This course, now in its second year, is for and by psychoanalytically informed writers. Each of the six evenings features a different writer—and a different kind of writing—and one of their published pieces. We will hear about each writer’s inspiration, routines, and impasses. We will consider the revision, peer-review, and/or publishing process. And we will invite attendees to bring in issues and questions related to their writing projects.

September 11, 2024

Kerry Malawista, MSW, PhD, Contemporary Freudian Society
Meet the Moon
Kerry L. Malawista, PhD is a training and supervising analyst in McLean VA. She is co-chair of New Directions in Writing and founder of the “The Things They Carry” project, offering virtual writing workshops for healthcare and frontline workers. She is associate editor of JAPA. Kerry’s essays have appeared nationally in newspapers, magazines and literary journals and she is author of six books. We will read a chapter of her first novel, Meet the Moon.

October 9, 2024

Donald Carveth, PhD, FIPA (TPS, CPS)
“Marching to the Drum of the Super-Ego”
Donald Carveth has been widely published across disciplines. He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social & Political Thought, York University, and a Training and Supervising Analyst with the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis. We will discuss Donald’s latest book, Guilt: A Contemporary Introduction, and find out what fuels his writing: ambition; anger; a love of puzzles; and a life-long search for truth.

October 23, 2024

Abraham Drassinower, PhD, LLB, FIPA (TPS)
Freud’s Theory of Culture
Psychoanalyst and University of Toronto Professor Abraham Drassinower, a world expert on copyright law, is also the author of Freud’s Theory of Culture. Abraham will share his journey turning his dissertation—written during an analysis—into a unique and important contribution to psychoanalytic discourse.

November 13, 2024

Allannah Furlong, PhD, FIPA, Société psychanalytique de Montréal
The Creation of the Subject through Baby Talk: Passage between Need-to-be-caused and Wish-to-be-caused.
Allannah Furlong is a PhD psychologist, recently retired from a full-time private practice. She has served on the North American Editorial Board of the IJP and has written about many aspects of the psychoanalytic frame. She has also published on the traumatized temporality of lovesickness and dehumanization as a shield and defense against our helpless openness to the other (winner of the 2013 JAPA prize for an original or significant contribution to the psychoanalytic literature). Her most recent areas of study are informed consent in psychoanalysis, the need and the wish-to-be caused, and baby talk as subject invention. It is the last of these that is the subject of her most recent work and we will discuss its genesis.

November 27, 2024

Cecilia Taiana, MD, FIPA, Ottawa Psychoanalytic Society
“What Does Poetry Offer Psychoanalysis”
Cecilia Taiana is an Ottawa-based psychoanalyst and published poet. Cecilia will discuss the process of writing her trilogy, which aims to answer the following question: What does poetry offer psychoanalysis? For the poet, the “craft of writing” is an intimate relationship with the “craft of living.” It involves creating their own path in history, just like a groove in the ground. Cecilia argues that the poet’s writing process resembles the analytic work in the session.

December 4, 2024

Concetta Principe, PhD Poet; Assistant Professor, English, Trent University
Disorder
Professor Concetta Principe’s current scholarship focuses on the relationship between culture and madness from a Lacanian perspective. Alongside her scholarly publications, Concetta has published many books of poetry as well as fiction and creative non-fiction. She will discuss her most recent work, Disorder (Gordon Hill Press 2024), a musing on her “borderline” diagnosis.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

1. Understand more fully the psychoanalytic writing and publication process;
2. Query and challenge the notion of “inspiration”;
3. Consider ethical questions regarding confidentiality and self-disclosure related to psychoanalysts who write.

Karen Dougherty, MA, RP (CRPO), FIPA

Karen Dougherty is a Registered Psychotherapist and Psychoanalyst in private practice in Amaranth, Ontario, a writer and documentary filmmaker, a communications consultant for psychoanalytic institutions and initiatives, and a mental health consultant for film and television. She teaches at the ATPPP, the FPP, the TIP, and the Extension Program of the TPS.