Psychoanalysis Culture and Religion: Times of Conspiracy Theories & Fake News

Co-organised by St Mary's University and the Association for Psychosocial Studies.

We live in a time that is characterised by increasing political polarisation, fake news, conspiracy theories and other forms of extremism. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram are often characterised by misogyny, sexism and racism and as lacking in empathy, compassion and love.

This seminar will explore what role psychoanalysis in combination with religion can play in analysing such phenomena, as well as finding possible solutions for them. Recent political developments, such as the Trump presidency, have been credited with an increase in political paranoia and conspiracy theories have spread far and wide on the internet. Contemporary forms of conspiracy thinking, such as QAnon, have led to the establishment of communities which, to a degree, have quasi-religious characteristics.

This seminar asks how our contemporary age can be analysed through the prism of post-Freudian psychoanalysis and religious studies. Do we need a new form of spirituality? What can a psychoanalytic understanding of religion offer in analysing the phenomena described above? What can psychoanalysis and religion learn from each other in the present moment? How do religious understandings of hope, love and compassion figure in times of seeming uncertainty, mistrust and fantasies?

Speakers

• Peter Tyler (St Mary’s University): Dionysos or the Crucified One?: Freud, Nietzsche, Jung and the Return of the Repressed in Society
• Mark Murphy (St Mary’s University): Freud, Lacan and their Approach to the “Mystical”
• Anthony Faramelli (Goldsmiths): The Alt-Right and Religion: The Death Drive in American Evangelicalism