NW 21: Charting the Way Forward between Beliefs and Uncertainty

Network
NW 21 Education and Psychoanalysis

Title
Charting the Way Forward between Beliefs and Uncertainty

Abstract
ECER 2025 theme could be an opportunity to focus on key issues linking Education and Psychoanalysis such as the threat of ideological injunctions; the necessity to think how a researcher is related to his research object or the importance of creating devices that allow the study of unconscious phenomena at stake in educational situations.

Psychoanalysis has been contested all around the world over the last decade, probably because its approach of the human subject is at the heart of those debates. Taking into account the complexity of the subject seems to be crucial to enlight contemporary phenomena in Education.

The Call
Quoting Le Bon (1895), Freud wrote in Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (1921) that “groups have never thirsted after truth”. Freud's approach did not seek a truth by formulating hypotheses and constructing new certainties. Rather, his discoveries led him to question previous certainties. The question of uncertainty is not new to psychoanalysis, even if it was recently renewed in this field, linked to the contemporary times marked by uncertainty. For Winnicott, the ‘area of illusion’ (1971) is marked by the uncertainty of the boundaries between I and the other, something inherent in the emerging play and creativity. When Bion discovered the concept of ‘negative capability’ (1970, 327) in a letter from Keats, he incorporated words that he had no doubt already carried within him.  The challenge today could be charting the way forward between building beliefs and the emergence of new uncertainties in Education.

To contribute to a better understanding of the contemporary and future world of education, we propose an opportunity to share some research focusing on what is at stake, at a conscious and unconscious level, during the educational relationship.

Presentation formats in Network 21 are Posters, Papers, Long papers, Symposia, Research Workshops, preferably falling within one of the following themes:

– Theme 1: In the field of education and training, as in other ‘professions of the link’, recourse to an injunctive discourse woven from ‘good practice’ and ‘benevolence’ and often backed up by ‘evidence-based’ seems to become a common practice. But the subjects involved in educational and training practices, whatever their position, often shy away from or resist the discourses that claim to frame their actions and their relationship to their practice. How can we think about the current issues and practices for education that are not subject to injunctive principles set out outside the context of what is happening for the players involved?

– Theme 2: What links the researcher to his research object? What conscious and unconscious relationships to this object precede the research, emerge during exchanges with the subjects we meet, are revealed during the course of the study or during the writing phase?

Proposals in this area will focus on taking account of the researcher's subjectivity during the research and the production of results. The ways of approaching this question vary according to the researcher's theoretical position and may be based on concepts like involvement or counter-transference, without excluding other notions. In all cases, it will be important to show the use that can be made of the reference theories to consider the question of this specific link.

– Theme 3: How can research into educational practices take into account phenomena that are hidden from the subjects consciousness, yet have a strong influence on their interactions? Depending on national characteristics and the history of currents interested in the links between education and psychoanalysis, various clinical research ‘devices’ or ‘apparatus’ have been set up over the years, often evolving in line with the realities encountered in the field. This dimension can be presented and shared through communications or research workshops.

Contact Person(s)
Arnaud Dubois - arnaud.dubois@u-paris.fr
Patrick Geffard - patrick.geffard(at)univ-paris8.fr

References
Bion, W. R. (1970). Attention and interpretation: a scientific approach to insight in psycho-analysis and groups. In The Complete Works of W. R. Bion, vol VI. Routledge.

Datler, W., Müller, B., Finger-Trescher, U. (Hrsg.) (2004). Sie sind wie Novellen zu lesen: Zur Bedeutung von Falldarstellungen in der Psychoanalytischen Pädagogik. (Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Pädagogik, 14). Pychosozial-Verlag.

Devereux, G. (1967). From anxiety to method in the behavioral sciences. Mouton & Co.

Freud, S. (1921/1940). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 18:65-144. Hogarth Press.

Winnicott, D. W., (1971). Playing and Reality. Routledge.