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An initiative of Strike MoMA Working Group
Lara Sheehi, Stephen Sheehi, Amar Husain, Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon in conversation on Thursday, April 14, 6:30-8pm
This is a conversation about resistance, mental health, and revolutionary struggle grounded in Lara and Stephen Sheehi's recent book titled Psychoanalysis Under Occupation. On the one hand, it reads the occupation of Palestine through a psychoanalytic prism, considering the profound psychic violence inflicted upon Palestinians, individually and collectively. In doing so, it validates and normalizes the cultural, social, and individual ways that Palestinians reject structural and psychological configurations that would lead to erasure. On the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, the book explores how psychoanalytically oriented Palestinian clinicians see their own practice as a form of resistance, collusion, collaboration, and/or metabolization of settler violence.
During the conversation we will delve deeper into the themes of the book, asking among other questions: How can psychoanalysis be a mechanism for social and political mobilization? What does Palestine have to teach us about mental health? What is the relationship of structural violence to/on the imagination?
Lara Sheehi, PsyD (she/hers), is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the George Washington University's Professional Psychology Program. She teaches decolonial, liberatory and anti-oppressive theories and approaches to clinical treatment, case conceptualization, and community consultation. She is the president-elect of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (APA Division 39), and the chair of the Teachers' Academy of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She is co-editor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality and co-editor of CounterSpace in Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society. Lara is on the advisory board to the USA–Palestine Mental Health Network and Psychoanalysis for Pride. She is co-author with Stephen Sheehi of the book Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2022).
Stephen Sheehi (he/him) is the Director of the Decolonizing Humanitie Project at William & Mary, where he also teaches in the Asian and Middle East Studies Program, Asian and Pacific Islander American Studies Program and Arabic Studies Program. Most recently, he co-authored Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine with Lara Sheehi and Camera Palaestina: Photography and the Displaced Histories of Palestine with Salim Tamari and Issam Nassar.
Amar Husain is a Licensed mental health counselor in private practice. Her experience is focused on working with marginalized communities of color, focusing on trauma, healing, and liberation. Amar's work throughout her career has focused on the intersectionality between racism, oppression, and trauma and the process of individual and collective healing.
Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon will participate as facilitators.