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16. Palestine is a Four-letter Word: Psychoanalytic Innocence and Its Malcontents

Chapter of: For Palestine: Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group(pp. 245–262)

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Metadata
Title16. Palestine is a Four-letter Word: Psychoanalytic Innocence and Its Malcontents
ContributorLara Sheehi(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0345.17
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0345/chapters/10.11647/obp.0345.17
Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightLara Sheehi
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2023-06-26
Long abstractIf psychoanalysis is to transform itself from a disciplinary practice of quiet (and often explicit) violence, we are asked to confront the dynamics and paradigms that objectify rather than liberate. What follows in this chapter is an account of how contemporary psychoanalysis resists, subverts, and defangs such a possible revolutionary mutation and threats of transformation. But also, more importantly and simultaneously, this chapter highlights the real-time transformation of the field by Palestinian clinicians who wilfully enact and materialize the promise of mutation, and indeed liberation, across Palestine. To map out the counter-revolutionary forces that attempt to upset the life-affirming mutation happening in Palestine, I will use work that my partner and co-author, Stephen Sheehi and myself outline in our book, Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2022). Importantly, our work and book utilizes a decolonial feminist solidarity building approach to map out, discuss and platform the work of our Palestinian colleagues, not as they are interpolated by and through settler colonial logic. Rather, we approach Palestinian clinicians through the understanding of them, following Sara Ahmed, as ‘willful subjects’.
Page rangepp. 245–262
Print length18 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Media1 illustration
Contributors

Lara Sheehi

(author)
Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at George Washington University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7827-3477

Lara Sheehi, PsyD (she/her), who gave the sixteenth Hurndall Memorial Lecture in 2021, is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the George Washington University’s Professional Psychology Program. She teaches decolonial, liberatory and anti-oppressive theories and approaches to clinical treatment, case conceptualisation, and community consultation. She is the president-elect of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (APA Division 39), and the Chair of the Teachers’ Academy of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She is co-editor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality and co-editor of Counterspace in Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society. Lara is on the advisory board to the USA–Palestine Mental Health Network and Psychoanalysis for Pride. She is co-author with Stephen Sheehi of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (2022).

References
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