APsaA provides diverse ways to connect so that everyone can find a place, while protecting the special place of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts.

Excerpt from APsaA’s Community Vision Mission Statement.

Connecting the worlds of academia and psychoanalysis, the University Forum serves as an open venue for an in-depth exploration of a wide range of topics by experts outside of the psychoanalytic realm. This year distinguished scholars and psychoanalysts will examine “The Golden Bowl” by Henry James. The session is chaired by Dr. Hilary J. Beattie with Dr. Susan Griffin and Dr. William Veeder presenting and Dr. Lucy Lafarge discussing the material. Each brings a unique perspective to the exploration of this work. Read on to learn more about the faculty and their relationship with Henry James in their own words.

Hilary J. Beattie I started out as a historian of China but have always been a compulsive consumer of literature, for which my second career as psychologist and psychoanalyst has afforded many opportunities. An interest in the psychology of the Double (as well as my Scottish roots) led me to publish, among other things, several articles on the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, including one on his mutually-enriching literary friendship with Henry James. “The Golden Bowl” amazed me on a first reading over thirty years ago, so I am thrilled at the opportunity to discuss it with this distinguished panel.

Susan M. Griffin As Editor of “The Henry James Review” for over twenty years, one of my chief pleasures has been the “reach” of James’s writing: art historians, literary critics, social historians, creative writers–not to mention psychoanalysts–all read and write on James. I welcome this chance to continue what has been an ongoing, multi-voiced, interdisciplinary conversation.

William Veeder Henry James has been my favorite novelist since I fell in love with “The Portrait of a Lady” (though not with Isabel Archer) in sophomore year of college. Eight years later, having published a monograph on Yeats which grew from a seminar paper at Berkeley, I realized the Yeats work would readily fold into a dissertation on twentieth-century poetry. This possibility shot an electric bolt through me—commitment to a career “in” poetry would mean, effectively, a life without Henry James! The choice made itself. Now the chance to share James’ greatest novel with psychoanalytically-oriented readers…imagine, a choice without regrets.

Lucy LaFarge I am a Training Analyst at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center and Regional Editor for North America at “The International Journal of Psychoanalysis.” I have published extensively on both literature and analytic listening and have published a paper “The dynamics of the deceived as we come to understand them through the reading of “The Portrait of A Lady” and “The Golden Bowl.”” A participant in a previous University Forum on “The Portrait of a Lady,” I welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation and to view James’s last novel from the perspective of literary scholarship.

University Forum: Desire and Deceit in Henry James’s “The Golden Bowl”
Friday, June 22
3:45 p.m. – 5:45 p.m.

To view the Preliminary Program click here.