For tender translation: An Encounter Between Plato and Ferenczi | April 27, 2024

For tender translation: An Encounter Between Plato and Ferenczi

Presenter: John Tavares | Discussant: Darren Thompson

_{Art Credits: Artist: Raphael | Title: The School of Athens  |  1511  |  Fresco} 

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“He whom loves touches not walks in darkness.”
Plato, The Symposium

Relying on concepts from Ferenczi’s 1932 paper on the Confusion of Tongues, John’s paper explores how the analytic enterprise consists of a metaphorical translation of passionately disrupted experience into tender, integrated terms, all in the here and now analytic moment.

To structure this exploration while shining a light on the psychoanalytic value of Classical ideas, the paper playfully meanders through Plato’s Symposium, whose principal themes of virtuous love, regression to oneness and confrontation with lack provide a rubric for key aspects of the psychoanalytic process.

An extended clinical case presentation is used to highlight the themes in the Platonic dialogue while ideas from Ferenczi’s contributions to clinical psychoanalysis are linked throughout.

John Tavares is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst member of the Western Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He currently works in private practice and shared psychiatric care in Vancouver, British Columbia and provides didactic teaching and clinical supervision in his role as Clinical Assistant Professor at UBC. He is an active member of the editorial board of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis.

Darren Thompson is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, a member of the Western Canada Psychoanalytic Society & Institute and the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society & Institute, and he has a private practice in Vancouver, BC.

After this presentation, participants can expect to:

1.  Review core aspects of Ferenczi trauma theory and consider translation as a metaphor for the work of traumatic processing.
2. Appreciate the value of Platonic ideas in the understanding of the psychoanalytic situation
3. Recognize the centrality of erotics and the complexity of its management in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

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