Psychoanalysis und Social Inequality

A joint event series organized by Freie Universität Berlin and IPU Berlin: As part of the book launch on April 24, 2026, the editors—Nicole Burgermeister, Lalitha Chamakalayil, Esther Hutfless, and Barbara Zach—will present key perspectives from the volume and engage in a discussion with the audience.

The anthology Psychoanalysis and Social Inequalities – Social Power Relations on the Couch explores the unconscious mechanisms of social power relations and argues for addressing and analyzing them in clinical practice as well.

The contributions illuminate, among other things, the significance of normalization processes in society and psychoanalysis, as well as the engagement with racism, colonialism, antisemitism, sexism, ableism, and queer- and transphobia in psychoanalytic theory, practice, and training. Additionally, the effects of racialization processes and class differences in psychotherapeutic contexts are discussed. The authors are united by the conviction that psychoanalysis—despite its own blind spots and the reproduction of power relations—possesses a critical, emancipatory, and resistant potential in relation to contemporary social and individual developments.

Lalitha Chamakalayil, a licensed psychologist, is a research associate at the Institute for Child and Youth Welfare at the School of Social Work of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland in Muttenz. In her teaching and research, she focuses on social inequality, families, inclusion and exclusion, biographical research, and psychoanalysis in a society of migration, and she also works on these topics in the context of continuing education.

Esther Hutfless is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and scholar of psychotherapy. Hutfless is a professor of queer-feminist psychotherapy and psychoanalysis at Sigmund Freud Private University in Linz, and a lecturer at the University of Vienna and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Academy. Research areas: psychoanalytic theory and practice, feminist and queer approaches in psychotherapy and psychotherapy science, poststructuralism, posthumanism, deconstruction, gender and sexuality, trauma, social power relations and the unconscious, psychoanalytic social theories. For more information, visit: www.hutfless.at

Barbara Zach, is a lawyer, independent psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in Vienna, a member of the Vienna Working Group for Psychoanalysis and the International Psychoanalytical Association, and a lecturer at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Academy. Main areas of work and research include individuation and the development of autonomy, anxiety, transference and countertransference in the therapeutic process, sexuality and gender, psychoanalysis, and queer feminist theory.

Nicole Burgermeister, Ph.D., works as a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, and sociologist in Zurich, and serves as a lecturer at various universities and continuing education institutes. Areas of focus: Psychoanalytic work with groups and in institutions, social structures of inequality and psychoanalysis, gender and queer studies, and depth hermeneutics.
 

Caro Ingwersen (Queer IPU), Christian Woll-Weber (Freie Universität Berlin)