A Culture of Psychosis?

In 1979, Christopher Lasch published his epoch-defining book The Culture of Narcissism. While there is no reason to suspect narcissism is in any way in decline, over 45 years after Lasch, we are most certainly in a different time. With the invention of social media and the decentralisation of information has come a disintegration of consensus on basic facts. Fake news, conspiracy theories and competing narratives all abound, leaving us considerably less in the way of any surety as to what is really going on. From a psychoanalytic perspective, these conditions might be thought to be ripe for a culture of psychosis. This one-day event will pick up this question, exploring what it might mean to live in a time of psychosis, if this is the case or even if this is a helpful way of thinking about what is going on.

Speakers

Jack Black is Associate Professor of Culture, Media, and Sport at Sheffield Hallam University. He is the author of Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy: A Psychoanalytic Exploration (Routledge, 2021) and The Psychosis of Race (Routledge, 2023).

Leon S. Brenner is a psychoanalyst and a research fellow at the University of Potsdam, Institute for Philosophy, Germany. His publications include The Autistic Subject (Palgrave, 2020), Against Reality (Everyday Analysis, 2024) and the forthcoming Infinity: The Subject of Love in Lacan and Badiou (Palgrave, 2026).

Calum Neill is Professor of Psychoanalysis and Continental Philosophy at Edinburgh Napier University and host of Lacan in Scotland. His publications include Without Ground: Lacanian Ethics and the Assumption of Subjectivity(Palgrave, 2014), Ethics and Psychology (Routledge, 2016) and Jacques Lacan: The Basics(Routledge, 2023) and ZakLakan (Pedio Books, 2025).

Stijn Vanheule is Professor of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Psychology at Ghent University and a privately practicing psychoanalyst. His publications include The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective (Palgrave, 2011), Psychiatric Diagnosis Revisited – From DSM to Clinical Case Formulation (Palgrave, 2017) and Why Psychosis is not so Crazy(Other Press, 2024).

Fabio Vighi is Professor of Critical Theory and Italian at Cardiff University. His publications include: Emergency Capitalism: Financial Hubris, Economic Collapse, and Systemic Manipulation (Sublation Media, 2024); Capitalism and the New Political Unconscious: a Philosophy of Immanence (Bloomsbury, 2023, co-edited with Riccardo Panattoni); and Unworkable: Delusions of an Imploding Civilization (SUNY Press, 2022).