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I want to write something that can act as a counterpoint, or extension, to the discussion at the ACP conference. I had hoped, given the title, for new and exciting perspectives to longstanding psychoanalytic ideas but felt instead our radical and thought-provoking underpinnings under pressure to be ‘screwed’ and ‘re-screwed’ to make them perhaps easier to bolt on to contemporary culture.
We had been provided with a sort of mezze of different topics; five presentations over the course of one day, which seemed a lot to take in with little room for digestion and working over. Had there been an underlying anxiety about the dangers of giving more space for real thought? Was there a fear of where we might end up?
The fact that ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’ (EDI) has been higher on the agenda in almost all areas of contemporary life, installed in institutions and workplaces across Western society, tells us that we need close monitoring and reminding to treat our fellow humans equally. It cannot be taken for granted. We live with an unequal, excluding and pathologising past and present: a part of ourselves and society that likes splitting and certainty, neat boxes and order and hates difference; a part that never wants to be on the outside, that likes to export badness and then wash hands of it – EDI mandates or not.
The conference opened with ‘“I’m a pervert, aren’t I?” Addressing the trauma of growing up queer’, by Ian Paton, which aimed to shine light on the experience of growing up feeling sexually different to, and at odds with, the mainstream. It was a paper that combined theory with clinical material and personal experiences. It asked why psychoanalytic treatment often struggles to support our ‘queer’ patients and why there is still a reluctance to recognise and tackle head-on homophobia within the psychoanalytic community. Composite case studies were used to give snapshots of the experience of being gay or sexually different from the proposed norm and the struggl