'The Oblivious Object
presented by Mary Brady

Synopsis

This lecture will consider an object relationship to an ‘oblivious object’ and distinguish an oblivious object from an unconscious relationship to a ‘stupid object.’ Alvarez describes children who see adults as stupid, implying that the child has no concept of an object who is intelligent, that is, having an interested and interesting mind. Such children see their internal object and potentially adults in general as weak, useless, unprotective and unprotected. Children with an ‘oblivious object’ might consciously see their parents as highly intelligent and successful, but unconsciously experience them as oblivious to their emotional problems. The child’s sense of the oblivious object needs to arise and be understood in the transference- countertransference field. Such work can allow a beginning sense of an object who can be of genuine use. This lecture will include material from the analyses of a late adolescent male and a thirteen-year-old girl but is equally applicable to the treatment of adults.

When

Online via Zoom Saturday 7th September 9.30-11.00 am

Cost

$88 inc GST

Biography

Dr. Mary Brady is an adult and child psychoanalyst practicing in San Francisco. On the Faculties of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, she is recipient of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Roughton Award for her writing.

Her book, Psychoanalysis with Adolescents and Children: Learning to Surf is forthcoming from Routledge. She is Editor of Braving the Erotic Field in the Treatment of Children and Adolescents, (Routledge, 2022). She is also author of Analytic Engagements with Adolescents and The Body in Adolescence (Routledge in 2018 and 2016 respectively). She is North American Co-Chair for the Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (COCAP) of the IPA and has co-led a Psychoanalysis and Film group for a decade.