The Critical and Clinical Initiative is an online collective interested in putting clinical problems under a critical lens while opening up critical analysis to its clinical dimensions. We are happy to announce two events for the last quarter of 2023.
War of Worlds, Worlds of War: Thoughts of Gaza far from Gaza
In this free public lecture, Dr. Soumyabrata Choudhury will examine the question of war that governs much of the current discussion around Israel and Palestine: does the State of Israel merely fight a war of self defence or in claiming to do so it inflicts another war, a war on the world that is Palestine, exactly when it reduces Palestine to the murder and destitution of life in Gaza? He’ll try to distinguish between the level of “life” which is an object of humanitarian care — and hence also of inhuman brutalisation— and that of “world”, which is an active appearing of a political subject — and hence the target of a mode of war which seeks to make all world and all politics disappear.
Social Diagnosis of Psychic Symptoms: Depression. Alienation, Melancholy (DAM)
This paid course comprising six lectures by Dr. Soumick De will explore depression. Depression is a symptom, but of what? We will develop the argument that depression is a symptom of a certain crisis of the self within contemporary society which values freedom above everything else. Further, depression indicates a type of society that systematically refuses conflict. The primary objective of these lectures would be to examine the validity of the following argument: The psychic dysfunction called depression is a symptom of a society of emancipation without conflict.
Power, Knowledge, Psychotherapy: An Introduction to Critical Thinking
Over the course of this 90-minute session, Dr. Soumick De will discuss how freedom, transformation and resistance constitute the backbone of critical thinking. In addition, we will dwell on the resistance to critical thinking particularly in the domain of psychology-psychiatry-psychotherapy, which despite the 'biopsychosocial' model, continue to oppose the ‘psychological’ against the ‘social’. There is no fee for participation in this session.