title: PARRHESIA, PHAEDRA, AND THE POLIS: ANTICIPATING PSYCHOANALYTIC FREE ASSOCIATION AS DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE.
abstract: This essay explores the mostly unexamined analogy of psychoanalytic free association to democratic free speech. The author turns back to a time when free speech was a matter of considerable discussion: the classical period of the Athenian constitution and its experiment with parrhesia. Ordinarily translated into English as "free speech," parrhesia is startlingly relevant to psychoanalysis. The Athenian stage-in particular, Hippolytus (Euripides, 5th century BCE)-illustrates this point. Euripides's tragic tale anticipates Freud's inquiries, exploring the fundamental link between free speech and female embodiment. The author suggests that psychoanalysis should claim its own conception of a polis as a mediated and ethical space between private and public spheres, between body and mind, and between speaking and listening communities.
authors.affiliation: Co-chair of the Independent Track and faculty member at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and a faculty member and supervisor at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New York.
authors.forename: Jill
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gentile
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D005608:Free Association; D005619:Freudian Theory; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011572:Psychoanalysis; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy
keywords: Euripides; Freud; Greek tragedy; Hippolytus; Parrhesia; ancient Athens; democracy; desire; free association; free speech; polis; women's bodies; women's voices