David Livingstone Smith presents at Analytical Philosophy and Clinical Psychoanalysis conference

On May 26, 2016, David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, presented a paper titled “Beyond Countertransference: Psychoanalytic Ideology and Clinical Oppression” at an international conference on Analytical Philosophy and Clinical Psychoanalysis, which was sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at Indiana University.

In the paper, Smith contends that the psychoanalytic session provides a unique opportunity to study oppression as it occurs in the psychoanalytic session, itself, with the patient being the oppressed and the analyst being the oppressor.

“I think that he psychoanalytic session can be fruitfully regarded as a kind of laboratory for the study of oppression,” he stated.