In today’s episode, we’ll listen to Gregorio Kohon’s work on “Monuments and Denials: Creating and Re-creating History”, that follows on from his book on Reflections on the Aesthetic Experience - Psychoanalysis and the Uncanny.

It is argued that denials are daily events at all levels of human existence. Denials can also work in a negative way: memories, for example, can create events that might have never occurred; even if not true, mnemic inventions may still make sense and become meaningful. Historical and religious monuments are a case in point. They are political statements which work through denials, not always representing historical “truth”.

Gregorio Kohon is a Training Analyst from the British Psychoanalytical Society. He lived in Australia, where he co-founded (together with Valli Shaio Kohon) The Brisbane Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies. He published No Lost Certainties to be Recovered; Reflections on the Aesthetic Experience - Psychoanalysis and the Uncanny, and Considering the Nature of Psychoanalysis. He edited The British School of Psychoanalysis - The Independent Tradition; The Dead Mother - The Work of André Green; and British Psychoanalysis - New Perspectives in the Independent Tradition. He edited, together with Rosine Perelberg, The Greening of Psychoanalysis, and co-authored with André Green, Love and its Vicissitudes. His works have been translated into many languages. He is also a poet and a novelist. 

Reflections on the Aesthetic Experience - Psychoanalysis and the Uncanny,

This episode is available also in Spanish