Rendering Unconscious welcomes Timmy Davis to the podcast!

Timmy Davis graduated from Birkbeck College with an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies and with a BA Hons in Philosophy and Religion from the University of Kent, where he was president of the psychedelic society for three years. Currently, he is a candidate at the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and the Psilocybin Rescheduling Project manager at the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group, which is running a campaign to move psilocybin from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 2001, to reduce unnecessary barriers to legitimate scientific and medical research. He is also a contributing member of Drug Science’s Medical Psychedelics Working Group, as well as a guide on the psilocybin for treatment resistant depression trials at Kings College London. He also works as a welfare and harm reduction manager at music festivals in the UK and abroad.

His article New, Strange, Odd and Weird Perceptions – A Lacanian Approach to Psychedelic Experience (2020) can be found in issue 21 of Lacunae: International Journal for Lacanian Psychoanalysis.

Mr. Davis also co-authored a chapter entitled “The Feminine Enshadowed: the Role of Psychedelics in Deconstructing the Gender Binary” in the book Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine (2019). He also authored THOU ART NOT THAT – Towards a Psychoanalytic Understanding of the Bad Trip (forthcoming) and The Psychosis of Saint Schreber (forthcoming).

Mr. Davis is organising and chairing a series of events on the intersection of Psychoanalysis and Psychedelics for the Maudsley Psychedelic Society. The inaugural event is to be held on February 12th. Through this series of events, he hopes to initiate a conversation between contemporary psychoanalysis and psychedelic research, with all proceeds going towards the Psychosis Therapy Project. Tickets for the first event can be found HERE

This episode is also available to view at YouTube:

Also mentioned in this episode:

The Medicinal Use of Psilocybin: Reducing Restrictions on Research and Treatment (2020), a report co-authoured by Mr. Davis, can be found HERE. 

The documentary series Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, which features two episodes on the Sonoran desert toad and its 5-Meo-DMT containing secretions can be found HERE.

“Ritual and Psychoanalytical Spaces as Transitional, featuring Sangoma Trance States” co-authored by Vanessa Sinclair and Ingo Lambrecht, available in The Fenris Wolf, volume 8 edited by Carl Abrahamsson.

Rendering Unconscious Podcast is hosted by psychoanalyst Dr. Vanessa Sinclair, who interviews psychoanalysts, psychologists, scholars, creative arts therapists, writers, poets, philosophers, artists and other creatives & intellectuals about their process, world events, the current state of mental health care, politics, culture, the arts & more.

Rendering Unconscious is also a book! Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics and Poetry (Trapart Books, 2019).

You can support the podcast at our Patreon: www.patreon.com/vanessa23carl

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Vanessa Sinclair, Psy.D. is a psychoanalyst based Stockholm, who sees clients internationally, specializing in offering quality psychoanalytic treatment remotely and online. Most recently, she authored Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art: the Cut in Creation (Routledge 2020). Her other books include Switching Mirrors (2016), The Fenris Wolf vol 9 (2017) co-edited with Carl Abrahamsson, On Psychoanalysis and Violence: Contemporary Lacanian Perspectives (2018) co-edited with Manya Steinkoler, and Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics and Poetry (Trapart Books, 2019).

Dr. Sinclair is a founding member of Das Unbehagen: A Free Association for Psychoanalysis. (Das) Unbehagen is a collective for those who love psychoanalysis including clinicians, academics, artists and intellectuals. It is an association formed for the investigation of psychoanalysis free from the constraints of theoretical allegiance, institutes and other authorizing bodies, including local and national organizations. Unbehagen is dedicated to the creation of a space where members can learn to be practitioners of the unconscious. As a group of peers, we are creating a series of lateral relationships with those who likewise seek to revitalize psychoanalytic practice in an ethical manner. Through clinical study days, reading groups, peer supervision, and working groups investigating topics from support structures for those taking on analytic work independently, to the investigation of systematized violence in mental health services in America, to the possibility of forming a clinic to bring psychoanalysis to an underserved population, Unbehagen hopes to give new impetus to Freud’s discoveries.

The track at the end of the episode is Hunter’s Moon by Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson. Music is available at Bandcamp, as well as limited edition CD boxsets available from Highbrow Lowlife and Trapart Editions.

Music for intro and outro of Rendering Unconscious Podcast by Carl Abrahamsson

Image: Collage by Vanessa Sinclair utilizing artwork by Alex Grey. Available in The Mega Golem: A Womanual for all times and spaces by Carl Abrahamsson and Vanessa Sinclair.