Erikson Institute Podcasts
Since 2004, the Erikson Institute for Education and Research has brought various professionals and the interested public together for Interdisciplinary Forums on a range of topics. These presentations and discussions continue Erik Erikson’s effort to generate knowledge at the boundaries between clinical psychoanalysis and other disciplines, including history, anthropology and sociology.
We are pleased to offer these Interdisciplinary Forums in the form of podcasts in MP3 audio format that you can easily download to your iPod or MP3 player. You can also listen to the podcast segments through your computer.
Fall Conference: Participatory media and self-representation, Presented on 10/16/11, Ethan Zuckerman
Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and a principal research scientist at MIT's Media Lab. With Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan co-founded the international blogging community Global Voices, which showcases news and opinions from citizen media in over 150 nations and thirty languages. It has become “something much larger and more exciting: a global community of citizen media authors, an advocacy group that works to preserve freedom of speech online, a media development organization that promotes participatory media in developing nations, a vast and distributed translation project, and a crazy set of friends from every corner of the world… a joy to be involved with and one of the projects I'm proudest of.”
Ethan's “day job” is at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where his research focuses on issues of quantitative media analysis, a Media Cloud project, free expression and the digital world, and “whether the internet is leading us to have a wider view of the world, or whether we’re becoming trapped in ‘echo chambers.’” He is addressing this question through experiments that “try to discover how parochial or cosmopolitan the use of the internet is in different communities”. With others, Ethan founded Geekcorps, “a Peace Corps for geeks, and Tripod, “one of the first ‘pure’ dot.com’ companies.” Ethan sits on a number of non-profit Boards, which he considers some of his most important work, blogs at http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog and lives in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts.
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Fall Conference: The (Anti) Social Media: Why Isn't Digital Technology More Democratic? Presented on 10/15/11, Benjamin R. Barber, Ph.D.
Benjamin R. Barber, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Dēmos, president of the international NGO CivWorld at Dēmos and the Interdependence Movement. He is Walt Whitman Professor of Political Science Emeritus, Rutgers University. An internationally renowned political theorist, Dr. Barber brings an abiding concern for democracy and citizenship to issues of politics, globalization, culture and education in America and abroad. He consults regularly with political and civic leaders in the U.S. (President Clinton, Howard Dean) and around the world (Germany, U.K., Libya, Finland, Syria). Full Bio
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Fall Conference 2011 Introduction and Social Media and the Evolution of Consciousness, Presented on 10/15/11, Venessa Miemis
Venessa Miemis is a writer and digital ethnographer, exploring how social media is transforming communication, collaboration, and commerce in a network society. She is currently Executive Director for Contact, a participatory festival that highlights opportunities for new forms of p2p culture, governance, and collective action. Her recent projects include The Future of Facebook, a 6 part video series, and Open Foresight, a methodology for engaging experts and the public to create collaborative visions of the future together. She authors the blog, Emergent by Design.
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Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Societal Trauma and Its Consequences, Presented on 2/12/09, Vamik D. Volkan, M.D.
There are various types of shared catastrophes. Some are from natural causes, such as earthquakes. This seminar focuses on the deliberate actions of an enemy group in the name of large-group identity that leads to massive trauma. The “victimized” group has to deal with six interrelated psychological phenomena: 1) a shared sense of shame and humiliation; 2) a shared sense of survivor guilt; 3) a shared inability to be assertive; 4) a shared identification with the oppressor; 5) a shared difficulty or even inability to mourn; and 6) a shared transgenerational transmission of trauma. The transgenerational transmission of trauma itself initiates long-lasting cultural, political processes, such as “entitlement ideologies” and “chosen traumas” that may have drastic consequences in large-groups and individuals’ lives.
Being in Berlin, 9:30 am - 12:30 pm, Saturday, August 9, 2008
Shmuel Erlich, Ph.D. and Mira Erlich-Ginor
With Edward R. Shapiro, M.D., Medical Director/CEO Austen Riggs Center
In Nazi Germany, psychoanalysis was described as “a Jewish science” and Freud’s books were burned along with others. In July 2007, the International Psychoanalytic Association Congress convened for the first time since the war in the former Nazi capital, Berlin. Shmuel Erlich and Mira Erlich-Ginor held an open, large group forum at this meeting, where attendees (Jewish, German and others) had the opportunity to explore the emotional aspects stirred up by being in Berlin. Hundreds of people participated in the event and described it as the “heart of the Congress”. The Erlichs will examine several aspects of the event, including the passions stirred, the containment of the setting, and the voices present and absent.
Citizenship, Consumerism and Psyche: Identity Politics in an Age of Global Markets, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm, Friday, March 14, 2008
Benjamin R. Barber, Ph.D.
Building on themes explored in depth in Jihad versus McWorld as well as in his new book Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Undermine Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole, Professor Barber’s lecture focuses on the problem of competing identities in contemporary society. These include traditional identity elements related to ethnicity, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation; voluntary understandings of citizenship and a civil society; and commercial constructions based on a consumerist culture. He argues that the latter tend to trump both of the former in a consumerist society. An ethos of infantilization and privatization prevails, and the problematic consequences for democracy are profound.
Katrina: What Kind of Disaster Was It?, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm, Saturday, July 8, 2006
Kai Erikson, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Yale University
Hurricane Katrina peeled away the surface of an important part of the American landscape and offered a rare look at the inner workings of our society. The dimensions of the disaster reveal a critical need and a rare opportunity for social science research. Eminent sociologist Kai Erikson, Ph.D., and a team of scholars are establishing a research agenda around Katrina, attempting to grasp both the human tragedy and the essential knowledge needed for reconstruction and future preparedness. In this Forum held on Saturday, July 8, 2006, Erikson summarized his work in the Gulf States.
Lincoln’s Melancholy, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm, Saturday, June 24, 2006
Joshua Wolf Shenk, essayist and Director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College
In Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, author Joshua Wolf Shenk argues convincingly that the 16th president not only managed his chronic depression, but actually harnessed it to fuel his astonishing success. Lincoln’s private notes on the value of personal and national suffering illuminate his ongoing effort to move beyond what was for him the unattainable goal of personal contentment to the transcendent goal of universal justice. In this Interdisciplinary Forum held on June 24, 2006, Josh Shenk, historian John Demos and psychoanalyst and Riggs Medical Director/CEO Edward Shapiro, M.D. discuss Lincoln’s melancholy.
Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century: Addressing Complexity – A Psychosocial Approach To Thinking About Religion, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm, Saturday, August 5, 2006
A.W. Carr, Ph.D., Dean Emeritus, Westminster Abbey
The demise of religion has in the last two centuries frequently been announced. But religion remains both alive and quite powerful, and the contemporary social sciences have contributed much to understanding and believing. Dr. Carr was, for nine years, Dean of Westminster Abbey. During those years, he presided over many national and royal occasions, including the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, and services around 9/11. In this Forum held on Saturday, August 5, 2006, he used this experience and other studies to argue that religion is more sophisticated than we are sometimes told and requires a sophisticated approach if it is to be understood. Dr Carr’s presentation was followed by a presentations from two members of the Riggs staff, both of whom have some background in theological studies, Jane Tillman, Ph.D., and Richard Ford, Ph.D.
Stigma, 9:30 am - 12:00 pm, Saturday, September 16, 2006
Co-sponsored by the Austen Riggs Alumni Association
Webster’s dictionary defines “stigma” as a scar left by a hot iron, or a mark of shame or discredit. Our society takes aspects of people to “stigmatize” – their color, ethnicity, sexual preference, illness or behavior – in order to separate some from others and to avoid the connections that make all of us human. This conference, which was held on Saturday, 16, focused on the process of stigmatization and the ways in which this social dilemma deprives us of learning and complexity. This podcast is Dr. James Gilligan’s presentation on the 16th.
