Psychoanalysis Beyond the Human

It is commonly assumed that the object of psychoanalysis is the uniquely human unconscious; that the work of analysis and its transformative potential lie in the quality of the human relationship between patient and therapist which constitutes its grounds. Yet the practice of psychoanalysis – and of talk therapies more generally – have evolved considerably since Freud’s time. A global-level mental health crisis, alongside a crisis in available psychological support services, have prompted the widespread proliferation of ‘more than human’ modes of clinical intervention. This movement includes modalities such as AI-generated therapeutic support, robotic animals, SMS-based therapies, virtual therapies and telehealth, and the use of a wide range of live animals in therapeutic practices, known as Animal-Assisted Therapies. At the same time, psychoanalytic insights initially formulated with human patients in mind are being repurposed in psychotherapeutic interventions with animals, treating everything from recurring traumatic nightmares to obsessive-compulsive behaviours. Running parallel to these shifts is a steadily growing body of research which overwhelmingly confirms that understandings of animal mind, both in the natural sciences and the humanities, have significantly under-estimated the complexity and capabilities of nonhuman psychologies. Although historically recent these interventions provoke significant questions about the presumed centrality of the human to the psychoanalytic enterprise – as both clinician and patient. This symposium responds to this novel landscape through an examination of spaces of interspecies encounter, exploring the psychic contours of how human and animal minds meet. 

This symposium took place on 11 November and was curated by Dr. Jacqueline Dalziell with the support of the School of History and Philosophy of Science and the Sydney Environment Institute.

Speakers

Associate Professor Sigi Jöttkandt

Sigi Jöttkandt is an Associate Professor in English at UNSW. She is author of Acting Beautifully: Henry James and the Ethical Aesthetic (2005), First Love: A Phenomenology of the One (2010) and The Nabokov Effect: Reading in the Endgame (2024), and numerous articles working at the intersection of literature, psychoanalysis and philosophy. She is Editor of S: Journal of the Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique, and is a founding Director of Open Humanities Press. Sigi will be presenting The Dog and the Poet: Image, Imago, Eidolon. 

Dr Matthew Chrulew

Matthew Chrulew is Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University and editor of the Edinburgh University Press book series, Animalities. He has published extensively on the history and philosophy of ethology, animal psychology, zoo biology, and conservation biology. His recent essays can be found in Theory, Culture & Society and Environmental Humanities, and his short fiction in Westerly and Plutonics. Matthew will be presenting Eugène N. Marais and the Problem of the Animal Psyche, Revisited.

Dr. Muhammad A. Kavesh

Kavesh is Associate Professor in Anthropology and the Director of the South Asia Research Institute at the Australian National University. His forthcoming book, Spies and Other Pigeons is being published by the University of Washington Press. He is also the author of Animal Enthusiasms: Life Beyond Cage and Leash in Rural Pakistan (2021) and co-editor of Nurturing Alternative Futures: Living with Diversity in a More-than-Human World (2024). Muhammad will be presenting Cherished Birds and Avian Speis: Hospitality and Hostility in Multispecies Pakistan.

Abdallah Habib

Abdallah Habib is studying in the four-year Program of Theoretical and Clinical studies at the Australian Centre of Psychoanalysis (ACP), and a member of the Seminar for Contemporary Studies of Freud and Lacan. He is also a practicing Sufi disciple of Al Siddiqiya Al Shazoliyah order. He is a founding member of the ACP cartel “The Others in the Room: On Cross Cultural Transference”, where his research and writing explores the intersections between Sufi thought and Lacanian psychoanalysis. In his professional life, Abdallah also works with language: as a journalist, media advisor, and communications specialist. Abdallah will be presenting Sufism, psychoanalysis, and the mystics’ enjoyment. 

Dr. Angela Smith

Angela Smith is a political and environmental geographer whose research investigates how infrastructure, law, and elemental environments shape practices of governance, mobility, and resistance. She is particularly interested in how political authority is exercised and contested through mobility systems, from civil aviation to security regimes. Working across political geography, infrastructure studies, critical theory, and environmental humanities, her research explores the material and discursive dimensions of territorial control, migration, and security—including the unconscious investments and attachments that underpin both repressive state practices and liberatory projects of solidarity and struggle. Angela is a Lecturer in the Environment and Society Group of the School of Humanities and Languages at UNSW. Angela will be presenting on Atmospheric entanglements: thinking politics through air. 

Associate Professor Robert Briggs

Robert Briggs is Associate Professor in the School of Media, Creative Arts & Social Inquiry, Curtin University, Australia. He is author of The Animal-To-Come: Zoopolitics in Deconstruction (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), and Lead Investigator of ‘Living Together: New Approaches to Multispecies Conflict and Coexistence’ (DP240102689), funded by the Australian Research Council. Robert will be presenting on “The Truth Is Always Disturbing” Psychoanalysis and the Question of Apian Desire. 

Professor Joy Damousi

Professor Joy Damousi is Dean of Arts and Director of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Australian Catholic University and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the University of Melbourne. Her recent publications include: The Humanitarians: Child War Refugees and Australian Humanitarianism in a Transnational World, 1919-1975 (Cambridge, 2022); Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia’s Greek Immigrants after World War II and the Greek Civil War (Cambridge 2015); and co-edited with Ruth Balint and Sheila Fitzpatrick, When Migrants Fail to Stay: New Histories on Departures and Migration (Bloomsbury, 2023). 

Organiser

Dr Jacqueline Dalziell

Jacqueline Dalziell is a Lecturer in the School of the History and Philosophy of Science, at the University of Sydney. Previously, she held Postdoctoral Fellowships at UNSW (Environmental Humanities) and Macquarie University (Philosophy) before joining the University of Sydney in 2023. Jacqueline’s scholarship merges contemporary critical theory (STS, feminist) with perspectives from classical social theory (philosophy, psychoanalysis). Her research has been published in journals such as the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy and Australian Feminist Studies. Jacqueline convenes Psychoanalysis at Sydney, a monthly seminar series at USYD.