About P-HOLE

Let’s face it: traditional models of psychoanalysis have too often failed minoritized people. Sometimes this is a matter of the unreflective ways psychoanalytic theory and practice presume whiteness, heterosexuality, binary gender, non-disabled status, and middle-class (if not upper-middle-class) economic background. This can result in epistemic and ethical gaps in which non-normative subjects speak but cannot be heard within the terms of traditional psychoanalysis – whether as patients, candidates, or colleagues. When psychoanalysts cannot reckon with the social context that is already in the consulting room or the educational institute, they implicitly uphold systems of domination. They also diminish the extraordinary capacity and complexity of psychoanalysis to move in the spaces between outside and inside, the social and the psychic.

Many of us who have gone through canonical channels to train have felt harmed by our field.

The liberatory potential of psychoanalysis is at painful odds with its long history of pathologizing forms of “otherness.” Sadly, this is not just bygone history nor does it seem to be a matter only of unintended consequences. Even today, some quarters of psychoanalysis are lending their prestige and “expertise” to the pathologization of trans childhood and of trans life more broadly. We have also seen how mightily psychoanalytic institutes and professional organizations have resisted and outright fought against naming the genocide in Gaza.

No more.

Welcome to P-HOLE: the Psychoanalytic Hub for Online Liberatory Education!

We are a group of analysts, teachers, artists, activists, and scholars who are committed to supporting, challenging, and educating psychoanalytic candidates and any and all colleagues who want to learn a liberatory, non-discriminatory psychoanalysis. Every one of us is a clinical practitioner, many of us are analytically trained, and all of us are long-time students of psychoanalysis as well as experienced teachers of it. In addition, every one of us identifies as queer, trans, and/or as a person of color.

P-HOLE is an unequivocally pro-trans, pro-queer, pro-Palestine, and anti-racist group, committed to decolonial practices, and to disability and economic justice. We oppose antisemitism, which remains an active and deadly force. But we object to the weaponization of antisemitism to shut down criticism of Zionism and, increasingly, to clamp down on wider forms of political dissent.

We love psychoanalysis too much to leave it in the hands of those who don’t care about a truly liberatory psychoanalysis. We are calling for a profound transformative reclamation and re-imagining of psychoanalysis as a tool for liberation and flourishing.

And we are committed to being part of that revolution. We have thus formed P-HOLE to offer the psychoanalytic education we ourselves did not get and that candidates and students of psychoanalysis are still too often deprived of.

P-HOLE is not a full-fledged psychoanalytic training program. It is a year-long course on a variety of psychoanalytic topics. Taking inspiration from Dr. Carter Carter’s recent call to abolish the institute, it is an offering to our communities and to anyone genuinely interested in how to think psychoanalytically without, well, being an asshole.
 
We are honored and proud to be supported in our endeavor by The Asian American Center for Psychoanalysis. All classes will be held on Sundays from 12pm–3pm ET to maximize flexibility for registering across time zones. Registration closes on September 1st. First class will be held on September 7th.

P-HOLE is an offering of liberatory love for all learners of psychoanalysis.

Want to learn more about our Faculty?