NCSPP Intensive Study Group: On Perversion

This yearlong study group meets Fridays at the Access Institute in San Francisco from September 5, 2025, to April 17, 2026, from 10 AM to 12 PM.

Course Overview:

In this yearlong course, we will explore the provocative and “polymorphous” psychoanalytic topic of perversion and its manifestations and intersections in the clinic and beyond. The course brings together classical and contemporary psychoanalytic approaches to examine perversion’s complex place in our individual dimensions and broader collective formations.

As we face an urgent time in our contemporary moment in which perversity is increasingly visible in sociopolitical discourse and practice, we will aim to study perversion with the depth and focus it requires as both an intrapsychic and sociocultural phenomenon. The course will survey the shifting definitions and uses of the concept of perversion, from Freud’s foundational metapsychological formulations to its reworkings by figures such as Bollas, Stein, and Grunberger. The course will consider how psychoanalysis has historically pathologized or marginalized certain forms of desire, and how recent interdisciplinary scholarship opens space for more nuanced and liberatory understandings.

Clinically, perversion’s creative-destructive potential will be investigated, drawing from diverse psychoanalytic schools which will include thinking from French psychoanalysis, the British Independent tradition, and American intersubjectivism. We will supplement our inquiry with philosophical and political texts by writers such as Foucault, Bataille, Bersani, and Sharpe. Finally, the course will culminate with a thorough examination of Lacan’s structural reading of perversion, inhabiting its contradictions in clinical and cultural life.

Tuition:

• General Public: $2610 ($500 deposit with registration)
• NCSPP Member Discount: $2030 ($500 deposit with registration)
• NCSPP CMH Member Discount: $1856 ($300 deposit with registration)

For more details about each section of this event, CE, and general information, please visit https://ncspp.org/events/isg-psychoanalysis-perversion

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