Materiality in the Psychic Encounter (Online Presentation)

[2 CE Credits for Psychoanalysts, Psychologists, and Social Workers]

This presentation explores the interobjective dimension of psychic life through the lens of Fairbairn’s object relations theory, positioning it as an extension to the more traditionally applied intersubjective approaches in psychoanalysis. Building on Fairbairn’s emphasis on the social genesis of the internal object, which is further developed in Kerr’s “Culture as the Bad Object” (2024), the presentation shifts the focus of analysis to the materiality of psychic experience itself. It illustrates that the psyche (or what Fairbairn terms the “endopsychic structure”) is populated not only by internal objects shaped through interpersonal dynamics, but also by cultural and material artefacts that carry the affective charge and social meanings of the political conditions in which they emerge. Through theoretical inquiry and clinical illustration, the presentation demonstrates how worldly objects, such as state documents, can function as containers of psychosocial remembrance, holding (hidden) traces of personal, collective, and ancestral struggle.

Nini Kerr, DPsych, MBACP, FHEA, is a Senior Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of Edinburgh. She is an accredited psychoanalytic practitioner and trainer. She has published extensively in the field of psychosocial studies and won the Good Practice Research Award in the Positive Disruptor category in 2022 in recognition of her sustained achievements in innovating and revitalizing research practices that promote social justice and equality. She has also won the Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme for her project on decolonizing counseling and psychotherapy (2023-24). She is a Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council and serves on the Executive Board of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and the Editorial Board of Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society.

Practitioners and General Public: $40
Students: Free

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