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Professor Paul Verhaeghe is
senior professor at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and head of
the Department for Psychoanalysis and Counselling Psychology. He
teaches clinical psychodiagnostics and psychoanalytic psychotherapy
and works as a psychoanalyst in private practice as well. His first
book Does the Woman Exist? (1999) is a comprehensive study of
hysteria based on Freud and Lacan. His second book Love in a Time of
Loneliness (2000) brings a critical analysis of our contemporary
love life; it became an international bestseller and was published
in 8 different languages. A selection of his papers was published as
Beyond Gender. From Subject to Drive, where he reconsiders the role
of sexuality. His latest book On Being Normal and Other Disorders: a
Manual for Clinical Psychodiagnostics (2004) received the Goethe
Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship (2007) and is considered to be
a psychoanalytic answer to the failure of the DSM. His contemporary
research focuses on the so-called ‘new’ forms of psychopathology.
Keynote Presentation:“Chronicle of a death foretold”: the end of psychotherapy My generation has lived in the heyday of psychotherapy and we
may see the demise of it as well. The confluence of three issues
threatens the vitality of psychotherapy and may prove lethal: The
rise of protocol-based treatments makes psychotherapy much less
efficient and will reinforce a pharmacological approach; The
contemporary social discourse installs the idea that everyone should
receive everything without a personal effort (just think of the ads
saying “because you deserve it”); Finally and most importantly,
contemporary psychopathology has changed in such a way that in many
cases, psychotherapy doesn’t work. If we want to avoid our
disappearance, it is time to think about action.
Professor Paul Verhaeghe is
senior professor at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and head of
the Department for Psychoanalysis and Counselling Psychology. He
teaches clinical psychodiagnostics and psychoanalytic psychotherapy
and works as a psychoanalyst in private practice as well. His first
book Does the Woman Exist? (1999) is a comprehensive study of
hysteria based on Freud and Lacan. His second book Love in a Time of
Loneliness (2000) brings a critical analysis of our contemporary
love life; it became an international bestseller and was published
in 8 different languages. A selection of his papers was published as
Beyond Gender. From Subject to Drive, where he reconsiders the role
of sexuality. His latest book On Being Normal and Other Disorders: a
Manual for Clinical Psychodiagnostics (2004) received the Goethe
Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship (2007) and is considered to be
a psychoanalytic answer to the failure of the DSM. His contemporary
research focuses on the so-called ‘new’ forms of psychopathology.
