The Life of Concepts: Theory Workshop on Free Clinics

Organiser: Lizaveta van Munsteren

We invite members of the Free Clinics Network, as well as clinicians, trainees, and researchers interested in free and low-cost clinical practice, to join a collective theoretical workshop exploring the key concepts that shape free clinic work. Drawing on shared readings and participants' clinical experience, discussions will focus on both socio-political concepts (such as free, care, value, commons, listening, and witnessing) and psychoanalytic concepts (including frame, transference, countertransference, and working through). The discussion will be structured as a collective thinking session rather than paper presentations.

The workshop aims to deepen shared theoretical reflection, clarify how key psychoanalytic and political concepts are reworked in free clinic contexts, and strengthen a common conceptual language without imposing theoretical uniformity. We will create a collective concept map documenting how these key terms are understood, contested, and mobilised in free clinic practice.