Spring Speaker Series 2010 The Radical Potential of Psychotherapy: The Psychological Equivalent to Discovering Fire Carol Gilligan, Ph.D.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Spring Speaker Series 2010
The Radical Potential of Psychotherapy: The Psychological Equivalent to Discovering Fire
Carol Gilligan, Ph.D.

The logic of the psyche is an associative logic—the logic of dreams, poetry, and memory. But the power of free association to undo dissociation is at once liberating and inflammatory. In this presentation, internationally acclaimed psychologist, feminist, ethicist and prolific writer Carol Gilligan will consider the tensions between an associative method, grounded in love and freedom, and theoretical frameworks that reinforce cultural prohibitions on knowing and speaking. As elucidated by Dr. Gilligan, these are tensions that have played out in the history of psychoanalysis and continue to beset the talking/listening cure. Her inquiry will raise the question as to whether Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor was right in claiming that, in the end, people will choose miracle, mystery, and authority over the challenges of love and freedom. Dr. Gilligan will discuss these and other probing ideas from her newest book, The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy’s Future.
  Psychologist, professor, and novelist, Carol Gilligan, Ph.D., was named by Time magazine as 1 of the 25 most influential Americans. Harvard University Press describes her 1982 book, In a Different Voice, as "the little book that started a revolution." Her first novel, Kyra, published in January 2008, was reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle as "a rare thing: an engrossing, deeply emotional, thinking person's love story." Her 1992 coauthored book, Meeting at the Crossroads, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In 2002, The Birth of Pleasure was praised by the Times Literary Supplement as a "thrilling new paradigm" and characterized by National Public Radio as the work of a psychologist who writes like a novelist.
  As a Harvard faculty member, she held the university's first chair in gender studies. She received a Senior Research Scholar Award from the Spencer Foundation, a Grawemeyer Award for her contributions to education, and a Heinz Award for her contributions to understanding the human condition. Her recent work includes a critically acclaimed play, coauthored with her son Jonathan and inspired by The Scarlet Letter. Her latest book, coauthored with NYU law professor David Richards, titled The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy's Future, was published in 2009 by Cambridge University Press. She is currently a University Professor at New York University.

Saturday, March 27, 2010
Time: 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Location: Berkeley Repertory Theatre: Roda Theatre
2025 Addison Street, Berkeley
(between Shattuck and Martin Luther King Jr. Way)
Parking in pay lot down the block
CE: 3 Units (MFT, LCSW approved; submitted to MCEPAA for approval)