COLLOQUIUM
FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 2024
LAUGHTER IN THE ANALYTIC SETTING
NUAR ALSADIR, Ph.D., L.P.,
Beginning with a moment in one of Freud’s case studies in which he bursts out laughing, this talk will explore the ways in which laughter can act as a form of unconscious communication. Because of the positive associations most people have to laughter, its meaning often flies beneath the social—and, often, analytic—radar, even as it has the potential to collapse the alliance between an analyst and an analysand.
Nuar Alsadir, Ph.D., L.P., is a psychoanalyst, nonfiction writer, and poet. Her most recent book, Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation (Graywolf Press/Fitzcarraldo Editions), was a TIME Magazine must-read of 2022 and a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 2022. She is also the author of two poetry collections: Fourth Person Singular, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and More Shadow Than Bird. She is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and a member of the curatorial board of The Racial Imaginary Institute. She works as a psychoanalyst in private practice and teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at New York University.