Faculty of Education course director Dr. Lorin Schwarz is the recipient of an awarded membership presented by the International Psychohistory Forum. Schwarz received the award after attending a conference sponsored by the International Psychohistory Forum earlier this spring.
While attending the conference, Schwarz asked a few questions and engaged with the speakers. Afterwards, he wrote to the organizer, Paul Elovitz, thanking him for organizing and putting on such a dynamic and informative weekend of speakers and conversation. “I usually do that when I can because organizing a conference is such a big deal, I think organizers deserve some support, but in this case, it was really a good conference and I wanted to let them know how much it meant to me,” said Schwarz.
Elovitz wrote back saying that he was glad it was meaningful and that Schwarz’s contribution to the discussion was noticed. He then asked Schwarz to write a review of what he learned from the conference for their journal Clio's Psyche: Understanding the Why of Culture, Current Events, History and Society. Schwarz obliged and was awarded a membership presented by the International Psychohistory Forum based on his written review. Another York University scholar, Jun Lu, a Ph.D. student in the Social and Political Thought program was a co-recipient of the award.
“Applying Freudian ideas to the study of history offers the same insight and advantage that an attention to interiority provides for the teacher: when we remember that everyone has an unconscious, that there's always more going on than we know, that we carry invisible histories around with us --and that the emotional world is always at play in everything that happens and how we react to what we encounter, we then act in ways that hold the possibility for more thoughtful, compassionate and rational relations with the world and with ourselves,” says Schwarz on how he applies Freudian thinking towards teaching. “Psychoanalytic thinking offers a chance for us to choose complexity over superstition and an "us against them" mentality, dynamic experience overtaken-for-grantedness, and care --perhaps even love? -- over a sense of isolation and indifference.”
The Psychohistory Forum is an international group of scholars who apply psychoanalytic thinking and the ideas of Freud to engage with and better understand, history and culture. For more information visit their website at psychohistoryforum.com.