2021 Ethics Series | Seminar 1: Consenting and Assenting to Psychoanalytic Work | May 15

The moment is opportune for a renewed look at what we understand about patient consent to treatment. Until recently, little reference to informed consent could be found in the literature as though it has never really been a preoccupation for psychoanalytic practitioners. Yet, several post-Freudian authors offer reasons to suppose the risk of misunderstandings about consent. In fact, the very discovery of transference, replete with unrequited infantile wishes, implies that at some level, at some moment, in every psychoanalytic treatment, there will be moments when “consent” to some extent will vacillate. A distinction, justifiable on etymological and intersubjective grounds, is made between patients’ consent as a cognitive, somewhat passive, acceptance and patients’ assent as an arduous, conflicted, partial disagreement with the symbolically limiting details of analytic work. It is in the discovery and working through of unexpected unconscious responses to aspects of the analytic setting and to the analyst that patients become “informed” of the unique risks as well as the benefits to their existing psychic equilibrium of the process. Instead of a static and unitary contractual event, informed consent in psychoanalysis is more properly conceived as a multi-layered, repetitively posed, and necessarily ambivalent process of good enough assenting over time.
In this seminar Allanah Furlong will elaborate on the various elements discussed in her paper: Consenting and Assenting to Psychoanalytic Work, and will illustrate with a clinical example. Participants are encouraged to contribute with vignettes from their own clinical practices.

Photo Credits: Pool of Reflection | Richard M. Markus| 2011 Oct 16 |Inkjet on Archival Rag-15”x20”

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Allannah Furlong, Ph.D., FIPA. Allannah Furlong is a PhD psychologist in full time private practice, and a member as well as a former president of the Société psychanalytique de Montréal. She is a former member of the North American Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. She has written about many aspects of the psychoanalytic frame. She has also published on trauma and temporality in lovesickness and dehumanization as a shield and defense against our helpless openness to the other. The latter essay was awarded the 2013 JAPA prize for an original or significant contribution to the psychoanalytic literature. Her most recent area of study is free will and unconscious choice.

Learning Objectives:
At the end of this seminar participants will be able to:

1.  Be aware of the underdeveloped theorization of consent in psychoanalytic work.
2. Realise the importance of developing a psychoanalytically-informed process of consent.
3. Develop tolerance for unexpected regressions in consent during psychoanalytic therapy.
4. Be able to take into account the therapist’s role in triggering crises of consent.

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Format: Theoretical discussion and clinical vignettes. Allanah Furlong will elaborate on the various elements discussed in her paper: Consenting and Assenting to Psychoanalytic Work, and will illustrate with a clinical example. Participants are encouraged to contribute with vignettes from their own clinical practices.

Registration is closed.
Please email info@wcpsi.digitalswan.com for late registrations.

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