FRSS - Renting Within Oneself: A psychoanalytic exploration of home

All registrants will receive their link to join via ZOOM. Attendees will also receive access to the recording on the Monday after the event, available to watch back for 3 months.

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Abstract:

This paper departs from a fundamental question: how is ‘home’ conceptualized and experienced within both the conscious and unconscious mind of the human subject? It argues that rent and ownership are not merely legal or economic constructs, but symbolic molds that shape the structuring of oneself and one’s experience. Central to this inquiry is the psychic tension between renting and owning as subjective positions, each imbued with visualizations of possession, control, permanence, and the existential need to ‘have a place’. Drawing on theoretical-clinical reflection and insights from individual psychotherapeutic practice, this paper explores the way in which the form of dwelling, shapes the symbolic construction of inner space and the relationship of the individual with the self. Renting can appear as an existential position of transience and insecurity, where the boundaries of ego become unstable. This form of dwelling reinforces the sense of “not having a place in the world,” positioning the subject as someone navigating spaces that are not their own, vulnerable to exclusion and unable to construct an inner space that provides a sense of continuity and security. Conversely, ownership fosters the illusion of permanence and control, both over space and the self, often sustained by the fantasy of passing property to one's children as a symbolic victory over mortality. The theoretical framework includes the concept of ‘unheimlich’ (Freud), the notion of the transitional object (Winnicott), as well as other approaches that consider ‘home’ as a potential space for symbolization and affective processing. The clinical reflections aim to highlight how the lack of the sense of “home” as a physical place, which is subsequently outlined as an internal experience, can manifest as a symptom of the disintegration of the Self and indicate the inability to develop a grounded identity that provides security or a sense of belonging.

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Speaker:

Arjet Pervizi is a licensed clinical psychologist, assistant lecturer at the University of Shkodra “Luigj Gurakuqi,” and doctoral candidate at the University of Tirana. His research focuses on the construction of masculinity among adolescents and the clinical applications of psychoanalytic theory. He has published internationally, including papers such as “Psychoanalytic View of Neurotic Forms of Love Object Choice” and “Man for Himself,” and maintains a private psychotherapeutic practice with a strong Freudian orientation.

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Tickets:

Suggested donation £10-£15.
Minimum donation £1.

The purpose of this event is to raise funds for the Freud Museum London, which receives no regular Government income. We are grateful to you for supporting our independent museum as generously as possible.

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The Freudian Research Seminar Series

The Freudian Research Seminar Series (FRSS) will convene virtually once every month and seeks to establish a forum which both cultivates and circulates new psychoanalytically informed research. We welcome both PhD students and Researchers across disciplines (inc. psychoanalysis, psychology, literature, art, film, history), to participate and form a community in which new ideas can be openly discussed and developed.

Each seminar will commence at 6pm (London) and last for an hour and thirty minutes, with thirty-forty minutes for the paper followed by a discussion. Seminars will be recorded for those registered to playback for 3 months but please note they will not be later made available on the On Demand service.

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Schedule:

Wednesday 22 October – Kimberly Lamm, Fashioning the Ego as Home: Black Women Writers and Clothing

Thursday 27 November – Helen Rose, No Fixed Abode, No Fixed Support? The Weaponization of Homelessness in an Era of Austerity and NHS Decline

Thursday 11 December – Kazue Niki, Staging the Finale: Freud’s London Garden as a Constructed Space

Wednesday 28 January – Faye Mather, A Return to the Mother – on the transition from Freudian fathers to Kleinian mothers in psychoanalysis and Athenian tragedy

Thursday 26 February – Arjet Pervizi, Renting Within Oneself: A psychoanalytic exploration of home – between rent and ownership, transience, and the fantasy of belonging in the psychoanalytic subject

Thursday 26 March – Callum Blades, The Unhomely Mind: Conspiracies as a Defence Against Psychic Displacement

Thursday 23 April – Nisrina Larasati, “Only You Understand Me Completely”: Contemporary Investigation of the Uncanny in AI Therapy Bots

Thursday 21 May – Sam Bolton, I Cannot Turn Away from Your Home: A Melancholic Reformulation of Transgender Dysphoria

Thursday 25 June – Anna-Peter Magyarlaki & Eric Harper, Homes, closets and wombs: Psychoanalytic reflections on home-making and homelessness for queer, trans and gender nonconforming people

Thursday 30 July – Huaiyuan “Susanna” Zhang, The Ego Is Not Master in Its Own House: Levinas, Freud, and the Ethical Unhousing of Oedipus