Love: A Guide for Amateurs

An informal and loving discussion

 

This event will be an informal and loving discussion between amateurs on the subject of love. Using different aspects of love in Greek philosophy - agápe, éros, philía, and storgē - and Freud’s conceptualisations of Eros, we will think about why it’s so difficult to love.

Download the free 'Love: a guide for amateurs' e-book here >

David Morgan will look at the profound experiences we face with intimacy, in learning deeply about ourselves.

Candida Yates will look at ‘new intimacies’ in our representations of love, jealousy and flirtation in popular culture.

Matt Gieve and Milena Stateva will think about love as the interplay between emancipation and resistance in an economic view in contemporary notions of love.

 

Steve Fuller will ask, as the sphere of human concern extends beyond Homo sapiens to other animals and even machines, is our capacity for agape, a ‘higher love’ increased as well?

 

Yiannis Gabriel will look at what happens when all love is sucked out of a community in the grip of a contagious pathogen which dissolves bonds of solidarity and trust among its members.

 

Marianna Fotaki will talk about the link between a culture of compulsive consumerism and toxic attachments and propose an ethics of relationality and compassionate care.

 

The event will be managed compassionately by Elizabeth Cotton and will include publication of an eBook and online activities #loveamateurs in the run up to the event to find out what you really want to know about love.

 

Biographies:

 

David Morgan is a consultant psychotherapist and psychoanalyst NHS and private practice. Training analyst/therapist and supervisor for the British Psychoanalytic Association and British Psychotherapy Foundation, and a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is Hon. Lecturer at City University, London. Director of (PiP) Public interest Psychology. He provides consultation to the public and private sector, including organisations of a political and social nature, and is a regular speaker at conferences. He enjoys lecturing and teaching and has contributed to radio programmes on Whistleblowing, Van Gogh(Radio 4) and the Political Mind(ABC). Recently he has lectured on Narcissism (London School of Economics), Poetry; Hypnotism; Louise Bourgeois (Freud Museum) Perversion (City University), Whistleblowing and Dissent, (Institute of Psychoanalysis & Wessex Training Oxford). Sleep Paralysis (Dana Centre), and War States (UCL). He has recently published in the New Internationalist. He was co-editor with Stan Ruszczynski of Lectures on Violence, Perversion, and Delinquency (Karnac, 2007).

 

Marianna Fotaki is Professor of Business Ethics at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, and holds a visiting professorship in Manchester Business School. She is a graduate of medicine, public health, and obtained a PhD in public policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Before joining academia Marianna worked as EU resident adviser and as a medical doctor for Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins Du Monde for eight years.

 

Milena Stateva is Senior Researcher and Consultant at the Tavistock Institute. She deploys rigour from social and political thought, British psychoanalysis, group relations, critical and deconstructive theory, and qualitative research in sociology. Her recent work supports those working on vulnerability and trauma across differences - understanding Roma as a trans-national minority, working with systemic blockages surrounding welcoming migrants and challenges to migration (human trafficking, mental health, detention, etc), and empowering parents. Milena's project for the year ahead is the Tavistock Institute Academia, a new professional development offer prioritising reflectivity rather than the transfer of knowledge and skills.

 

Steve Fuller is Auguste Comte Professor of Social Epistemology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick. The author of twenty books, his most recent work focuses on the future of humanity. He has two new books being published this year: Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History (Acumen) and, with Veronika Lipinska, The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism (Palgrave).

 

Candida Yates is Professor in Communications at Bournemouth University and is a Director (with Caroline Bainbridge) of the AHRC Media and the Inner World research network. She has published widely on the themes of popular culture, psychoanalysis and emotion and is an Editor of Karnac Book Series: Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture. Her recent publications include: Television and Psychoanalysis: Psycho-Cultural Approaches (co-edited, Karnac Books, 2013); Media and the Inner World: Psycho-Cultural Approaches to Emotion, Media and Popular Culture (co-edited, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); The Play of Political Culture, Emotion and Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).

 

Yiannis Gabriel is Chair of Organisation Studies at Bath University. His current research includes work on the importance of an ethic of care in health and education, the dark side of certain organizations captured in the concept of miasma, the relation between image and narrative and the exploration of the ways in which clinicians defend themselves against work-related anxieties. He writes and works with storytelling and is co-founder and co-ordinator of the Organizational Storytelling Seminar series, now in its ninth year. Most recently he has carried out research into the experiences of unemployed managers and professionals in the current economic recession.

 

Elizabeth Cotton is a Senior Lecturer at Middlesex University Business School. Her academic background is in political philosophy and current writing includes precarious work and employment relations, activism and mental health at work. She has worked as an activist and educator in over thirty countries, working with trade unions and Global Union Federations at senior level. Some of this work is reflected in her co-authored publication, Global Unions Global Business, described as “the essential guide to global trade unionism”. Elizabeth lived and worked abroad until returning to the UK in 2007 to write and start the process of training in adult psychotherapy. She is founding director of The Resilience Space and runs the Surviving Work Library, a free online resource on how to actually do it.

 

Matthew Gieve is a researcher and consultant at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. He graduated in politics and philosophy and holds a Masters in psychoanalytic theory from University College London. He works in applied social research across a wide range of fields, centering on issues of social exclusion with a particular focus on children and families and on mental health.