Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies
Friday 15th February 2013
Open Seminar (Southend Campus)
‘Work in the Mind and the Mind in Work ‘ (Michael Scott, Adult Psychotherapist, NEPFT & Honorary Senior Lecturer, CPS)
Psychoanalysis has long held the concept of work in mind, Freud famously referred to the process of Civilisation as being predicated on a “compulsion to work and a renunciation of instincts” (Freud 1930). One of the functions of a modern society is to understand and construct Organizations that not only are effective in terms of carrying out work but that also allow and encourage people to develop their full human potential (de Board1978). In this presentation I shall be talking about my interest in work, the organisation of work and what it means to work in an organisation. It is an exploration not only of the actual process of work and why we choose to do it, or not, but how work might be understood as an internal process, a concept in the mind and a part of one’s own inner world that we all carry with us. The seminar is offered as a direct precursor to a Group Relations Conference on the same theme and will therefore be of interest to students who will be attending the conference as part of their programme at the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies University of Essex. It may also be of interest to anyone wishing to further and deepen their understanding of the work they have chosen to do and their relationship to it.
Michael Scott is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, where he teaches Psychoanalysis as an academic subject and is Director of the 2013 Group Relations Conference ‘Work in the Mind and the Mind in Work’ to be held from 22 – 24 February. He is also an Adult Psychotherapist with the North Essex Partnership Foundation Trust (NEPFT).
The Open Seminars all take place in room GB.3.46. (Lecture Room 2) from 5.00 – 6.30pm. All Welcome
T 01206 873640 E cpsadmin@essex.ac.uk www.essex.ac.uk/cps