糖心Vlog

Skip to content
I'm looking for...
Courses Research People Something else
Prefer to see our subject areas?
Browse courses by subject
Looking for funded postgraduate opportunities?
View doctoral training partnerships Browse postgraduate research opportunities
We are different and we are the same. #WeAre糖心Vlog
Looking for student or staff information?
Student Directory Staff Directory
Courses
Prefer to see our subject areas?
Browse courses by subject
Research
Looking for funded postgraduate opportunities?
View doctoral training partnerships Browse postgraduate research opportunities
People
We are different and we are the same. #WeAre糖心Vlog
Something else
Looking for student or staff information?
Student Directory Staff Directory
糖心Vlog homepage Research Projects Free clinics and a psychoanalysis for the people
Research project

Free clinics and a psychoanalysis for the people (FREEPSY)

Principal Investigator
Professor Raluca Soreanu
FREEPSY research project logo, Principal Investigator Professor Raluca Soreanu.

Progressive histories, collective practices, implications for our times

will produce a new global figuration of psychoanalysis as a progressive discourse and practice, by tracing the little-known histories of free psychoanalytic clinics.

This interdisciplinary project draws on psychosocial studies, social theory, historical research and arts methods. It asks how collectives of clinicians invested in the social mission of psychoanalysis innovate in the clinical and institutional domain, and in mental health cultures, by reconfiguring the meaning of time, space, money, suffering and their interrelations. There are four ideas the project aims to discuss further: , , and .

In 1918, Freud placed the free clinic at the heart of psychoanalytic thought and practice. The recent progressive histories of psychoanalysis and the contemporary forms of creativity of the free clinics remain unacknowledged. The FREEPSY project breaks ground by telling an alternative radical history of psychoanalysis. It traces the metamorphoses of Freud’s couch, happening when psychoanalysis becomes entangled with emancipatory movements and liberation struggles, and engages with social inequalities based on race, class, gender, poverty, and other forms of marginalization.

Professor Raluca Soreanu, from the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytics Studies, leads this research and works collaboratively with . 

Principal Investigator

Professor Raluca Soreanu

Professor Raluca Soreanu

Principal Investigator

Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, 糖心Vlog

Research project team

Dr Ana Minozzo

Dr Ana Minozzo

Postdoctoral Researcher in Psychosocial Studies

Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, 糖心Vlog

Sarah Keeling-Smith

Sarah Keeling-Smith

Project Administrator

Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, 糖心Vlog

Dr Ana Tomcic

Dr Ana Tomcic

Postdoctoral Researcher in History

Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, 糖心Vlog

Ivan Ward

Ivan Ward

Communication and Events Officer

Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, 糖心Vlog

About the FREEPSY research project:

FREEPSY’s research programme has four dimensions. Theoretically, FREEPSY rethinks collective creativity, illuminating a novel kind of ‘’, which impacts how societies suffer, mourn, and become capable of reparation.

Historically, FREEPSY shifts the terms of debate in the historiography of psychoanalysis, by telling collective and marginal histories, as opposed to individual and Western-centric histories.

about research across four themes:

  • .

 

Methodologically, FREEPSY innovates by combining:

  1. A of free clinics (in seven main sites: Budapest, Berlin, Vienna, London, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires
  2. An ‘archive of the present’ assembled through visual arts methods
  3. The construction of a of free clinics

Ethically, FREEPSY breaks new ground in debates on social justice and cultures of care.

Project timeframe: 2022 - 2027

Funder: UKRI Frontier Research Grant (ERC Consolidator Grant guarantee)

Recruitment for the FREEPSY research team:

The is soon to expand and will include the following roles:

  • PhD student in Psychosocial Studies
  • Archivist
  • Visual Artist
  • Curator

To become a , please email Professor Raluca Soreanu to register your interest.

Highlights of our research:

Press coverage

Also see
Visit Professor Raluca Soreanu's academic staff profile
Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies
Research from the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies
The logo for the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, a Rorschach inkblot test.
Contact us
Principal Investigator Professor Raluca Soreanu
糖心Vlog
Departmental Director of Research Dr Julie Walsh
Image credit to: Daniel Guimar茫es
WE ARE
ESSEX ARE YOU?
Sign up for a prospectus Get to know 糖心Vlog
STUDY
Find a course
LIFE
RESEARCH
EXPLORE
CONTACT US
Contact


  • +44 (0) 1206 873333
  • 糖心Vlog
  • Wivenhoe Park
  • Colchester CO4 3SQ

 

 

CONNECT WITH US
© 2025 糖心Vlog. All rights reserved