By Francesca Colzani (Chile) and Roberto D’Angelo (Australia)
The IARPP Muriel Dimen Fellowship honors the tradition of academic rigor, creativity, and challenge that Muriel Dimen’s thinking brought to psychoanalysis. Before she died, Muriel proposed that IARPP create a fellowship program to open up new connections between relational psychoanalysis and other non-analytic fields. The aim was to help extend relational psychoanalysis beyond the clinical domain, and also to enrich relational thinking through dialogue with other disciplines. Muriel’s idea finally came to fruition in 2017, when her program was launched and our first two fellows completed their fellowship year. The program was more successful than we imagined and attracted very accomplished and impressive applicants. Both fellows produced outstanding papers, which they presented at the 2018 IARPP conference in New York.
Everyone involved, including both the fellows and the mentors, found the program to be an exciting and enriching experience. As Co-chairs of the Fellowship Committee, we would like to thank our Fellows, Zeynep Turan and Bettina von Lieres, and congratulate them on their success! We would also like to thank the mentors who volunteered their time to this project, Avgi Saketopoulou (USA) and Stephen Hartman (USA). We would also like to thank Stephen Hartman and Griffin Hansbury (USA) for their thought-provoking responses to the fellows’ papers during the New York Conference.
If you were not able to attend the fellowship panel at the conference, we would like to introduce you to our 2018 Fellows and their work. We also asked our fellows to write about their experience of the fellowship with IARPP members so that you can hear from them directly.
Zeynep Turan, PhD, was trained as an architect and has a doctorate in environmental psychology. Born in Turkey, she lives and works in New York City, where she is part-time faculty in the Milano School for International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy at The New School, and a fellow at the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. From 2013 to 2016, Zeynep was Assistant Professor at Istanbul Bilgi University’s Faculty of Architecture, where she conducted research on participatory design with a grant from the Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Center, entitled “User-focused Approaches to Istanbul’s Waterfront Transformation.” The current focus of her research is the transformation of public spaces, especially waterfront areas, under neoliberalism and climate change pressures.
In her presentation, “Gentrification as a Medium of Whiteness,” Zeynep explained gentrification in Brooklyn neighborhoods through a realization of whiteness by examining dissociation and splitting as two psychological constructs that sustain unacknowledged white privilege and ingrain white supremacy at individual and community levels.
About her experience participating on the Fellowship Program, Zeynep wrote, “The IARPP fellowship exposed me to psychoanalytical approaches and enabled me to apply these conceptual tools to my work on processes transforming cities, such as gentrification. It was invaluable working with a mentor who was able to direct me to insightful resources, help formulate my own ideas, and also polish my paper. The conference panel provided useful feedback for taking next steps with the project. Overall, the experience was intellectually and emotionally rewarding; it not only has revealed new ways of thinking about my work but also is expanding it, in that I am considering pursuing additional training in psychoanalysis. The fellowship has also introduced me to a supportive and stimulating community.”
Our other fellow, Bettina von Lieres, PhD, is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto in Scarborough, Canada. She teaches courses in the field of critical citizenship studies. She is a third-year academic-stream candidate at the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. From 1991 to 2002 she held university positions in South Africa, and from 2002 to 2011 she participated as a lead researcher in the Development Research Centre for Citizenship, Participation, and Accountability, which was hosted by the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. She is currently also appointed as an Extra-ordinary Senior Researcher at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Her publications include Mediated Citizenship: The Informal Politics of Speaking for Citizens in the Global South (co-edited with Laurence Piper, Palgrave, 2014), and Domains of Freedom: Justice, Citizenship and Social Change in South Africa (co-edited with Thembela Kepe and Melissa Levin, UCT Press, 2016).
Combining insights from psychoanalysis and critical citizenship studies, Bettina’s IARRP conference paper, “Silent Citizenship, Dissociation and Participation,” focused on the ways in which experiences of material indignity, non-recognition, and silent citizenship shape political action in the Global South. Her core argument was that experiences of incessant non-recognition by political authorities generate a wider condition of dissociated citizenship which is disrupted when people participate in collective action.
Bettina shared her reflections about her experience with IARPP. She wrote, “I am so happy to have had the opportunity to participate in the Muriel Dimen Fellowship. Once a week, for eight months, on a Friday afternoon, Stephen Hartman and I discussed the connections and dissonances between psychoanalysis and critical citizenship studies. I learnt an enormous amount about new ideas in contemporary psychoanalysis. Our inter-disciplinary discussions were challenging, but always fun and exciting. Inter-disciplinary dialogue is never easy, but the fellowship provided enough time and space for iterative engagement.
“The fellowship has infused my own research and writing (on inclusive citizenship) with a deeper awareness of the role of dissociation in the disruption of democratic citizenship. Since completing the fellowship I have introduced psychoanalytical theories into my research networks. I am currently organizing an inter-disciplinary research project that will bring together researchers from India, South Africa, and Canada to collaborate on psychoanalytical approaches to citizenship. Thank you so much IARRP!”
Francesca Colzani
Napoleón 3565, of. 1004, Las Condes, Santiago Chile
Email Francesca Colzani
Website: www.francescacolzani.com
Roberto D’Angelo, PhD
Suite 33, 8 Hill St,
Surry Hills NSW 2010 Australia
Email Roberto Colzani