2:30 pm Saturday 10th July 2021
PP16 : Feil & Scanlon: When walls become porous – Dangerous Liaisons and Close Encounters with Violence
After a change in legislation in 2007, forensic outpatient clinics for the treatment of violent and sexual offenders were established in almost all federal states in Germany. These initiatives provide psychological and social services to clients who have been released from prison or secure detention under conditions imposed by the courts. Most, but not all, of the clients of these services are male offenders, almost all of whom have themselves come from violent and/or transgressive backgrounds. The primary task of these clinics is to reintegrate the clientele into society – whether they, or the wider society, desire this (re-)integration or not. Previously, they were walled up as alienated humanity from a society that was more interested in retribution than treatment. However, the treatment enterprise has brought new challenges to staff of such institutions. read more (PDF)
PP18 : Jønson, Skrumsager Frederiksen & Visholm:
Working around the wall and under the surface – Developing a psychodynamically informed technology to study unconscious aspects of the experience of townscapes in urban planning and architecture
Visible and invisible walls are parts of processes of connecting and disconnecting people. In the urban setting, constant encounters with physical others on roads, pavements, bicycle lanes, in places, buildings, and rooms can be seen as a potential threat to the individual but also as a potential relation. Walls as physical barriers and as symbols and structures are everywhere in the city and are hindering or supporting contact between individuals and also between individuals and their own otherness. How do these dreams of the future and defences against otherness manifest themselves in urban surroundings and how does this influence or communicate with individuals, provide dreams and reality, and contain or deny aggression, separation, security or protection etc.? This paper describes the process and preliminary results of an attempt to design a cross-disciplinary technology to explore unconscious aspects of the experience of urban spaces. read more (PDF)
PP19 : Philip Boxer: Working beyond the pale: when isn’t it an insurgency?
It’s not uncommon to arrive at the moment within a coaching or consultation relationship at which the client feels confronted by an unavoidable career crisis: leave because s/he can’t see any future staying in his or her role; or stay because s/he sees no alternative to the limitations being imposed by the larger system. This paper will examine two case situations in which the client had come up against such a wall, one involved with the procurement of military capabilities, the other with the provision of intensive social care. In both cases there existed possible courses of action that would provide better outcomes and would make greater commercial sense, but which were nevertheless judged as beyond the pale by the existing authorities, discluded from further consideration (Boxer 2017). The challenge for the client facing this crisis is not to take the disclusion personally, but to consider the walling off as a systemic defense (de Madeiros 2019). read more (PDF)
PP20 : Gilles Amado: Deadly “INSTITUTIONAL HARASSMENT”: can psychoanalysis be a resource against it?
The macabre forms of the “institutional harassment” decided and organized at the top of one of the biggest and most famous french organizations leading to dozens of suicides among employees ten years ago is a dramatic example of otherness denial and a neo-liberal perverse approach to organizational effectiveness. Its history, interpretations and learnings are explored in this communication. read more (PDF)