What are you to do when you do not find yourself, your community, represented in the literature of your field? Despite a burgeoning revisitation of the body in psychoanalytic theory, much, though not all, of this literature is grounded in normative embodied experiences—experiences that reproduce and are grounded in culturally accepted embodiments/bodies.

So what is to be done with bodies like ours—bodies outside “acceptable limits”? How can we think about, with, and through subaltern (that which holds a subordinate position) bodies? Bodies that are socially and politically excluded. We take up the following questions: Can the subaltern’s voice be heard, felt, regarded? Who, or what systems, creates the subaltern as a positionality, how do those implicated reinforce this, and must implicated people accept this stratification? In other words, are there other ways of being, in the face of systems of domination and oppression?

These questions may be best addressed through autotheory. Autotheory as we see it is about using our lived experiences not as a memoir, but as a way of bringing visibility and analysis to our experience such that we can make use of these as tools to critique our social context and formulate how we make a mind and a life in relation to, in spite of, or in response to, the social surround. This conference will take up the use of autotheory as a necessary component of theorizing through and alongside the “subaltern” via presentations from each of the featured speakers. We will also invite case presentations from Tiffaney Hale, LMFT and Lisa Naugle, RPS and emergent discussion between presenters and the participant audience. This event will be moderated by Dr. Shir Shanun, creator of Connections and Conversations and Associate editor of Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context.

Course Objectives:

1. Identify three ways areas of intersection may create an embodied experience for a patient.
2. Describe one way in which psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy can support subaltern bodies in treatment.
3. Identify two ways psychotherapists can interrogate their body biases.
4. Define the term “subaltern bodies.”
5. List two oppressive systems/structures that create the subaltern positionality.
6. Assess how your clinical practice may perpetuate the subaltern positionality.

6 CE Credits Available

This conference is available to attend both in-person and via Zoom.

9:00 am – 4:30 pm PT