When & where: 23rd May, 2023 at 6pm | SFU Vienna, Freudplatz 1, 1020 Vienna
Free entry. Please check the screens in the building for the room number.
→ For PTW students, participating in the lecture can be credited as “Window of Opportunity”.
About the lecture
What is the concept of liberty in Freud’s psychoanalysis? In this talk, Dr. Håvard Friis Nilsen revisits the political roots of psychoanalytic theory, in light of the excavation of classic republicanism, performed by Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit and others.
Friis Nilsen argues that the concept of freedom lies at the core of Freud’s view of the aetiology of neuroses as well as his ideal of therapeutic efficacy of psychoanalysis. Arguing against what we might call the liberal interpretation of Freud’s politics associated with Carl Schorske or John Forrester, Friis Nilsen presents the theory of classic republicanism and claims that understanding the neo-Roman concept of liberty is required to understanding Freud’s concept of freedom. This argument opens up for an entirely new perspective on one of the 20th century’s most influential theories of the mind.
About the speaker
Håvard Friis Nilsen, Ph. D., is a Professor of Social Science at Ostfold University College, Norway. He studied history of science, psychology and political science at the University of Oslo and Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg. He was a Visiting Scholar under Prof. John Forrester at the Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University, and lectured there on the history of psychoanalysis. He has written on the history of psychoanalysis in several articles and books, among them “Resistance in Therapy and War” in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis.