We are pleased to announce and call for papers for the Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study's 35th annual FORUM Conference. Our theme this year is Sexual Dis/Orientation. We invite you to dream, think, and play with us around this most essential of topics.
Submissions are due Sunday, December 6, 2024 at 11:59 pm PST. Click here to download proposal submission form.
Within the psychoanalytic tradition, sexuality has always been about both ‘sex’ as a lived experience, and ‘the sexual’ as reflective of all the forces that make up what being human is. Freud's original concept of the unconscious centered on sexuality, and the developmental, creative, and symbolic conflicts it creates.
These foundational ideas, then and now, entice and challenge us. As Adam Phillips states in introducing Freud's writing, “Sexuality was what there was to be disturbed about.” We acknowledge that in some areas of psychoanalysis, the ‘sex’ in sexuality has been neutered or forgotten. While in others, queer sexuality, trans experience, attention to sexual violence, and realities of embodiment have flourished.
Sex — sexuality and the sexual — enlivens, informs, terrifies, disorganizes, and arouses us. We invite you to reflect on the theme of Sexual Dis/Orientation this coming season. See what questions of your own come to mind, get inspired or provoked, and consider presenting to and discussing with the community.
- Does sexuality still have power to disorient and disturb?
- How much have we removed sex from sex?
- What are the dynamic and phenomenological threads that constitute our sexual desires and acts with one another?
- What are the effects of censoring sex from praxis or censoring the unconscious in thinking about sex?
- How do we work with sexual bodies in unconscious phantasy?
- How does sex make us feel at home or not at home with our bodies?
- What makes a phrase, act, fantasy, “sexual?”
- What are our own fears of projections on either self or others around sex?
- What dynamics and affects are present within such inquiries and exchanges?
- How do your theories contribute to the way you address sexuality and the unconscious?
This year, the Keynote will be a live case discussion, with a senior clinician presenting a case around this year's theme to local early-career psychoanalytic clinicians from varying perspectives. If you are interested in participating in this part of the FORUM, please reach out to Caleb at forum@nwaps.org.
Caleb Dodson (Chair)
Matt Brooks
Katharine Joo
James Nole
