This symposium is made up of two parts and focuses on the links between education and psychoanalysis both as a teacher and a researcher. ECER 2022 will be the first session of Network 21 ‘Education and Psychoanalysis’. It is an opportunity to think about these links.

The project of a new Network has been submitted in 2016. First, it was nested in Network ‘Philosophy of Education’. Since 2019, the ‘Education and Psychoanalysis’ group has produced a Special Call for every ECER which led to paper sessions and symposia. After expansion in terms of researchers and teams involved, as well as in the number of countries represented, the group became a new Network.

During this work and at all steps, the question of the link between education and psychoanalysis has been discussed, during exchanges in the EERA councils as well as during exchanges between researchers involved in the building of the new network. How do those researchers relate to psychoanalysis was an important topic during the exchanges, from an epistemological point of view but also in the way psychoanalysis is used in the context of teaching at university. Does the way of linking education and psychoanalysis change depending on national cultures? There are important differences in the developments of psychoanalysis between the German-speaking area, the French-speaking area and the British school of psychoanalysis, for example. How do these differences influence the way education and psychoanalysis are linked in teaching and research?

According to Freud, “Psycho-analysis is the name (1) of a procedure for investigating mental processes which are almost inaccessible in any other way, (2) of a method (based upon that investigation) for the treatment of neurotic disorders and (3) of a collection of psychological information obtained along those lines, which is gradually being accumulated into a new scientific discipline” (1923a [1922], p. 235). Application, transposition of psychoanalysis into education and pedagogy has been the subject of constant debate since Freud (1913, 1925) and the first psychoanalytical pedagogues (Zulliger, Aichhorn, Bernfeld, Pfister, Anna Freud, etc.). In this symposium we want to take up these questions and discuss them from four national perspectives (France, UK, Austria, Germany). These questions will also be an opportunity to make hypotheses about the impact of global realities on the prospects and experiences of educational research, as the ECER call suggests this year.

This symposium follows the perspectives opened by points 1 and 3 of the Freudian definition of psychoanalysis by focusing on research and educational issues in the field of education. The issues that have been debated since the first links made in the early 20th century between education and psychoanalysis will be addressed in the light of current realities in different European countries and the ongoing changes in the field of education.

The first contribution will support the idea that a form of ‘non-comprehension’ can be heuristic in a research process based on psychoanalysis. Based on a clinical research on the circulation of adolescent girls in French urban spaces, the subjective positioning of the researcher, the question of otherness and the stakes of writing the research will be examined in turn.

The second speaker will address the question of the professionalisation of pedagogical practice from psychoanalytical references within the framework of teaching at the University of Vienna and thanks to a device based on the ‘Work Discussion’ (Martha Harris, Tavistock Centre, London).

The third speech is based on research carried out in a juvenile detention centre in Germany to show the interest of action and research methodologies in the German-speaking world (‘Tiefenhermeneutik’ and ‘Szenisches Verstehen’) which can be compared with French or Italian approaches.

Benjamin, W. (1933). Erfahrung und Armut. In Die Welt im Wort. Freud, S. (1913). Geleitwort. In O. Pfister, Die Psychoanalytische Methode. Leipzig und Berlin: Klinkhardt. Freud, S. (1925) Preface to Aichhorn's Verwahrloste Jugend In August Aichhorn, Verwahrloste Jugend, 5-6, Leipzig Vienna and Zurich: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag. Freud, S. (1923a [1922]). Two encyclopaedia articles. Psycho-analysis. SE, 18, 234–255. Harris, M. (1977). The Tavistock Training and Philosophy. London: Routledge. Lorenzer, A. (1974). Die Wahrheit der psychoanalytischen Erkenntnis. Ein historisch-materialistischer Entwurf. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag.