A Psychoanalyst came to visit the workshop from the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He told me about this fellowship given to an academic outside the institute and discipline of psychoanalysis. The goal is working with the institute for a year and producing a paper/presentation. This years paper/presentation is coming up and the event is as follows:

Julius Silberger Award Presentation

Wednesday November 4, 2009
08:00PM

THE FETISH GOES TO WAR:
Disavowal and the Family Romance in Modern China

ELLEN SCHATTSCHNEIDER, PhD
2008-2009 Silberger Scholar

Discussant
HUMPHREY MORRIS, MD

During Japan’s long era of overseas military adventurism (c. 1890-1945) the class of ritual figurines known as ningyo (usually translated into English as “dolls”) were often deployed as symbolic doubles of military combatants and victims of war. Ningyo were given as gifts to soldiers and kamikaze pilots, and used to memorialize those who died “in the service of the Emperor.” I provisionally characterize each of these deployments of doll figurines akin to “family romances,” fantasy tableaus of a privileged relationship between an injured person and his or her primary love object (a lover, child or sibling) frozen in time outside of the ebbs and flows of history and everyday life. Under conditions of serious injury, these ritualized scenarios allow for processes of disavowal as well for splittings of the ego. Through these practices, the agonizing repetitions of trauma are transferred or avoided, with varying degrees of success.

References:
1. Freud, Sigmund. Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence. (PEP)
2. Freud, Sigmund. (1909c [1908]). Family romances. SE, 9: 235-241.
3. Schattschneider, Ellen. “The Work of Sacrifice in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: The Enigma of Fascist Aesthetics at Yasukuni Shrine.” The Culture of Japanese Fascism. Ed. Tansman, Alan. Duke University Press, 2009.

For a copy of Dr. Schattschneider’s article “The workshop of Sacrifice in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” as background in advance of the program on November 4 please contact the BPSI Administrative Office.