It's been an exciting month at Rendering Unconscious headquarters!
It’s been an exciting month here at Rendering Unconscious with the launch of the RU Center for Psychoanalysis!
We have our first event coming up Wednesday, July 16th. Join Myriam Sauer and I for The Queerness of Psychoanalysis: Emptiness is the Cure for Psychoanalysis!
To participate in the event, you may sign up at the eventbrite or join RU Center for Psychoanalysis as a paid subscriber, where Myriam’s chapter Emptiness is the Cure for Psychoanalysis from The Queerness of Psychoanalysis: From Freud and Lacan to Laplanche and Beyond (Routledge, 2025) is available to read.
All paid subscribers to RU Center for Psychoanalysis will receive zoom links to join live events in The Queerness of Psychoanalysis series where contributors to this edited collection will be presenting their chapters in depth, and we will have plenty of time for questions, comments, and discussion.
All paid subscribers to RU Center for Psychoanalysis are also enrolled in my first intensive course: An Introduction to Psychoanalysis! We’ll meet once a month for 12 months beginning Saturday, September 13th. There is no prior experience or knowledge necessary to sign up for this class. All are welcome.
Over the course of a year, we will come to understand the various theories and tenants of psychoanalysis by tracing the history of the field as it has unfolded from Freud’s time to ours, reading key texts along the way. The first class will begin with Freud’s own development, surveying the cultural Zeitgeist and political landscape of his time in order to gain a greater understanding of how he began to formulate his ideas. We will look at his early work, as he studied with Jean-Martin Charcot, worked with Josef Breuer, and penned letters to Wilhelm Fliess.
As we progress through the classes, we will cover early psychoanalysts, including Carl Jung, Sabina Spielrein, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Sandor Ferenczi, Theodor Reik, and Otto Rank, among others, tracing the movement of the field as it evolved over time. We will look at the shifts that took place after the First World War, the push for free clinics, history of early leftist activists, including Erich Fromm and Wilhelm Reich, and their influence on liberation psychology and the work of Frantz Fanon. We will follow the expansion of psychoanalysis, as analysts fled World War II and spread out across the continents. The International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) also moved its headquarters to the United States during that time, resulting in the unfortunate trajectory of psychoanalysis becoming ego-psychology. In Europe, Jacques Lacan took the field by storm with his resulting expulsion from the IPA. We will review Lacan’s theories, as well as the work of Jean Laplanche and several contemporary scholars who have studied their work and influenced my own thinking, including trans and queer theorists.
More information and sign up HERE.
A lot has been happening at Rendering Unconscious Podcast this month! We celebrated Juneteenth and PRIDE with a plethora of episodes, and featured a discussion centering the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Check out this month’s new and archival episodes:
RU352: CARTER J. CARTER & VANESSA SINCLAIR ON PSYCHOANALYTIC FORMATION INDEPENDENT OF INSTITUTIONS
RU350: MARY WILD & VANESSA SINCLAIR TALK SHRINKS ON SCREEN – PSYCHOANALYSTS & THERAPISTS IN TV
RU340: KATHERINE MARSHALL WOODS ON BLACK FILM THROUGH A PSYCHODYNAMIC LENS
RU334: ÙNA MARIA BLYTH ON MUSES NO MORE: PORTRAITS OF OCCULT WOMEN
RU333: GEOFFREY HERVEY, MOLLY MERSON & SIMONE A. MEDINA POLO ON THE QUEERNESS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
RU329: MIRIAM MORRISSETTE ON CREATIVITY, TAROT, CUT-UPS, COLLAGE, QUEER, TRAUMA, ABLEISM, EDUCATION
RU292: DRS EMMA LIEBER & ANNA FISHZON ON THE QUEERNESS OF CHILDHOOD
RU249: LANGSTON KAHN & DAVID SHI ON WORKING WITH ANCESTORS & SPIRIT VOICES
RU247: ANN PELLEGRINI & AVGI SAKETOPOULOU ON GENDER WITHOUT IDENTITY
RU85: S. ALFONSO WILLIAMS, THEORY & ANALYSIS, ETHICS, FILM, ACTIVISM, BLACK LIVES MATTER
Rendering Unconscious is also a book series! Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics and Poetry volumes 1:1 and 1:2 (Trapart Books, 2024) available now!
If you are interested in pursuing psychoanalytic treatment with me or are an analyst-in-formation and would like consultation/supervision services, please feel free to visit my website or be in touch directly at vs [AT] drvanessasinclair.net
Thank you for being a paid subscriber to Rendering Unconscious Podcast. It makes my work possible. If you are so far a free subscriber, thanks to you too. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to gain access to all the material on the site, including new, future, and archival podcast episodes. It’s so important to maintain independent spaces for critical thinking, free from censorship and corporate influence.
Warmly,