In a recent episode of the IPA’s “Talks on Psychoanalysis”, Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau presented “Driven to preserve self and object”, investigating the structuring function of the object in tension with the subject and its drives; the role of the aggression as an intensified expression of a need; and her original term “Lethe”, describing the energy of these preservative drives. Click on the player above to listen.
You can also listen to this lecture on Apple or Spotify.
Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau, PhD, studied literature, philosophy and psychology in Heidelberg and Zürich, where she worked as a university professor for clinical psychology. She is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society and at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Her areas of expertise are metapsychology, in particular drive theory, its clinical application, and applied psychoanalysis of creative processes. She is the author of Life Drive & Death Drive, Libido & Lethe (2001), Driven to Survive: Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis (2018), and Rousseaus Traum: Roman (2019) and over 40 articles, published in many languages, and the editor of a Freud Reader and two collections of short stories. Her new book, Memory’s Eyes. A New York Oedipus Novel, will be released by the end of September, 2020 (already available as kindle-edition). Currently she is the Chair of the IPA in Culture Committee. She works in private practice in Chestnut Hill, MA.
