John Forrester et la psychanalyse

Thinking in Cases: On and Beyond the Couch

A Half-Day Symposium

30 October 2016
2pm - 5.30pm

John Forrester tragically died in November 2015. His long-standing research project, ‘thinking in cases’ was an attempt to theorise the particular kind of thinking that pertains to psychoanalysis and psychotherapy; different from ‘scientific’ and deductive reasoning but, he asserted, a valid form of knowledge all the same. Can one move from a textured particularity, like that in Freud’s famous cases, to a level of reliable generality? In his last book, to be published in October, Forrester teases out the meanings of the psychoanalytic case, how to characterise it and account for it as a particular kind of thinking and writing. While he was principally concerned with analysing the style of reasoning that was dominant in psychoanalysis and related disciplines, Forrester’s path-breaking account of thinking in cases will be of great interest to scholars, students and professionals across a wide range of disciplines, from history, law and the social sciences to medicine, clinical practice and the talking therapies. This conference brings together speakers from a range of disciplines to debate the pros and cons of ‘thinking in cases’.

SPEAKERS

ANDREAS MAYER (Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris)

MATT FFYTCHE (Essex University)

BARBARA TAYLOR (Queen Mary's)

STEPHEN FROSH (Birkbeck College)

STAN RUSZCZYNSKI (Portman Clinic)

RALUCA SOREANU (Wellcome Trust)

LISA APPIGNANESI (Chair)