The Webinar Committee recently offered a program led by long-time IARPP member and former IARPP Board member Steven Knoblauch (USA), featuring a discussion of themes from his new book, Bodies and Social Rhythms: Navigating Unconscious Vulnerability and Emotional Fluidity (Routledge, 2020). Running September 20 through October 3, the webinar welcomed 78 participants from 19 countries and was co-moderated by Peter McKay (Australia) and Christina Emanuel (USA).
Steven Knoblauch
During our two-week time together, the group considered how our contemporary psychoanalytic culture continues to privilege cognitive imagining as the ideal for emotional self-control. Knoblauch invited the participants to expand their attention beyond just speech meaning to include embodied registrations of rhythm and the socially contextualized meanings such registrations can have.
In particular, the group discussed the contributions of Frantz Fanon concerning race as it manifests in the tensions between the social and the unconscious. Despite their historical and ongoing significance, Knoblauch emphasized that Fanon’s perspectives and clinical work have not become part of the psychoanalytic canon to which most candidates are exposed in their training. The online discussion represented an effort toward bringing Fanon and his crucially important ideas into our psychoanalytic conversations.
The ideas proved to be quite challenging for the group; attention to clinical examples brought into focus the concepts Knoblauch has been developing over several decades of his career. The group also came together for an online Zoom meeting at the midpoint of our webinar, a warm and open conversation that allowed the participants to connect in a more personal and “embodied” way.
Knoblauch’s program closed out our 2021 season of online webinars, in which members of our international community came together for a variety of intimate learning opportunities. At this time we are organizing our 2022 lineup of webinar programs, which will include programs in English, Italian, and Spanish. Stay tuned for further details about these upcoming programs.
Carmine Schettini (Italy) and Christina Emanuel (USA), Co-Chairs
Christina Emanuel, MFT, Psy.D.
Pasadena, CA, USA
Email Christina Emanuel
Carmine Schettini, MD
Rome, Italy
Email Carmine Schettini
