SAVE THE DATE!

The Academy for the Psychoanalytic Arts presents.....

"Breaking the Silence: the Story of Confidentiality in the Age of Information, Twitter and Surveillance"

 When:  Sunday, November 22, 2015 from 1:00 - 4:30

Where: Madonna University, room 1000, Main Building, 4221 Levan Rd., Livonia, MI

(No charge, all welcome)

What:  Symposium and Open Discussion (with light refreshments)

Who:   Patrick Kavanaugh, Ph.D.

Program Description:  Traditionally, a strict and absolute confidentiality has been the cornerstone of the psychotherapeutic endeavor. Confidentiality, however, is an idea or construct that is periodically rewritten and revised as a function of the ever-changing historical and cultural times. The principles underlying the culture’s view of privacy and confidentiality are not timeless, natural, universal, or unchanging, as if existing outside of their historical-political moment or community. Contemporary understandings of privacy and confidentiality must be understood in the cultural and historical context of our times. And the times are changing profoundly and irreversibly: The Patriot Act and terrorism; the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance program; and, the mass school, theatre, and church shootings have led to increased “invasions of privacy” in the larger culture and increased “erosions of confidentiality” in the analytic culture.   The psychological community is as deeply affected by as it is implicated in the complex socio-cultural processes and institutional discourses involved in rewriting the recent revisions of privacy and confidentiality. Breaking the silence surrounding the story of confidentiality is, hopefully, the beginnings of an extended conversation in the psychological community that raises, but is not limited to, such questions as: How have the concepts of privacy and confidentiality traditionally functioned in our society? What purposes did they serve? How are the concepts of privacy and confidentiality currently being rewritten and what purposes do they serve in the current age of information, twitter and surveillance?  Have privacy and confidentiality become subordinated to the socio-political ideologies and power alliances of our historical and political moment?

Patrick B. Kavanaugh, Ph.D. is the founding president of the Academy for the Psychoanalytic Arts, a former president of the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education, and a former president of the Michigan Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology. Over the past forty-five years, he has been privileged to work with people and madness on various in-patient units, day treatment programs and in his private practice. His experiences have included serving as the clinical director of an adult in-patient unit of an inner city state hospital, the clinical director of a community mental health day treatment program, and a member of the core teaching and supervising faculties at various academic institutions, psychoanalytic programs, and teaching hospitals in the Detroit metropolitan area.

A self-described skeptical phenomenalist, Dr. Kavanaugh has spent his career thinking about, discussing, and presenting on psychoanalytic theory and discourse as situated in philosophy, the humanities and the arts in contradistinction to biology, medicine and the natural sciences. He has presented and published on psychoanalytic epistemology, theory, ethics, education, and practice in local, national, and international forums. His interests include the inseparable relationship between culture, psychoanalysis and the anthropic sciences; madness, social construction, and the analytic discourse; and, the industrialization and commercialization of the mental health professions His recent book, Stories From the Bog: On Madness, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis (2012, Rodopi, NL) was published through Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies, an international scholarly book series devoted to all aspects of psychoanalytic inquiry.

Questions?  Contact:  Bethann Kalt, Ph.D.  bethann933@aol.com or 248-626-5600