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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

ECPS Psychotherapy course 2, on Oedipus: seeing Freud's model as the expression within his culture of a universal challenge, that of entering into a triadic world of desire, jealousy, love and hatred. #oedipus #freud enfieldcounselling.co.uk/training/

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

ECPS Supervision course. Aim of #supervision should be to increase supervisee's capacity for insight and analytic attitude, rather than supervisor self-gratification. Gee, H. (1996) Developing insight through supervision #psychoanalysis bit.ly/47pXBqn

bit.ly

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Teaching #Freud 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle'. Repeating trauma to find resolution makes sense: see #Winnicott 'Fear of Breakdown'. While a biological #deathdrive makes less sense, there is comfort in seeing death as universally inevitable, as well as individual: #JacquelineRose 'The Plague'.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Visited Vaison-la-Romaine and walked around the remains of the Roman town. Thought about those people who walked these streets 2,000 years ago and wondered who would walk around the ruins of our civilisation, whether in 2,000 years or just in 20? #AI #singularity www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Preparing to teach ECPS online supervision course bit.ly/4xYUxgo. Initial theme 'teach or treat', Leader, D (2010) 'Some Thoughts on Supervision', echoes clinical link between interpretation and relationship, Segal, H. (1987) 'What is therapeutic and counter therapeutic in psychoanalysis'

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Psychoanalytic projection similar to #neuroscience predictive processing. Projection evacuates undesired elements and predictive processing reduces surprises. Both aiming at homeostasis. Stänicke, E et al (2026) Freud’s Model of the Mind Within a Predictive Processing...Paradigm. Entropy 2026, 28

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Your AI Is Not a Tool Awais Aftab on how seeing AI as a tool misses the point, it is an environment that shapes how we see the world and relate to eachother. McLuhan's 'the medium is the message' on steroids. open.substack.com/pub/theconvi...

open.substack.com

Your AI Is Not a Tool

The Convivial Society: Vol. 7, No. 5

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Interesting angle from Oz: while success of the ban with under 16s is limited, there may be positive outcomes in raising awareness amongst parents. theconversation.com/is-australia...

theconversation.com

Is Australia’s social media ban for under 16s working?

Adolescent health expert Susan Sawyer talks to The Conversation Weekly podcast, six months on from Australia’s social media ban for under 16-year-olds.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

open.substack.com/pub/elliotki... These are, indeed, dark days for the US. A darkness that is gaining ground in Europe, too.

open.substack.com

A Disgrace on D-Day

An Ominous Speech on Hallowed Ground

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Akhter: 'Finally, during old age, as one approaches death, a deep and post-ambivalent view of the world that one has lived in and is about to leave needs to be developed for this final transition to be smooth.'

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Delivering seminar tomorrow on object constancy, based on 1994 paper by Salman Akhtar 'Object constancy and adult psychopathology'. Useful discussion on links between difficulties in rapprochement subphase, and narcissistic and borderline personality structures.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

A dialectical idea. That AI includes the seeds of its own limits. AI trawls the output of our civilisation to supply its raw material, yet to the degree that it is replacing our civilisational output with slop, it is creating a limit to its own creativity. www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-so...

theideasletter.org

The Social Edge of Intelligence - The Ideas Letter

Simons challenges the dominant story of AI-driven efficiency, arguing that the intelligence powering today’s systems is built from accumulated human interaction. As organizations automate work and off...

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David Wearing @davidwearing.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

There'll be scenes like this (and much worse) up and down the UK if Reform get into government and start acting out their Send Them Back fantasies. A thousand acts of sadism carried out by malevolent racist thugs employed and empowered by the state. Some of you will be safe. Many of us won't.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Last ECPS Psychoanalytic Film Club, Haneke's fascinating The White Ribbon, themes: the uncanny, the return of the repressed, fascism. As with a therapy session, the film doesn't include answers. But sometimes we shouldn't look for answers, instead allow ourselves to be transformed by an experience.

Uncanny sense of threat from group of children

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Took part as a member in the first CityLit meeting of my Nietzsche reading group. Great group of people, with interesting contributions. I've known nothing about Nietzsche, so good to continue exploring links between psychoanalysis and continental philosophy.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Interesting reflections on a significant contemporary theorist

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

This over-valuing of possibly super intelligent machines and the uploading of human entities, also misses out the meaning given to life by being embodied, with its consequent emotional richness. Rationality without embodied emotion is a very thin existence.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

'Angels in the nursery (2005)', Lieberman et al on possible benign childhood experiences that the traumatised child can draw upon when they become a parent. Interrupting intergenerational cycles of maltreatment. As important as Fraiberg's 'Ghosts'. Good to end the term with a hopeful message.

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Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 19/03/2025

Ego defences displayed here include rationalisation, splitting, denial, and projection.

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Prof. James Davies @drjamesdaviesbskys.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

"Of the scores of people I spoke to... all perceived their lives to be better off thanks to an [ADHD] diagnosis. [And yet, since] the diagnosis, almost all had left their job, dropped out of education & lost many old friends. Several were housebound". www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

theguardian.com

The number of people with chronic conditions is soaring. Are we less healthy than we used to be – or overdiagnosing illness?

Are ordinary life experiences, bodily imperfections and normal differences being unnecessarily pathologised? One doctor argues just that

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

One of the many useful insights in this article: 'Johnstone prefers to conceptualise mental health problems as survival strategies rather than brain disorders.' Not to ignore real suffering, but many MH 'symptoms' involve attempts to solve an underlying dilemma or conflict.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

From Christina Emanuel. In 'An Accidental Pokemon Expert' (2015), she encourages us to see the individual's subjective experience within autism.

Extract from Christina Emanuel (2015) 'An Accidental Pokemon Expert'

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Prof. James Davies @drjamesdaviesbskys.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) reports that nearly a quarter of the UK population now suffers 'material deprivation' (being unable to properly heat their homes or feed their families).... And we wonder why mental & emotional anguish escalates....

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Psychoanalysis and Politics @psapol-org.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Dreams under fascism, and paralysis:

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

3/ Tom Shakespeare: 'All of us will grow weary and die. True inclusion is to value people equally, regardless of their abilities. Happiness comes from acceptance of frailties.' aeon.co/essays/i-hur...

aeon.co

I hurt therefore I am: a new approach to our shared vulnerability | Aeon Essays

We should be able to acknowledge that disabilities can cause pain and suffering without disabled people feeling dehumanised

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

2/ Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor: conversation about living in this society with bodies that have 'diverse characteristiccs and shared needs' youtu.be/R_N84BffPcM

youtu.be

Examined Life Judith Butler & Sunaura Taylor 720p avi

YouTube video by Christopher Lee

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

1/ Pamela Bartram (Melancholia, Mourning, Love. 2013): Therapy with disabled adults/parents of a disabled child, disability can bring loss of ego ideal and consequent harsh superego. If melancholia can turn to mourning, then Britton's 'Rueful humour' and an acceptance of impermanence can emerge.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

2/ Alleyne warns we need to work sensitively with the associated historical & present-day narcissistic wounds, which even 'small' hurts can reopen. Important, though, not to see all negatives as external to the self. Need to recognise role of shame, as well as presence of resilience.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Next seminar: Aileen Alleyne 2007 The internal oppressor. External oppression leading to an inhibiting adaptive false self. Alleyne sees this as a specific structure, different to internalised oppression, the latter being internalisation of the oppressor's values.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Of course, I am responsible for my feelings, these are my judgements or desires, but I also need to be curious - why am I feeling this with this person and at this time? What analytic third are we co-creating and what might this tell me about them. Including if I am feeling cold and uncaring.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

I'm not sure that one can ever be free of being judgemental, nor of having memory or desire. The psychoanalytic task is to be aware of how these arise in response to the other, how much my reactions are intended by the other, and what their function is for them.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Raphael-Leff's 'Absolute hospitality and the imagined baby' (2020) provided a good start to a term on human development. Our beginnings lie in the body and mind of the mother. Raphael-Leff also reminds us that a degree of maternal ambivalence is to be expected.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

Awais Aftab brings his usual clear thinking and compassion to the complex and non-determining relationship between biological sex and gender identity.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

One of The American Psychoanalyst's top stories for 2024 is this useful and well-written piece by Lily Meyersohn... Revisiting Freud’s “Discrediting” open.substack.com/pub/american...

open.substack.com

Revisiting Freud’s “Discrediting”

Frederick Crews has died. Let’s lay his views on psychoanalysis to rest.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

Another thoughtful post by Awais Aftab, this about risk and iatrogenic harm. open.substack.com/pub/awaisaft...

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

A great thread with a insight that continues to be challenging; but without this insight much of human life remains obscure.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Thanks for the reminder of Fairbairn. And, of course, this trauma may lead the child to believe that its own love is toxic and that this is the reason that it is not loved.

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Thanks for sharing these (and other) images.

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BiteSize Therapy @bitesizetherapy.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

It is odd that so many people see psychoanalytic therapy as an endless, intellectual rehashing of one’s childhood experiences when, in fact, one of its core assumptions concerns the emotional power of the here-and-now therapeutic relationship. - Nancy McWilliams

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Frédéric Tordo, PhD @frederictordo.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

"The construction of the object leads retroactively to the construction of the drive, which constructs the object" (André Green, 2000).

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Last seminar for the term. Heidi Keller's paper encourages us to broaden our often culturally-bound understanding of attachment theory.

Article by Heidi Keller seeing how attachment may vary between cultures

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Judith Beyer @judithbeyer.bsky.social · 07/12/2023

🧵 Yesterday was Frantz Fanon's death anniversary (6 Dec 1961). I want to credit what usually gets little attention: the fact that he was a psychoanalyst and a psychiatrist. And that his critique of colonialism can only be understood as being build from his clinical experience...

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

In the UK the legacy of colonialism runs deep, in our culture and social fabric, distorting the lives of the descendents of both the colonisers and the colonised. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVT0...

youtube.com

Legacies of Colonialism – Lennox Thomas

YouTube video by Rethinking Existentialism

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Geoff Ferguson @geoff75.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Haneke's The White Ribbon, set before WW1. A feeling of threat throughout the film, the uncanny sense of the return of the repressed. In this case, the return of the adult's cruelty towards their children. Do the children enact the violence that erupts in the bucolic village? We're not told.

A group of silent children outside a window, looking back at the observer.

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