Psychoanalysis & Politics: Embracing “Stupidity” and Disruption

I craned my neck trying to see the man lying on the floor with his cello. This was at the end of Day 1 of the Psychoanalysis <> Politics conference, as part of the intervention by Ethan Philbrick. As one of two members of the “chorus,” Ethan’s task was to hold space for the non-intellectual, “stupid,” disruptive. I was delighted that the energy that had built until that point through panel conversations and interviews was being transformed into a musical group experience, a first in over a decade of psychoanalytic conference attendances. Ethan had collected speech fragments from the day and instructed sections of the audience to rhythmically intone them. It was playful and unnerving, like confronting an echo of my own voice.

Emma Lieber’s initial invitation to speak from a place of “stupidity” was meant as a challenge to the dominant discourses, so that no single discourse would rigidify into manifestly representing the “truth.” Following the Lacanian principle that the subject of the unconscious emerges in the speech of the analysand, the conference aspired to create a space for unconscious formations to emerge within the listeners. The notion of “stupidity” as a generative force and as a starting point resonated deeply. It exposed a void in my professional engagement with psychoanalysis.

Clinically, we understand the centrality of creating space for doubt and not knowing. As analysts, we experience daily how difficult and useful it is for our analysands to find their way into uncertainty. In my exploration of the ways in which psychoanalytic praxis can learn from the creative arts, I discovered generative parallels in the work of the South African artist William Kentridge. He, too, champions “stupidity” as one of the cornerstones of his artistic process. Central to his work is fostering a space in which one can dispense with good reason and logic and follow impulses that arise from the body. This entails “giving yourself over to what the activity provokes, and then following these possibilities assiduously, as you would follow the irrational rules of any game” (Kentridge, 2014, p. 107). In Kentridge’s studio, artists from different disciplines collaborate and experiment with this mandate, which often includes movement or dance. This “stupidity,” then, is not ignorance, but a form of embodied knowledge, a “savoir-faire” that taps the kinetic intelligence of the body. The arm’s gesture creates the mark on the page and guides the artist as the work evolves.

Silvia Lippi’s presentation directly engaged the body’s relationship to the social link through her radical and innovative conceptualization of sisterhood. Drawing on her work with women who had experienced sexual trauma and powerfully amplified through the #MeToo movement, Lippi demonstrated how individual struggle can be transformed into a collective experience that allows for expression and engagement, rather than repression. Lippi argues:

Sisterhood is a traumatic community that draws its collective power from the encounter of bodies affected by the symptom: it remains a dispersed multitude, because there is no real factor of unity as in fraternity, gathered around the law of castration, or in the crowd, unified by idealization and love for (and the) leader. This way of including the singular (traumatic) in the sisterly collective (the shared symptom) is politically powerful. (Lippi, 2025, p. 10)

This form of identification transcends the limitations of the imaginary register. As the real is reworked into the symbolic, it creates the potential to destabilize entrenched patriarchal and phallic structures.

The conference culminated in a charged exchange on the second day. The enduring critique of psychoanalysis—its retreat into the internal and dyadic at the expense of social engagement—resurfaced. It was brought to bear on the conference itself, on the organizers, and on the participants. Was it too comfortable? Did it shy away from radical action? While the experience was undeniably uncomfortable, it was intensely thought-provoking and ignited personal questions. At what points did I feel compelled to internally reclaim my “outsider” status, shying away from entering the fray?

The selection of Mladen Dolar’s (2008) “Freud and the Political” as its central text was particularly apt. Dolar reminds us of the inherent “disruptive alterity” of the Freudian drive. He proposes:

relying on the disruptive as an opening, a possibility of another sort of social tie, its transformation. It is not unification and union (…) that is the basis of a political precept, but precisely its crack, its fissure, its impossibility, its untying that present an opening for the political. It is the negative excess, the non-lieu constantly produced by the disruptive nature of the drives, that requires representation and an act. (Dolar, 2008, p. 22)

The conference served as a powerful reminder that the group or mass invariably presents a challenge to the individual subject. This dynamic is compellingly explored in Freud’s strange final work, Moses and Monotheism (Freud, 1939/1964). In this text, Freud portrays Moses as both an insider and an outsider, a figure who introduces a stringent monotheistic faith to a Semitic tribe. When this new religion proves too demanding, the people commit an act of parricide, murdering Moses. This deed is subsequently repressed. However, the unconscious guilt persists, eventually giving rise to a symbolic structure that shapes Jewish religious practices. Freud deliberately avoids simplistic resolutions in this work, leaving many threads untied to highlight the inherent complexities of group dynamics and identification.

Given these complexities, where, as Jacqueline Rose (2004) astutely observes, “Nothing simply belongs” (p. xxvii), my own memory and view of the conference’s charged ending and unanswered questions have transformed. By inviting disruption and resisting premature resolution, the conference mirrored Freud’s own approach in his last work, a testament to the fact that identifying with groups is an ongoing, and often unsettling, process.