What does it means to become the (neuro)psychologist of one’s own life. If something is not working in our education, in our marriage, in our work and in society in general we turn to the (neuro)psy-sciences. But is the latter’s paradigm precisely not relying on feeding neuro-psychological theories into the field of research and action? Isn’t therefore, psychology not always already psychologization, and is, concomitantly, neuroscience not always already neurologisation?

The plea to depsychologize and to deneurologize modern subjective is hence rapidly uttered. If you want to know something about man, don’t study the human, don’t study psychology, study psychologization, don’t study neuroscience, study neurologization…

This is however, the place where the snake might bite its own tail. The defiance is hence to make sense off, to deconstruct, to transcend, to stumble over, to reformulate, to politicize, to de-academify, to decenter, to theorize, to bring back to the praxis… the paradoxes of (neuro)-psy critique.

This one-day symposium brings together psychologists, psychoanalysts, philosophers and educationalists to reflect on the centrality of the (neuro)psy slope of modern subjectivity and its consequences for critique. The closing event of the day is the book launch of Jan De Vos’s book “Psychologization and the Subject of Late Modernity” (Palgrave).

PROGRAMME (last update!)

9:30h Welcome : Prof. Gertrudis Van de Vijver (UGent)

10:00h    Education and its neuro/psy-subject. Chair: Michel Vandenbroeck (Ugent)

Erica Burman (University of Manchester, UK): Psychologisation and/as monkey   business: the artefactual character of affect.

Stefan Ramaekers (KULeuven): The use and abuse of neuropsychological research in the field of parenting.

Karin Lesnik-Oberstein (University of Reading, UK): Children’s literature, cognitivism and neuroscience, or, capitalism and/ as the return to the same.

11:45h    Philosophy and the critique of the neuro/psy-sciences. Chair: Emiliano Acosta (Ugent)

Sjoerd van Tuinen (Eramus Universiteit, NL): Depsychologizing ressentiment.

Jens De Vleminck (UGent): Making up people: The critical project of Foucault and   Hacking.

Jasper Feyaerts (UGent): Who needs to be disenchanted? The destruction of the   manifest image and it’s residuum.

14:30h   Psy-theory and praxis as ideology critique: Chair: Stijn Vanheule (Ugent)

Paul Verhaeghe (UGent): Psychotherapy and authority .

David Pavon Cuellar (Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, Mexico): Metapsychological praxis as critique of the psychological essence of ideology.

Ian Parker (Discourse Unit, UK): The psy complex and capitalism: four components

17:00h    BOOK LAUNCH & WINE RECEPTION

Ian Parker (Discourse Unit, UK) interviews Jan De Vos (author, UGent)