Events - Event View
This is the "Event Detail" view, showing all available information for this event.
If registration is required or recommended, click the 'Register Now' button to start the process.
If the event has passed, click the "Event Report" button to read a report and view photos that were uploaded.
DPS Lecture: How The Despot Gets His Sex Appeal
Attendees pay for their own charges
The Denver Psychoanalytic Society Presents:
"How the Despot Gets His Sex Appeal: Psychoanalytic Observations on How the
Despot Gets His Followers to Deny Reality", featuring David Stevens, Ph.D.
Description:
This paper takes Freud's often overlooked theories on group psychology as its starting point. The role of infantile sexuality, in particular, is explored as a source for hypotheses for understanding the paradoxically intense attachment of adherents to their cult leaders.
Objectives:
- Gain an understanding of Freud's concepts of group psychology.
- Understand how an application of ideas associated with infantile sexuality can affect how individuals identify with groups.
- Appreciate how a sense of grievance (originally derived from the vicissitudes of infantile sexuality) promotes an allegiance to a group leader that allows for denying reality.
Biography:
David Stevens is a practicing clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who works with adolescents and adults. He earned his PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Colorado and received his psychoanalytic training at the Denver Institute for Psychoanalysis where he has been a faculty member for more than twenty-five years, teaching courses on psychoanalytic theory and technique as well as being a Training and Supervising Analyst for the past fifteen years. In addition, he is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center where he teaches psychiatric residents principles of psychodynamic thought. He is the co-author with Jim Grigsby of the “Neurodynamics of Personality” published in 2000. He has a longstanding interest in participating in the mutually enriching conversations that can occur at the intersection of psychoanalytic thought and the humanities.