Matt Ffytche

Professor Matt Ffytche

Mid-Career Fellow 2014-15

Social Theoretical Contexts for the Conceptualisation of Transgenerational Trauma and Projective Identification

This project investigates theories of ‘transindividual’ processes of mind from the period 1890-1920 (including from Myers, Le Bon, Bergson, Butler and Scheler) in order to inform the study of ‘projective identification’ and ‘transgenerational trauma’ in contemporary social research. These concepts have been mobilised in numerous studies in the last twenty years of racial and ethnic conflict, and the after-effects of social trauma. However, their use within social research also meets with various challenges.

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Areas of interest

Psychosocial Studies Psychoanalysis History of Psychoanalysis Historiography Imagination Mental Health Psychiatry Creative Writing Critical Theory

Cohort

MCF2

Biography

Mat ffytche is Director of the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. He joined the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies in 2008 and served as Head of Department from 2015-2018. In 2015 he took over the Editorship of the journal Psychoanalysis and History from John Forrester, which he currently edits with Dagmar Herzog (CUNY). Matt has a particular interest in the history of psychoanalysis and its connection to other academic fields across the twentieth century, including the social sciences, philosophy and literature, and he is a member of the Essex research group on the History of Psychoanalysis.

Biographical details correct as of 07.02.25