Thursday, January 18th, 2024
8:00PM – 9:30PM
The Analyst’s Head Cinema:Imagistic Reverie & The Punctum of Memory
A haunting image. A moving scene. A waking dream. This presentation elucidates the concept of imagistic reverie—the mental and visual “stuff” that populates our minds within and outside of the analytic hours. Some images leak out as quickly as they arrive and others linger, demanding recognition. How do we make sense of our head cinema?
Inspired by the phenomenon of patients sharing childhood photographs in treatment, and musing on Barthes’ concept of the photograph’s punctum, I will examine a few of my own reveries, which arose in my work with queer, trans and non-binary patients. I consider how reverie may serve as a portal to the Otherness of early self-experience, which had to be dissociated in the face of traumatic negation and nonrecognition by the cis/heteronormative social order.
If, in the private space of our mind’s eye, we allow ourselves to see the queer child, to let them hover in imagistic reverie, there is an invitation for recognition, in afterwardsness. I wonder: Can the eye listen in ways that the ear cannot?
Location:
71 W 23rd St., Ste. 1400, New York, NY 10010
online option
(Meeting link will be e-mailed to registered participants on the day of the event)
Charlotte Curtis, LCSW is a psychoanalyst and clinical social worker in private practice in New York City. She completed her analytic training at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity (IPSS) and is also a graduate of the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center and the Smith College School for Social Work. Charlotte has extensive experience working with the lgbtq+ community and with artists and creative professionals. Her clinical interests include trauma, mourning and identity. She is currently on faculty at IPSS and the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, both in NYC.
Ken Corbett, Ph.D, Professor New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is the author of “Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities,” and “A Murder Over a Girl: Justice, Gender, Junior High.”
1.5 Continuing Education Credits for Social Workers & LMHC’s