Scientific Meeting “The Unwelcome Child” – January 18, 2020 with Endre Koritar and Adrienne Harris
Endre Koritar reviews the concept of the death instinct contrasting Freud’s metapsychological Dual Drive theory to Ferenczi’s object relational theory of the Unwelcome Child. The trans generational transmission of “unwelcomeness” to a child and its dynamic consequences will be explored through the narrative of an analysis of a young man who discovered he was an unwelcome child. Ferenczi’s revival of self preservative instinct, which he calls Orpha, is discussed. It is considered key in the deviation from a self destructive path in a young man’s life. The social consequences of unwelcomeness is discussed.
Endre Koritar is a Training and Supervising analyst in WPSI and its current director. He is an Associate Editor of the Am. J. Psa. and has been guest editor of several Special Editions dedicated to publishing important papers from the International Ferenczi conferences in Toronto and Florence. He is currently on the Board of Directors involved in organizing the next international Ferenczi meeting May 13-16, 2021 in Sao Paolo. He believes that Ferenczi was the first contemporary psychoanalyst and a harbinger of modern psychoanalysis as he wrote on themes that reflect current debates on psychoanalytic technique and process. Ferenczi’s ideas remain an untapped source of inspiration and insight for those clinicians struggling to find ways of working with severely traumatized and regressed patients.
Discussant: Adrienne Harris, Ph.D.
In her discussion, Harris draws on the details and insights of Koritar’s clinical account to think about the implications of Ferenczi’s ideas about unwelcome children. His 1929 paper which has been one of Koritar’s inspirations draws dire conclusions from varieties of neglect and unwelcomeness. Koritar’s paper allows us to think both theoretically and clinically about how to work with psychic absence, with inner emptiness covered by defences that may be self endangering and dangerous to others.
Adrienne Harris is currently involved in a working group at NYU’s New School studying the dynamic impact of unwelcome children psychologically and socially. She is planning a new book of edited papers on Unwelcomeness and its personal, familial, social, and political repercussions.
Adrienne Harris, Ph.D. is Faculty and Supervisor at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is on the faculty and is a supervisor at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. She is an Editor at Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. In 2012, she, Lewis Aron, and Jeremy Safran established the Sandor Ferenczi Center at The New School University. She is a co-editor the Book Series Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis, with over 100 published volumes. She is an editor of the IPA e-journal Psychoanalysis Today. Her current work is on analytic subjectivity, on intersectional models of gender and sexuality, and on ghosts.
Photo Credit: Pier at Malahat, oil on canvas, 2019, Edward Epp
Adrienne Harris will be speaking at SFU downtown campus
on Friday evening, January 17, 2020.
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