Conference: Solitary Pleasures in art and psychoanalysis- David Morgan

David Morgan (psychoanalyst)
Giving a Toss: From Onan's Simple Pleasure to Developmental Cul de Sac

Masturbation is a dress rehearsal for what hopefully becomes a sexual relationship. It operates in the main at a fantasy level in the mind of one, and leads sometimes, as part of a sexual lexicon, to two person mutuality.

However in this time of market economy pornography it can become a developmental Cul de sac where fantasy provides an endless cornucopia in which the real person with real limitations is commodified and becomes a ‘second eleven’ choice.

David Morgan is a Psychoanalyst at the BPAS and a Training Analyst at the BPA. He is the organiser of the Political Minds seminars at the British Psychoanalytic Society and hosts the 'Frontier Psychoanalyst' podcasts. He is co-editor with Stan Ruszczynski of Sexuality Delinquency and Violence, published by Karnac Books. He has worked as a consultant psychotherapist in the NHS for 25 years at Camden Psychotherapy Unit and the Portman Clinic, regularly contributes to radio and television programmes, and lectures nationally and internationally. 

Solitary Pleasures in art and psychoanalysis is a day-long conference to accompany Solitary Pleasures, a group exhibition at the Freud Museum.

The conference, like the exhibition, reveals masturbation as a topic that can transform our understanding of human subjectivity and sexuality. Perhaps the most common form of human eroticism, it is also one of the least theorised. The conference will explore our complex sexual, erotic, and intimate encounters with ourselves and one another by viewing masturbation as an all-inclusive practice – gay, lesbian, heterosexual, bisexual, trans, queer, +, offering possibilities of a shared exchange and an intimate encounter between couples, lovers and strangers in ways that redefine desires and eroticism’s possibilities.

Conference themes:

History – the cultural history of masturbation
Talking – masturbation in clinical practice and literature
Educating – masturbation in sexual health and wellbeing
Making – masturbation in creativity and art practice