Mixed Signals: Analysing Ambivalence

Based at Durham University, we are the UK's first Institute for Medical Humanities. Our research explores human experiences of health and ill-health using an interdisciplinary arts and humanities approach.

Institute for Medical Humanities

A symposium hosted by the Affective Experience Lab at the Discovery Research Platform in Medical Humanities, Durham University.

Tom Percival Annexe

I hate and I love. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask. I know not, but I feel it happening and I am tortured. (Catullus) An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable to my emotional life… not infrequently… friend and enemy have coincided in the same person. (Freud)

What does it mean to be in two minds — and what are the uses of mixed feelings? Introduced into psychiatry by Eugen Bleuler in 1910, ambivalence describes the coexistence of conflicting impulses toward the same person or object. For the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, the ability to live with ambivalence was a developmental achievement: Klein’s infant grows from the good-versus-bad, black-and-white ‘paranoid-schizoid position’ to the level-headed, rough-with-the-smooth ‘depressive position’, learning to integrate love and hate. But if mental health means seeing shades of grey, sometimes ambivalence still leads to illness: from Leon Festinger’s ‘cognitive dissonance’ to Gregory Bateson’s ‘double binds’, irresolvable contradictions can drive us out of our minds. Ambivalence is also of broader interest across disciplines, from philosophy (skepticism, nondualism, paradox) to politics (voter apathy, doublethink) to literary studies (what should we make of books we conflictedly ‘love to hate’—or hate to love?) In our polarised world, is ambivalence a desirable trait—an open-minded, unbiased ability to see debates from both sides—or is it the antithesis of commitment, a route to confusion and indecision? This symposium s gathers academics and mental health practitioners to analyse ambivalence from all angles: psychological, social, political, aesthetic and more.

Speakers and participants will include:<ul><li><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/303072/akshi-singh" title="https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/303072/akshi-singh" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Akshi Singh</a>, author of In Defence of Leisure: Experiments in Living with Marion Milner (Penguin, 2025), associate editor at Parapraxis and deputy editor at Critical Quarterly.</li></ul><ul><li><a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/english/faculty/profile.html?id=jhavard" title="https://www.binghamton.edu/english/faculty/profile.html?id=jhavard" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">John Havard</a> (SUNY Binghamton), academic and literary scholar; author of Disaffected Parties (Oxford, 2019) and Late Romanticism and the End of Politics (Cambridge, 2023).</li><li><a href="https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/profile/ben-kafka-phd" title="https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/profile/ben-kafka-phd" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Ben Kafka </a>(Columbia University), psychoanalyst in private practice; associate professor of clinical psychoanalysis, Columbia University, fellow at the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine</li><li>Carol Owens (Dublin), psychoanalyst and clinical supervisor in private practice in Dublin, Ireland, co-author (with Stephanie Swales) of Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch (Routledge, 2020).</li></ul><ul><li><a href="https://www.education.ox.ac.uk/person/harry-daniels/" title="https://www.education.ox.ac.uk/person/harry-daniels/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Harry Daniels</a> (University of Oxford), scholar of literature and psychoanalysis; currently working on “oceanic feeling” and environmental mysticism in British Literature and Object Relations Psychoanalysis.</li></ul><ul><li><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/contributors/sahanika-ratnayake-phd" title="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/contributors/sahanika-ratnayake-phd" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Sahanika Ratnayake</a> (Manchester University), historian and philosopher of science; recent publications in Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology and BMJ Medical Humanities.</li></ul><ul><li><a href="https://katharina-junejo.co.uk/" title="https://katharina-junejo.co.uk/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Katharina Junejo</a> (Manchester), psychotherapist and consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist in the NHS.</li></ul><ul><li><a href="https://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/people/jess-cotton" title="https://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/people/jess-cotton" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Jess Cotton</a> (Cambridge University), current book project Lonely Subjects: Loneliness in Postwar Literature and Psychoanalysis, 1945-1975.</li></ul><ul><li><a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/michael-kalisch" title="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/michael-kalisch" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Michael Kalisch</a> (University of Bristol), author of The Midcentury Minor Novel (Edinburgh, 2024).</li></ul><ul><li><a href="https://edwebprofiles.ed.ac.uk/profile/benjamin-bateman" title="https://edwebprofiles.ed.ac.uk/profile/benjamin-bateman" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Ben Bateman</a> (Edinburgh University), author of Queer Disappearance in Modern and Contemporary Fiction (Oxford, 2023).</li></ul><ul><li><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/veronica-esposito" title="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/veronica-esposito" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Veronica Esposito</a> (Berkeley, CA), psychotherapist; literary translator; writer and transgender advocate; regular contributor to The Guardian, Literary Hub, etc.</li><li><a href="https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/angela-m-filipe/" title="https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/angela-m-filipe/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Angela Marques Filipe</a> (Durham), associate professor of sociology, Leverhulme Trust fellow, and co-director of the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University; research foci include neurodiversity, vulnerability, and ecoanxiety.</li><li><a href="https://www.dcu.ie/snpch/people/stephanie-swales" title="https://www.dcu.ie/snpch/people/stephanie-swales" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Stephanie Swales</a>, Ph.D. (Dublin City University), Assistant Professor of Psychotherapy at Dublin City University, a practicing psychoanalyst, a clinical psychologist, and a clinical supervisor located in Dublin.</li></ul>

This event is free to attend. The virtual link will be circulated closer to the event.This symposium is hosted by the <a href="https://medhumsplatform.org/labs/affective-experience/" title="https://medhumsplatform.org/labs/affective-experience/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Affective Experience Lab</a> at the <a href="https://medhumsplatform.org/" title="https://medhumsplatform.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities</a>, Durham University.Please contact Dr Josh Pugh (<a href="mailto:david.j.pugh@dur.ac.uk" title="mailto:david.j.pugh@dur.ac.uk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">david.j.pugh@dur.ac.uk</a>) or Dr Fraser Riddell (<a href="mailto:f.i.riddell@dur.ac.uk" title="mailto:f.i.riddell@dur.ac.uk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">f.i.riddell@dur.ac.uk</a>) with any questions.