"Wild Eduction: See under Unsolved Problems

Presenter Deborah Britzman

Discussant Marsha Hewitt

Open to members, guests, TIP candidates, and ATPPP trainees

The paper discusses Freud's evolving theories on the nature of education (of children and adults, of patients and analysts, of institutes and schools) and argues for its relevance today. It asks what psychoanalysis may mean to the field of contemporary education and whether education can take flight with free association. The argument is that education, as a concept, practice, relation, history, and promise, is caught in the wagers of love, knowledge, and authority while its mode of transmission is affected by infantile theories and the conflict between the pleasure and reality principles. Deborah Britzman shows how Freud's evolving theories of the mind carry education over to the work of interpreting reality and coming to terms with representing internal and external aggression. She also asks why conceptualizations of education as an unsolved problem permit new learning dispositions. The paper is drawn from her new book, Freud and Education, in press with Routledge.