The Association for Psychosocial Studies

Psychosocial Methodologies: Politicising Research with Narrative and Free Association
2019-07-01 10:00 - 2019-07-03 16:00 (Europe/London)
A course for psychosocial researchers taking place at UCL Institute of Education and supported by the Association for Psychosocial Studies and the University of Birmingham

Course tutors: Claudia Lapping, Ian McGimpsey, Felipe Acuna, Mohamed Elshirazy
Dates: Mon 1st, Tues 2nd and Weds 3rd July, 10 am – 4pm
Location: UCL Room: B06 Drayton House, 30 Gordon Street, WC1H 0QB

Registration:
UCL students – as usual
Non UCL students: Please contact Claudia Lapping: c.lapping@ucl.ac.uk

Overview: Whenever we are teaching or discussing psychosocial approaches to the analysis of data, we come up against a question: how does a psychoanalytically informed approach differ from narrative analysis or discourse analysis? In this course we want to address this question very directly. We will do this through a combination of theoretical and practical exercises to explore the production and analysis of instances of narrative and/or free association. We will discuss:

The meanings of ‘narrative’ and ‘free association’ within a variety of literary, qualitative research and psychoanalytic frameworks, and in popular culture
Contrasting approaches we might use in identifying or producing ‘narratives’ or ‘free associations’ in the process of research
And the way conceptualisations of ‘narrative’ and ‘free association’ might have implications for the analysis of research data

Some key axes of difference include the ways in which different approaches think about language, subjectivity, the unconscious and the possibility of understanding or (mis)recognition between researcher and researched.
Why is this important? We believe these issues are central to the politics of research, and to the relation between politics and trauma. We have a hunch that narrative and free associative approaches pull in slightly different directions in relation to both the production of subjectivity and the formulation of political strategy and tactics in the field of social research.
Background reading:
Bollas, C. 1999, ‘Wording and Telling Sexuality’, pp. 158 – 166, in The Mystery of Things, Routledge
Butler, J. 2005, Giving an Account of Oneself, Fordham University Press
De Certeau, M. 1988, ‘Walking in the City’ pp. 91-110 of The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press
Fink, B. 2007, ‘Working with Dreams, Daydreams and Fantasies’, pp. 101-125 in Fundamentals of psychoanalytic technique: A Lacanian approach for practitioners, W. W. Norton and Company
Freud, S. 1958, The Interpretation of Dreams, London: Penguin Books (See esp.: Chapter V1 ‘The Dream-Work’ pp. 381-2, ‘The Work of Condensation’,pp. 283 – 411, and ‘The Work of Displacement’ pp. 415-9.)
McQuillan, M, 2000 (ed.), The Narrative Reader, Routledge
Zizek, S. 1989, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Verso

The 'READING’ CONFERENCE 2019
2019-05-16 10:00 - 2019-05-17 17:00 | Birkbeck College, WC1E 7HX
ASSOCIATION OF PSYCHOSOCIAL STUDIES ‘READING’ CONFERENCE 2019.
At Birkbeck, University of London, Thursday 16th and Friday 17th May 2019
The Psychosocial – reflections and developments

The APS Reading Conference 2019 will create an innovative space for developing the field of psychosocial studies. Over two days, you will have the opportunity to participate in discussion of contemporary and foundational psychosocial texts as well as symposia and workshops exploring cutting edge psychosocial ideas and research on contemporary politics and culture. Our aim is to open up spaces for us to listen to each other and for new ideas and projects to develop.

To register for the conference, please follow this link:
APS Reading Conference 2019

Conference Fees:

£50 – waged non APS members
£40 – waged APS members
£20 – unwaged

Conference Format:
The conference has an innovative format, including:

SCHEDULED SPACES FOR GROUP DISCUSSIONS
To share and discuss ideas from the sessions and to make links to your own work and generate ideas for the future.

READING SESSIONS
To read key texts together: these will be made available to all registered participants prior to the conference, so that the session can focus on discussion. There will also be an opportunity to respond in writing to key texts prior to the conference, using an online conference file sharing system.
Sessions will be lead by:

Ann Phoenix reading ‘On the Postcolony: a brief response to critics’ by Achille Mbembe (2005)
Stephen Frosh reading ‘Birthing Racial Difference: conversations with my mother and others’ by Lewis, G (2009)
Candida Yates reading ‘Something to Do with a Girl Named Marla Singer: Capitalism, Narcissism, and Therapeutic Discourse in David Fincher’s Fight Club’ by Layton, L. (2011)
Kate Kenny reading ‘The explosion of real time and the structural conditions of temporality in a society of control: durations and urgencies of academic research’ by Lapping, C. (2017)
The Activist Research Collective reading ‘Borderline personality disorder, discrimination, and survivors of chronic childhood trauma’ by Andrea Nicki (2016)
Sasha Roseneil reading ‘’Part 1: General Introduction’, Introduction to Group Analytic Psychotherapy: Studies in the Social Interaction of Individuals and Groups’, by Foulkes, SH (1948)
Paul Stenner reading ‘Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena’ by Winnicott, D. (1953)
… and more …

CREATIVE PANELS AND WORKSHOPS EXPLORING ART, POLITICS AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

Critical Psychotherapy and Psychosocial Studies: Psychogeotherapy, Risk and Theatre
The Unconscious in the Social World
The Image and the Psyche in Psychosocial Studies
Our Music, Our lives: the emotional and affective experience(s) of popular music
The Group as a Liminal Space: Recognition and Reparation for Political Trauma Survivors
Contributions to Psychosocial Thought and Practice from Latin America
Inconsolable Positions of (neoliberal) Critique in Psychosocial Research
Waiting Times: Psychosocial thoughts on time and care
Feminine Desire and the Postcolonial Condition
The Racialisation of Sexual Violence: some thoughts on discursive repression and projection
Protest
The Body
See it – say it – sort it: Resistance, surveillance and silencing
Same As, Similar to or Different From: negotiating relationships in narrative research

Please register soon to secure a place: APS Reading Conference 2019

Annual General Members' Meeting and Panel: Mental Health and The Emotional Work of the Gig Economy
2018-12-14 15:30 - 18:00 | University of Westminster, Boardroom, 309 Regent Street, London, W1B 2HW, United Kingdom
3.30-5pm: Panel on Mental Health and The Emotional Work of the Gig Economy
Speakers:
Sally-Anne Gross and Dr George Musgrave (University of Westminster): Can Music Make You Sick?

In recent years there has been a growing body of research that has begun to examine the dark side of our relationship to music. The media understandably concentrate on the more sensational aspects of rock and roll; membership of ‘27 Club’, or the recent public declaration of critically acclaimed dubstep producer Benga as suffering from schizophrenia (Hutchinson, 2015). There is then a tension emerging between the notion that artistry is positive both for the economy and for well-being, and a growing awareness that a musical career is a risky business.
‘Can Music Make You Sick?’ surveyed over 2,200 musicians working in the United Kingdom, and interviewed more than 25 musicians and industry professionals, to explore how they are emotionally experiencing working in the music industry in the United Kingdom. This paper presents findings from this project, which seeks to ask challenging questions of music, and specifically musical ambition and aspirations, in the current climate of precarious labour and hyper competition. Is it possible that musical aspirations are potentially making artists sick?

Jack Newsinger (University of Nottingham): Resilience in austerity cultural policy and practice
Resilience is a key theme in austerity Britain, prominent across government policy, popular discourses, business and management thinking and academia. This paper is about the deployment of the concept of resilience in cultural policy and practice. It is based on an extensive engagement with literature, an analysis of cultural policy discourse, and qualitative data drawn from 23 in-depth interviews with freelance cultural practitioners. I adapt Robin James’s (2015) concept of resilience to show how arts leaders and practitioners generate performative narratives that seek to publicly represent their capacity to adapt to austerity, and we explore the different versions of resilience thinking that these narratives mobilise. I argue that resilience in cultural policy and practice draws upon psychological conceptions of resilience which unwittingly produces a discursive surplus which becomes reinvested in institutions, providing subsequent justification for the processes of post-crisis austerity itself.

5-6pm: Annual General Meeting (for APS members)

6pm: Drinks (open to all)

Free registration:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/association-for-psychosocial-studies-agm-event-mental-health-and-the-emotional-work-of-the-gig-tickets-52064771132?utm_term=eventname_text

Psychosocial Methodologies: Politics and Change
2018-06-18 08:00 - 2018-06-20 17:00
Psychosocial Methodologies: Politics and Change

UCL Institute of Education in association with the Association for Psychosocial Studies and the University of Birmingham

Dates: over 3 days
Monday June 18th10am – 5pm
Tuesday June 19th 10am- 5pm
Wednesday June 20thand 10 am – 1.15pm

Tutors: Claudia Lapping, Ian McGimpsey, Maria Jose Lagos, Felipe Acuna

Venue:
UCL Institute of Education, Rooms tbc
20 Bedford Way
Bloomsbury, London
WC1H OAL

Registration:
UCL students – as usual.
Non UCL students: Please contact Bob Grist: r.grist@ucl.ac.uk
For any queries about the course, please contact Claudia Lapping: c.lapping@ucl.ac.uk

Psychosocial Methodologies: Politics and Change

This experimental, intensive, two and a half day course will explore different ways of understanding politics and processes of change. Drawing on selected texts from key theorists in the fields of psychoanalysis, social and cultural theory (e.g. Butler, Deleuze, Freud, Lacan, Laclau and Mouffe, Zizek) we will engage with a series of concepts each of which functions as a lens for the analysis of politics or processes of change. Each text provides a slightly different framework for identifying both what counts as change, and for the construction of interventions that might help to provoke or direct subjective and/or political change. Methodologically, these frameworks orient us for the empirical examination of discourse, language, affect or desire, time, regulatory technologies, and relations to individual and institutional o/Others. Sessions will explore:

Processes of subjective and political change
What is sayable? Processes of repression or disguise in discourse
The ethics of researching traumatic events
The event and the limit experience
The question of memorialisation
Trauma, Repetition and memory
Time, politics and the Other

In the sessions we will discuss the frameworks set out in the selected texts and, importantly, explore how these might be applied in the analysis of a concrete instance or piece of data related to a specific political moment. We see the course as an invitation for participants to take part in a project exploring this political moment with us. Through engaging in this project, which involves concrete processes of analysis, we will gain insights into both psychosocial methodologies and the event that is the object of the data we are exploring. As such, participants should be prepared to engage in discussions of recent concrete events that involve loss and the precarity of human life, distributive injustices, and symbolic violence. Participants will be asked to prepare through detailed readings of the core texts in advance of the session.

Key Texts – Relevant chapters and extracts will be specified!
Butler, J. 2004. ‘Violence, Mourning, Politics’ in Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso
Deleuze, G. (1990/1969) Deleuze Logic of Sense. Twenty-First Series of the Event (pp. 169-175) and Twenty-Third Series of the Aion (pp. 186-193). London: Bloomsbury Academic
Deleuze, G. (2004). Difference and repetition. London: Continuum – Extracts
Freud, S. (1914). Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through. In Freud, S. (2003). Beyond the pleasure principle. Penguin UK.
Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In Freud, S. (2003). Beyond the pleasure principle. Penguin UK. – Extracts
Foucault, M. (2000/1978) Interview with Michel Foucault. In Power. Essential works of Foucault 1954-1984 (pp.239-297). Edited by James D. Faubion.
Gerson, S. (2009). When the third is dead: Memory, mourning, and witnessing in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 90(6), 1341-1357.
Lacan, J. (2006). Logical time and the assertion of anticipated certainty. In B. Fink (Tr), Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: The first complete edition in English (pp. 161–175). London: W. W. Norton and Company
Laclau, E. & Mouffe, C. Section of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Verso – Extracts
Wiegman, R. (2000) ‘Feminism’s Apocalyptic Futures’, New Literary Histories, 31: 805-825
Zizek, S. 1989, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Verso – Extracts

Annual Conference: ‘Psychosocial Reflections on a Half Century of Cultural Revolution’
2018-04-05 08:00 - 2018-04-07 17:00 | University of Bournemouth
Venue:

University of Bournemouth

Date:

5th-7th April 2018

Call for papers

Deadline: 22nd January 2018
Send your abstract of 250–300 words to: APS2018@bournemouth.ac.uk

*Due to popular demand, we have added a new open stream for those who wish to submit proposals for papers, panels or artistic presentations on:
“Current and Future Directions in Psychosocial Studies”

‘Psychosocial Reflections on a Half Century of Cultural Revolution’

Join us to reflect on revolutionary relationships and revolutionary politics which challenged authority then and which influence us now.
The cultural forces and the political movements of 1967 and 1968 aimed to change the world, and did so. Recent development of some populist and protest politics could be seen as a continuation of the revolutionary movements in the 1960s. Hedonistic themes that recall the summer of love suffuse contemporary life, and self-reflection and emotional literacy have also become prominent values, linked towards human diversity and the international community.
We invite you to offer psychosocial analyses of the development and legacy today of the ‘revolutions’ in love, sex and politics. This could be via explorations of contemporary issues in politics, culture and artistic expression, or through historical studies. All proposals for papers must indicate how they address both psychological and social dimensions of their topic.

Send your abstract of 250-300 words to APS2018@bournemouth.ac.uk
Deadline: 22nd January 2018.
(Existing submissions, notified by 1st November).

Send your abstract of 250-300 words to: APS2018@bournemouth.ac.uk

Topics could include:

What happened to hate in the Summer of Love?
Lennon vs Lenin: did 1967 and 1968 announce two divergent trends in contemporary culture, and what has happened since to the psychosocial forces they expressed?
What are the meanings of ‘liberation’ today?
New inequalities in post-industrial societies
The resurgence of religion
The Six Day War, intifadas, and intractability
The planetary environment: fantasies and politics
Trajectories of feminism
The changing nature of ageing
‘The personal is political’ and other rhetoric in historical context
Free minds and free markets
The ethics of freedom: for example, where now for freedom of speech?
From the Manson Family to the Islamic State
Pop music’s global conquest and musical hybridity
Changes in artistic practice, creativity and commodification
The transformation of media
The digitisation of everything
Higher education: democratisation and marketisation
The potential and limitations of theories of narcissism as a major tool for understanding late modern/postmodern cultures
New narcissisms in the 21st century
Therapeutic culture and its critics
Where are they now? Biographical narratives of the revolutionaries
States of mind in pivotal moments: San Francisco 67, Paris 68, and since
The sense of entitlement: narcissism or social justice?
The decline of deference and its consequences
The hatred of government and authority
The sexualisation of culture
Controlled decontrolling or repressive desublimation? Elias and Marcuse on cultural liberalisation
Our bodies ourselves: shifting patterns and perceptions of embodiment.

Annual General Meeting
2017-12-15 16:00 - 18:00
The Annual General Meeting of the Association for Psychosocial Studies.
All members and interested parties welcome.

Friday 15th December, 4.00->6.00pm

Committee Room 3; 30 Bedford Way (Institute of Education/UCL) London WC1H 0AL.

Psychosocial Methodologies: Politics and Change
2017-11-01 17:00 - 19:00
A short doctoral course offered by UCL Institute of Education in association with the Association for Psychosocial Studies and the University of Birmingham

Dates: 5 – 7pm, Wednesdays 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th November 2017
Venue: UCL Institute of Education, Room 537
20 Bedford Way
London
WC1H OAL
Tutors: Claudia Lapping, Ian McGimpsey, Maria Jose Lagos, Felipe Acuna

Registration:
UCL students – as usual.
Non-UCL students: Please contact Bob Grist: r.grist@ucl.ac.uk to register and access course Moodle site.
Max: 25 students
Any queries about the course, please contact Claudia Lapping: c.lapping@ucl.ac.uk

Psychosocial Methodologies: Politics and Change

This series of five sessions will focus on politics and processes of change. Drawing on selected texts from key theorists in the fields of psychoanalysis, social and cultural theory (including: Butler, Deleuze, Freud, Foucault, Gerson, Lacan, Wiegman, Zizek) we will engage with a series of concepts each of which functions as a lens for the analysis of politics or processes of change. Each text provides a slightly different framework for identifying both what counts as change, and for the construction of interventions that might help to provoke or direct subjective and/or political change. Methodologically, these frameworks orient us for the empirical examination of discourse, language, affect or desire, time, regulatory technologies, and relations to individual and institutional o/Others. Sessions will explore:

Session 1: Change
Session 2: Ideology, discourse and the role of the signifier
Session 3: The event and limit experience
Session 4: Repetition and memory
Session 5: Time, politics and the Other

In the sessions we will discuss the frameworks set out in the selected texts and, importantly, explore how these might be applied in the analysis of a concrete instance or piece of data related to a specific political moment. It is through engaging in this process of analysis that psychosocial methodologies will be explored. As such, participants should be prepared to engage in discussions of recent concrete events that involve loss and the precarity of human life, distributive injustices, and symbolic violence. Participants will be asked to prepare through detailed readings of the core texts in advance of the session.

Reasons to be cheerful or manic hope? Thoughts on the general election
2017-07-04 18:00 - 20:00
Tuesday 4 July, 6-8pm – The Tavistock Centre, Belsize Lane, NW3

A roundtable discussion organised by the Tavistock Clinic Policy Seminar, the Association for Psychosocial Studies, and the BSA’s Sociology Psychoanalysis and Psychosocial Study Group.
The result of the recent general election took many of us by surprise. Labour’s unexpected surge in the polls and the loss of 13 Conservative seats indicate that large sections of the electorate are weary of austerity, reject the populist ‘Little England’ and anti-immigration sentiments that helped fuel the Brexit vote, and are either sceptical about a ‘hard’ Brexit or oppose leaving the EU altogether. After nearly 40 years in which neoliberalism has dominated British politics, is there now an opening for a social democratic or socialist vision of Britain’s future? If so, what might that vision
look like and how would we get there? And what can a psychosocial perspective contribute to our understanding those questions? This roundtable discussion will explore the potential lessons of the general election and consider possibilities for the renewal of social democracy in the 21st century.
Speakers Georgina Blakeley, Jon Cruddas MP and Michael Rustin

Georgina Blakeley is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the Open University. She has published widely on citizen participation and urban governance. Her co-authored book The Regeneration of East Manchester: A Political Analysis was published in 2013.
Jon Cruddas is MP for Dagenham and Rainham, and was Policy Coordinator for the Labour Party between 2012 and 2015.

Michael Rustin is a Visiting Professor at the Tavistock Clinic, and a founding editor of Soundings. A paper by him on the election is online at:
https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/blog/ge2017-corbyn-labour-what-next

Attendance is free but bookings can be made here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reasons-to-be-cheerful-or-manic-hope-thoughts-on-the-general-election-tickets-35728334410

Narcissism and Destructive Leadership
2017-06-16 09:30 - 17:00 | The Foundry, 17 Oval Way, London SE11 5RR, London, London, SE11 5RR, United Kingdom
The idea that there are ‘narcissistic’ individuals who can wreak havoc when in positions of leadership and power has been receiving considerable public attention. Stories from political arenas, corporate boardrooms and public organisations tell of the damage done by particularly destructive individuals who gain positions of power.
Superficially at least, the fit between the clinical formulations of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the behaviour of a number of prominent individuals seems strong. The seemingly overwhelming confidence in their own ability, the very grand sense of their own importance, alongside the disparagement, and aggression aimed at those who threaten their persona appears to fit well with the clinical accounts that emerged from psychoanalytic accounts of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ some decades ago.
Of course, serious questions have been raised about the utility of such psychological concepts to understand what might be better understood as more complex sociopolitical phenomena. Should we also be thinking more about the attraction of such personalities, and the organisations and cultures that promote them? Perhaps we need further analysis of the sociocultural conditions that create or encourage such states of mind? It is now over 35 years since Christopher Lasch published his stinging indictment of ‘post industrial’ American society – Culture of Narcissism. How much relevance does that analysis of social conditions have today?
This seminar will examine the status and utility of conceptualisations of narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic cultures.

PSYCHOSOCIAL CONNECTIONS: PRACTICE, POLICY AND RESEARCH
2014-12-16 - 2014-12-17
1st Annual Conference of the Association for Psychosocial Studies
16-17 December 2014
hosted by the Psychosocial Research Unit, University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR12HE
MORE INFORMATION and CALL FOR PAPERS TO FOLLOW
Abstract Submission deadline will be 1-07-2014

THE PSYCHOSOCIAL IMAGINATION
2014-06-13 10:30 - 18:30
A symposium to celebrate the launch of
The Association for Psychosocial Studies
Friday 13 June 2014
10.30am – 6.30pm
at The British Library Conference Centre
St Pancras, London
with talks, responses and contributions
from a wide range of psychosocial thinkers, practitioners and researchers including:
John Adlam (NHS), Caroline Bainbridge (Roehampton), Karl Figlio (Essex), Stephen Frosh (Birkbeck), Paul Hoggett (UWE), Wendy Hollway (OU), Gail Lewis (Birkbeck), Sasha Roseneil (Birkbeck), Mike Rustin (UEL), Paul Stenner (OU), Valerie Walkerdine (Cardiff)
Chaired by:
Lynn Froggett (UCLAN), Liz Frost (UWE) & Tom Wengraf
Organised in collaboration with the
Social Sciences Department of the British Library
Limited places – registration essential.
Cost, including morning and afternoon tea & coffee, lunch and a celebratory wine reception with canapés:
Members: £40
Unwaged members: £25
Non-members: £70
Unwaged non-members: £35
To register, click here
