The Learning Cooperative in association with the Red Clinic present the first in a new series of monthly events exploring the links between the psychoanalytic clinic and radical politics. ‘Psychoanalysis, Capitalism and Resistance’ will bring together two leading figures in the contemporary development of clinical practices that incorporate radical political perspectives on class, race, gender, colonialism and imperialism alongside one of the UK’s leading public intellectuals.

Lynne Layton is among the pioneers of the contemporary field of Social Psychoanalysis and is the author of several books on the intra- and inter-psychic impact of structures of exploitation and oppression. Her recent book Toward a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes was the winner of a 2021 book award from the American Academy and Board of Psychoanalysis. She is a past-President of Section IX (Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility) of Division 39, APA, and founder of Reflective Spaces/Material Places-Boston, a group of psychodynamic therapists committed to community mental health and social justice.

Daniel Gaztimbide is the assistant director of clinical training in the Department of Clinical Psychology at the New School for Social Research, where he teaches psychoanalytic theory and technique, ethnicity in clinical practice, and critical theory in clinical work. He is also the director of the Frantz Fanon Center for Intersectional Psychology at the New School. He is the author of the book A People’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology. His scholarship centres on psychoanalysis and Liberation Psychology, race, class and culture in psychodynamic psychotherapy, Puerto Rican racial identity and colonialism, comparative approaches to psychoanalysis, psychotherapy integration, and the psychology of religion.

Richard Seymour brings a complementary perspective on the continued relevance of psychoanalysis outside the clinic as a means of uncovering the unconscious within capitalist social relations. His widely praised 2019 book The Twittering Machine offered a novel interpretation of the psychopathology of social media and his upcoming book The Disenchanted Earth will blend psychoanalysis with ecosocialism to analyse our relationship to climate catastrophe.

Together our speakers will make the case for the multiple ways in which psychoanalysis and liberatory politics can inform each other, despite the recurring attack on this link both from within mainstream psychoanalysis and within radical political movements.