Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere: Growing up Absurd 21st Century Style
A 2 day online conference organised by David Morgan and Kurt Jacobsen of Free Associations Journal in partnership with the Freud Museum.
Date and time
Location
Online
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Highlights
- 1 day 7 hours
- Online
Refund Policy
About this event
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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In 1960, before there was any visible sign of activism on McCarthyised US campuses, Paul Goodman published his cri de cœur critique Growing Up Absurd: The Problems of Youth in Organized Society. A few years later, Kenneth Keniston’s The Uncommitted pursued a similar theme. Both works, though not authored by analysts, were deeply influenced by psychoanalytic ideas about socialisation, repression, and rebellion. (Colin Wilson’s The Outsider arguably exerted a similar popular impact in the UK.)
Although Goodman’s focus was the American scene, today’s globalised culture ensures that dynamics first visible in the US soon echo worldwide, shaped by distinctive national and regional inflections.
Corporate dominance, meaningless acquisitiveness, alienated labour, and resigned conformity were Goodman’s chief targets. His intervention revealed the discontent simmering beneath the surface of an apparently acquiescent generation, helping to ignite what would become the countercultural revolts of the 1960s. Yet, if anything, the conditions Goodman diagnosed have only intensified in the triumphalist neoliberal era.
Still, even within today’s forms of quiet desperation, symptoms of disaffection and despair abound. Whence this contemporary malaise? How does the profoundly conservative moment we find ourselves in shape the psychic lives of youth — across class, race, gender, and national lines? How do today’s conflicts differ from those Goodman described? And what does it mean now to “side with youth,” as Goodman did — is it to side with the id, with the principle of revolt, or with a more ambivalent psychic inheritance?
Looking back to Fanon, Reich, Fromm, and others, it is clear that psychoanalysis, for better and worse, played a crucial role in fuelling both critical dissent and personal transformation during the cresting of civil rights, anti-war, and anti-imperialist movements. Many contemporary psychoanalysts came of age in that ferment.
In 2025, the question remains alive, perhaps more urgently than ever: “Socialisation to what? To which dominant society, to what available culture?”
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How to watch
This event is taking place online only. All registrants will receive a Zoom Link after booking. All registrants will also receive access to the recording afterwards. _______________________________________________________________________
Panels
Saturday 15 November (10:45 – 17:20)
Opening remarks (10:45 - 11:00)
David Morgan
1.Rat Race Resurgent?: The Origins and Contemporary Relevance of ‘Growing Up Absurd’ (11:00 - 12:40) David Morgan (chair) Michael Chanan, Kurt Jacobsen, Neil McLaughlin
Lunch Break (12:40 – 13:30)
2. Analysis and Treatment of Youth: Reflections on a Fractured Coming-of-Age (13:30 – 15:10)
Bob Hinshelwood (chair), Barry Richards, Les Levidow, Agnieszka Piotrowska
Break (15:10 - 15:40)
3. Not Blank Pages: Psychoanalysis and the Struggles of Socialisation (15:40 – 17:20)
Jill Gentile (chair), Lauren Langman, Charles Thorpe, Marilyn Charles
Sunday 16 November (11:00 – 17:30)
4. Psychoanalysis of Adolescence: Race, Class, and the Politics of Maturation (11:00 – 12:40) Ruth Glover (chair), Jama Adams, Sally Sales, Phil Stokoe
Lunch break (12:40 – 13:30)
5. Comparative National Perspectives: Global Youth Cultures and Psychic Survival (13:30 – 15:10)
Karl Figlio (chair) Sabby Sagall, Nathan Gerard, Samir Gandesha
Break (15:10 – 15:40)
6. Roundtable Discussion: Generations in Dialogue: What Can We Say to Each Other Now? (15:40 – 17:20)
Lisa Appignanesi (chair), Eli Zaretsky, Susie Orbach, Charles Strozier, Micheal Rustin
Closing remarks (17:20 – 17:30)
Kurt Jacobsen
Click here for speakers’ biographies
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Tickets: £80
Freud Museum Members and Patrons receive 20% off the standard ticket price on all events, courses, conferences and On Demand programming.
A limited number of £30 bursary tickets are available for those under financial hardship. Priority will be given to UK unemployed and PIP/ESA claimants. Please email perry@freud.org.uk to apply for a bursary.
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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