January 27th 2016 at McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning, McMaster University
Melanie Klein, Early Analysis, and the Question of Freedom
Deborah Britzman’s lecture will introduce the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein and her theories of mental life as an emotional situation, through to problems of self/other relations in our own time. The case is made for Klein’s relevance and the difficulties her theories pose to the activities of learning and pedagogical relations. Klein’s vocabulary-the paranoid/schizoid and depressive positions, phantasy, object relations, projective identification, anxiety, envy, and the urge for reparation and gratitude- are discussed in terms of their evolution and the designs of her main questions, all stemming from the problem of inhibition. Her contribution to an understanding of symbolization and the shift from concrete thinking to greater freedom of mind is analyzed. The lecture will develop the following questions: Why is learning an emotional situation? How did Klein’s life and larger history influence her views? What are her central theories of mental life? Why did Klein focus on anxiety and phantasies as making up the life of the mind? What is object relations theory? And what does Klein’s model of the self proffer to contemporary education in schools and in universities?
Deborah Britzman is a Distinguished Research Professor at York University in Toronto, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and Psychoanalyst. Internationally known for her research in education and psychoanalysis, Britzman is the author of 8 books and over 90 research articles. Her two recent books are: A Psychoanalyst in the Classroom: Education as Human Condition (Albany: SUNY Press, 2015) and Melanie Klein: Early Analysis, Play, and the Question of Freedom (Springer Press, forthcoming). Britzman is the 2015 recipient of the Hans Loewald Memorial Award from the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education.