Call for Proposals & Tracks

We welcome proposals that open the borders of psychology to the contributions of other fields (e.g., philosophy, sociology, history, literature, art, and political and theological/religious studies). As the general track, we expect the majority of submissions will fall into this category.

What is ethics grounded on and for whom should it ultimately point us towards? How might phenomenological, hermeneutical, and existential approaches assist us in answering these questions? There as an urgency to this and a cost to our passive, disengaged, neutral approaches to ethics. Rather than creating a new ethical system, we hope these dialogues aim at addressing the taproots of today’s suffering.

*Co-Sponsored by: Interdisciplinary Coalition of North American Phenomenologists and New England Center for Existential Therapy

If psychology is to reach its full potential as a means of not only informing our understanding of the human condition but also aiding in the development of moral, intellectual, and civic character, then the disciplines that have traditionally dealt with character--theology and philosophy--must become essential aspects of psychological education and training. Participants in this interdisciplinary track are invited to consider how a broadening of the psychological discipline toward questions of moral and ethical significance can inform character formation, ethical discernment, and human flourishing.

*This track is made possible through the support of Grant 62632 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this track are those of the presenters and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

Psychological theory and science reflects the world and knowledge systems from which it was created. Thus, its injustices and stark limitations not only perniciously uphold hegemonic power, but pose a threat to genuinely studying truths about the human experience. Gender and women’s studies examine these taken-for-granted ideas and interrogate psychology’s relationship to power. This lens makes visible the ways that subjectivities are constrained (de Beauvoir, ), theories and practices are uncritically adopted (Cosgrove), and marginalized communities are further disempowered. Feminist theory reminds us those rendered to the margins of power are most astute in identifying critical questions about the social and natural world (Harding). From this standpoint, different ways-of-knowing provide inroads to a humanistic ethic. We may implore who has been “abject[ed] from the realm of the human” (Sharpe, 2016, p. 14) and redress the mechanisms and approaches that have justified injustice. In place of reductive theory and flattened subjectivity, feminist and queer scholarship centers that which is intersectional (Collins, Crenshaw; Davis, 2016) and interstitial. From this, impoverished narratives can be resisted. Gender and sexuality studies aim to dislodge and redress the fixed binaries and systems that do violence to the cultural and relational (hooks) constitution of our social reality so that we may (re)envision it anew. We invite the full range of traditions, especially traditions typically untapped, to the table for these important discussions.

*Co-sponsored by Studies in Gender and Sexuality journal

Trauma breaks the continuity of our narrative, inscribing history upon our remembering flesh. Yet, in our attempt to understand this haunting phenomenon, our literature has thinned the descriptive elements as we try to master and measure ‘trauma.’ How might a more diverse range of thinkers help us touch upon trauma? What do philosophies of embodiment, theologies of lamentation, histories of hysteria, neurosciences of memory, psychologies of suffering, critical theories of marginalization, and other interdisciplinary thinkers have to offer in dialogue? This track opens up space into these questions about trauma - to speak about the unspeakable rupture, and hopefully find a new horizon therein.

* Co-Sponsored by: Boston College School of Social Work - Trauma Integration Initiative; Boston College - Faith, Peace, & Justice Program; Narrative Therapy Initiative (pending approval)

Jacques Lacan and Frantz Fanon are uniquely iconoclastic thinkers, revolutionizing psychoanalysis each in their own ways.  This track explores the resilient concept of race through applying and reimagining the generative conceptualizations of subjectivity embedded in the works of Fanon and Lacan.

The Dante Salon returns for its third gathering in 2023! Building on the rousing success of the gatherings in 2019 and 2021, as well as the collection Dante & the Other: A Phenomenology of Love (2020) and a forthcoming second collected volume, this latest convivium will respond to and go deeper into the themes of alterity, the ineffable, and how Dante can bridge contemporary philosophy, theology, and psychology to his ancient sources.

The Aliens—predictably—have returned! Please join us for a second Alien Salon in 2023, building on the success of 2021’s first landing, and the forthcoming collected volume. We return to the fundamental question of an ultimately inscrutable other. No issue is more critical to contemporary society than the encounter with the other. Yet, whether in nature, culture, politics, or pathology, alterity is too-easily blanketed in banal familiarity. Where can we turn to return the sublime, the ineffable, and the unspeakable to the encounter? This gathering will examine such constructs as the uncanny of Freud or Heidegger, Kristeva’s abject, Levinas’s Other, and Miéville’s abcanny to look with fresh wonder—or horror—upon the extraterrestrials, monsters, alien landscapes, and stranded cosmic travelers of weird, horror, speculative, and science fictions.

In this first-of-its-kind gathering, the Spiritual Direction Salon at Psychology and the Other 2023 will bring together the scholarship, practice, and expanding frontiers of this simultaneously ancient and emerging form of accompaniment situated at the meeting points of theology, wellness, mindfulness, spirituality, psychology, and philosophy. As clinical psychology threatens to collapse into a series of manualized procedures and as the number of ‘spiritual but not religious,’ ‘nones,’ and ‘seekers’ steadily grows, who will support the call to meaning, character, growth, and discernment? To whom do we turn when traditional therapists, clergy, gurus, and self-help courses leave us cold? Spiritual direction may mean many different things and this gathering intends to bring that range into clearer focus.