On Friday, September 5th and Saturday September 6th, Psychology Tomorrow Magazine joined hands with The Zurich Lab for some fantastic discussions.
The workshops were led by Jakob Lusensky, a jungian psychoanalyst-in-training with a private practice in Berlin, Germany, and Evangelos Tsempelis, a Jungian Psychoanalyst based in Zurich, Switzerland. Jakob and Evangelos are founding members of The Zurich Lab, a Berlin-based psychoanalysis movement with the goal of challenging the contemporary social and professional constraints in the field of psychology, eliminating labels, and fostering creativity in the art of psychoanalysis.
The 2-hour long session on Friday, September 5th, Psychoanalysis on the Street, held in the serene courtyard garden of Camp David in the East Village, was attended by participants from all walks of life including psychoanalysts, artists, writers, sociologists, and even a few people with no connections to psychology or art.
The discussions, delicately led by Jakob and Evangelos, began with a vivid telling of popular Freud and Jung myths, and progressed through a free-associative discussion of those images, to religion, art, and even several personal stories, no doubt the heart of Psychoanalysis on the Street- fostering an environment in which strangers can reach an impressively quick intimacy with each other.
Saturday, September 6th, The Zurich Lab founders led Crisis and Creativity – A Conversation Among Colleagues at The Rare Gallery in Chelsea. Participants included faculty and students from the psychology departments at Columbia University and NYU, as well as practicing professionals from points all around the NYC area, who engaged in a lively discussion. While they didn’t agree on everything, one universally accepted conclusion was clear at the end: psychoanalysis is an art through which participants will find deeper meaning and greater awareness when therapists are no longer trained and constrained by restrictive rules, labels and diagnoses created by the medical, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries.
Psychology Tomorrow Magazine is already planning a follow-up to this successful weekend collaboration with The Zurich Labs, which is slated to include more workshops in NYC, Berlin, Venice, and Shanghai, and even a live, interactive psychoanalysis experience art exhibition in late 2015.
Stay tuned for your chance to participate!