ISPS-US Fourteenth Annual Meeting: What’s in a Name? Emerging Perspectives on the Intersection of “Schizophrenia” and “Recovery”

When: October 4-6, 2013
Where: The Hyatt Regency, New Brunswick, NJ

Keynote Speaker: Debra Lampshire
Experience-based expert, Senior Tutor at the University of Auckland, and Project Manager for Auckland District Health Board in New Zealand

Honorees: Marius Romme, MD, PhD and Sandra Escher, MPhil, PhD
Researchers, authors, founders of the International Hearing Voices Movement

ISPS (the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis) recently changed its name to eliminate the word “schizophrenia,” based on a growing international consensus that the stigmatizing impact of the term far outweighs the limited validity of the construct. Our previous keynoter, Richard Bentall, PhD, has written persuasively that while there is scientific evidence for the existence of certain symptoms, there is no evidence for a unified “disease” called schizophrenia. Even one of the so-called hallmark features of schizophrenia – auditory hallucinations – has been called into question by traumatologists, who cite evidence that hearing voices is a common feature of PTSD and dissociative disorders. Professors Romme and Escher’s research shows that hearing voices is a common occurrence among patients and non-patients. Recovering voice hearer Ron Coleman has suggested that the phenomenon of “negative symptoms” is merely a description of people who are lost in their voice hearing experiences and too distracted or despondent to interact effectively with the outside world. Others have found that “negative symptoms” are the manifestation of profound depression and demoralization, which are also common experiences among those diagnosed with schizophrenia.

What is it that one is recovering from and what does it mean to be in recovery or recovered? Recovery has become a popular buzzword in mental health, but its definition is also controversial. For some it means living with symptoms; for others it means elimination of symptoms. Some use professional treatment including medication and consider themselves recovered because they lead highly functional lives. Others consider dependence on prescriptions and therapists as indicators that one is not yet fully recovered. Given that there are new challenges to ways of thinking about the experiences formerly defined as schizophrenic, it is time to reconsider what recovery from these experiences looks like.

Come, join us, and explore where interventions, research, and training in recovery are headed! Meet up with old friends and make new ones in New Brunswick, New Jersey (accessible by train from NYC and Philadelphia, and close to Newark Airport) to develop an appreciation for and engage in dialogues about the complex dynamics and forces that characterize and challenge recovery from psychosis. We welcome your proposal for papers or panel discussions, and seek contributions from psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, occupational and art therapists, researchers, physicians, psychotherapists, case managers, rehabilitation specialists, nurses and nurse practitioners, peer counselors, consumers, survivors, students/early career professionals, and family members. Come and share your expertise, knowledge and experience. We are interested in integrative approaches that may include traditional psychotherapy and psychosocial interventions, as well as innovative methods being used to help people recover from psychotic conditions.

Jason Moehringer and I will be co-presenting a paper at the conference entitled “Psychosis, Defense and Recovery from a Psychodynamic Perspective”. Hope to see you there.

CFP: Subverting the Norm II

Phil Snider is hosting a second Subverting the Norm conference at Drury University.  Confirmed speakers so far include Peter Rollins, John Caputo, Namsoon Kang, Katharine Moody, Christena Cleveland, Barry Taylor, Kester Brewin, Micki Pulleyking, Clayton Crockett, Jeffrey Robbins, Phil, and myself.

And you, too, if you respond to the following call for papers… Deadline is the end of the month…

Futures and Illusions: Social Psychoanalytic Perspectives Conference Announcement

The Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (APCS) is hosting its 2012 Annual Conference at Rutgers University Continuing Education Center, New Brunswick, NJ from October 19-20, 2012. I will be presenting a paper on Friday afternoon for any of those interested. My paper is entitled “Lacanian Considerations of Neutrality, Self-Disclosure and Social Conformity”.

Here’s my abstract:

The classical psychoanalyst’s neutral posture has been strongly critiqued by relational and intersubjective psychoanalysts (e.g. Renik 1995; Orange & Stolorow, 1998) who advocate for a more authentic, transparent encounter wherein the analyst self-discloses and sacrifices the myth of analytic neutrality and objectivity. Following Lacan, it is my contention that the classical analyst’s stoic, removed posture and the relational analyst’s authentic, genuine stance are both false choices that do not properly help the patient re-think individual and social realities. In the face of economic recession, growing debt and political insecurity I believe that psychoanalytic thinkers must reconsider their analytic position vis-à-vis the Symbolic Order in treatment. For example, Parker (2009) has criticized the ideology of relationality as a liberal, de-radicalized political platform that simply reinforces capitalism and social adaptation. Similarly, Malone and Sowecke (1997) have considered the ways in which analytic neutrality can be interpreted as an implicit endorsement of the status quo, emphasizing social adaptation as the goal of psychoanalysis. I will argue that Lacan’s (2006) understanding of transference and countertransference dynamics (and the subject-supposed-to-know) offer ways to critically resist social conformity as the aim of psychoanalysis. Rather, psychoanalytic clinicians should focus on igniting the patient’s desires, which invariably includes an analysis of the social structures that produce false selves, identifications, and desires. After reviewing the literature on neutrality, countertransference and self-disclosure I will offer a Lacanian critique of standard psychoanalytic theory with a particular focus on the relationship between social conformity and analytic neutrality and the implications of treatment.

I’ll be posting more on other talks as the information is made available.

Making Contact with the Depths: Psychosis as it is Lived Conference

When: October 26-28, 2012
Where: Chicago School of Professional Psychology Chicago, IL

Keynote Speaker: Danielle Bergeron, MD, FRCPC, FAPA
A founder of GIFRIC Center for Research and Training, and Director of The 388, the Psychoanalytic Treatment Center for Young Adult Psychotics, Quebec. From Psychotic Experience to Civic Responsibility

Honoree: James Gottstein, Esq.
President and CEO of The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights). A Human Rights Lawyer’s Perspective On The Mental Health System

Registration is now open for the International Society for the Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychoses’ thirteenth annual conference. Early bird rates are in effect until September 15, 2012. This program will interest psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, counselors, nurses and other mental health professionals, as well as members of the lay public, including service users and their families, interested in learning about the experience and treatment of psychosis. Full information and registration is available at http://isps-us.org

I’ll be presenting my doctoral work at the conference on Sunday the 28th. My paper is entitled Psychodynamic Treatment and Model of Schizotypal Personality Disorder. There will be some notable speakers there including Karon, Silver, Davoine & Gaudillière, Steinman, etc. Here’s the program for the conference (http://isps-us.org/isps-us_2012_program.html)

Thinking the Absolute Conference Registration

Registration is now live for the ‘Thinking the Absolute: Philosophy, Speculation and the End of Religion’ Conference, June 29 – 1 July, Liverpool Hope University, UK. Keynotes: Iain Hamilton Grant,Catherine Malabou, Ray Brassier, Levi Bryant. CFP remains open untilthe end of February. For registration form and CFP, visit http://www.hope.ac.uk/acpr/call-for-papers.html

CFP: “The End of the World as we Know It?” A Graduate Theology Conference

[Unfortunately, I don't know if I will be able to make this, but I promised my friend Adam Wallis that I would spread the word here at AUFS.]

EXTENDED DEADLINE — January 20th

The Boston University School of Theology Doctoral Student Association invites submissions to a graduate student conference titled “The End of the World as We Know It? Religious Scholarship on Apocalyptic Themes.” The conference will be held the weekend of March 23, 2012 at Boston University. The keynote speaker will be Professor John Collins, Holmes Professor of Old Testament, Yale Divinity School.

Apocalyptic themes fill popular media – in movies such as 2012, Know1ng, and The Road, in television series like The Walking Dead, and in the news coverage of religious groups claiming the end of the world is nigh.

CFP: Critical Theories

Frequent commenter and Villanova graduate student Mark Westmoreland has informed us of the CFP for the upcoming Villanova conference. Its focus, taking a cue from the Occupy Movement, should be of interest to many of our readers considering our recent conversations about it over the past few months (though of course many are having those conversations) [APS]

Critical Theories

December 7, 2011

Villanova University

17^th Annual Conference in Philosophy

Critical Theories

March 30-31, 2012

Keynote Speaker: Nancy Fraser

Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political & Social Science

New School for Social Research

As the “Occupy X” movements spread across the United States and resistance movements continue in the Middle East, we recognize the pressing need for continued engagement with critical theory in it myriad forms. Since its inception in the 1920s, critical theory has sought to interrogate oppressive structures and imagine possibilities for human emancipation. During the present age of global capital and neoliberal governance, however, resistance has often appeared futile. But the economic crises of the 21st century have reawakened the call for critique both in theory and practice. As global political conditions radically shift and new modes of oppression and resistance materialize, examining historical iterations of critical theory and various contemporary critical theories appears ever more urgent.

Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:

The idea, method, and definition of “critique”; ideology; emancipation; discourse and the public sphere; problems and questions of modernity and Enlightenment; dialectics and materialism; redistribution and recognition; politics and the (im)possibility of democracy; and the relationship between critical theory and aesthetics, deconstruction, and other forms of theory (e.g., sociology, postcolonial theory, queer theory, feminism, and race theory).

Possible figures include but are not limited to the following:

Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Jürgen Habermas, Allison Jaggar, Karl-Otto Apel, Cornelius Castoriadis, Hannah Arendt, Charles Mills, Richard Rorty, Max Weber, Mikhail Bakhtin, Enrique Dussel, Angela Davis, Axel Honneth, Iris Marion Young, Seyla Benhabib, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Jean Baudrillard, Paulo Friere, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Erich Fromm, Guy Debord, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancière, Johann Löwenthal, Paul Ricoeur.

Submission Guidelines:

We encourage submissions from faculty members, graduate students, and independent scholars of abstracts (300-500 words) or papers (3,000 to 4,000 words). Please format these for blind review, including a cover sheet with name, contact details, institutional affiliation, and paper title.

Please email your submissions or any questions you may have to: villanovaphilosophy@gmail.com by February 1, 2012.

AAR/SBL open thread

I thought it might be helpful to provide a forum here where we can point out AAR/SBL panels that feature friends of the blog or are otherwise of interest to our audience, as well as plan things like room sharing, etc. For my part, I’m taking part in a panel on Negri’s The Labor of Job on Saturday morning from 9:00-11:30, over which Roland Boer will be presiding.

Northwestern’s Paul Reading Group schedule

The Paul of Tarsus Interdisciplinary Working Group at Northwestern University has published its calendar of events (PDF) for the remainder of the school year. Those in the Chicago area should check these events out — the Paul group always does great programming, and it’s an interesting group of people as well. Your intellectual and social needs will be met.

Upcoming Conferences

There are a couple upcoming events — beside and prior to the Future of Continental Philosophy conference in Syracuse and a Laruelle event in New York (more, of course, on these later) — in the Northeast that may be of interest to readers. On March 17-18, the Mid-Atlantic Region of the AAR will be holding their annual conference (schedule here — warning PDF!). I’ll be giving a paper, “Spinoza’s Relay: Nameless Thought and the Naming of Religion,” that draws on some thoughts I once sketched on this blog, developing them and proposing a Spinoza-inspired way of moving beyond their limits. Occasional commentor Brandy Daniels will be giving a paper, “The (Sexed) Body between Barth and Butler: A Theological Engagement with Elizabeth Grosz’ Volatile Bodies.” A quick glance at the schedule indicates that there will also be a ton of people there from Princeton Seminary.

The following week (March 25-26) there will be a conference at Binghamton University, “The Revolution of Time and the Time of Revolution” (I’ll be presenting a piece on the time-religion intersection in Agamben and Negri). While the schedule remains undecided (I’ll try to link when it’s available), I do at least know there will be a number involved from the interwebs: Peter Gratton is the keynote, Scu is a co-organizer, and participants such as Ben Woodard and David Kishik.