulates anxiety, Fanon also engaged these different mental aspects of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. Their dialogue will be useful for thinking through both the formation of the psychoanalytic subject in Lacan’s work, and the shadowy presence of an unthought other.
Learning Objectives At the conclusion of this workshop, participants will be able to: 1. Describe the differences and relationships between Jacques Lacan’s key concepts, the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real (ISR) 2. Apply each Lacanian concept of the ISR to instances of clinical practice 3. Assess the relevance of certain related Lacanian concepts – such as the mirror stage, the gaze, the objet petit a, anxiety – to the interpersonal processes of racial formation and racialization 4. Compare Frantz Fanon’s psychoanalytically informed concepts, of triple consciousness, epidermalization, and the phobogenic object to Lacan’s core ideas 5. Demonstrate the playing out and working through of Lacanian and Fanonian psychodynamics in complex racial enactments in therapeutic space
Target Audience: Suitable for Psychologists, Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, Psychiatrists, Advanced Practice Nurses, Graduate Students, Marriage and Family Therapists. Level of Sophistication: This is an introductory level post-graduate continuing education program suitable for all levels of training. ADA accommodations available upon request (Required at least 14 days prior to course start date). |
