Renowned psychoanalysts and scholars will converge on the Cornell University campus Nov. 22-24 for an international and interdisciplinary conference titled "Legacies of Freud: Translations". The conference, free and open to the public, will be held in the Guerlac Room of the A.D. White House from 1-9 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 22, and all day Saturday, Nov. 23, and Sunday, Nov. 24.

The conference is the final event in a yearlong series of programs at Cornell that have explored psychoanalytic theories and the relevance of psychoanalysis to a range of cultural, historical and political issues. These programs included a psychoanalysis workshop in March, a workshop on race and psychoanalysis in April and a seminar on Freud this semester that has been co-taught by Suzanne Stewart, a lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages, and Biddy Martin, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and associate professor in the Department of German Studies and the Women's Studies Program.

The goals of the upcoming conference, said Martin, "are tied to the goals we set for the entire yearlong series of events: to promote sound and innovative research and to build intellectual culture on campus among scholars and students interested in psychoanalysis, its history, its uses in contemporary cultural studies and its relationship to contemporary clinical practices."

Speakers will include Cathy Caruth of Emory University and Ruth Leys of Johns Hopkins University, both scholars who have published major studies of trauma and psychoanalytic theory; and renowned practicing analysts Ilse Grubrich-Simitis of the Psychoanalytisches Institut in Germany, Michael Parsons of the British Psychoanalytic Institute and Dori Laub of Yale University.

"One of our aims is to explore the gap between scholarly work in cultural studies, which draws heavily on psychoanalytic theory, and clinical practice outside the university, where psychoanalysis is often deemed passŽ," Martin said.

Presentations will include "Thanatos and Psychic Trauma: A Psychoanalytic Theory of Forgetting and Remembering," by Laub; "Ethnography and Psychoanalysis," by University of Chicago anthropologist Beth Povinelli; "Foucault's 'Oedipus,'" by the University of Rochester's Trevor Hope; and "Freud in Japan in the '20s," by Cornell graduate student in Asian studies Mark Driscoll.

Freud's legacy and the debates surrounding his theories are as robust and relevant as ever, Martin said -- despite the biological bent of today's therapeutic climate.

"The papers at the conference will show how complex Freud and his followers considered psychic life to be in its relation to biology and to social life," she said. "When definitions of mental health and the availability of services start to depend exclusively on cost effectiveness, symptom and behavioral controls and corporate profits, psychoanalytic emphasis on the riches of personality and the complexities of psychic life may become more precious and valuable."

The "Legacies of Freud" conference is being sponsored by several programs, including Cornell's Institute for German Cultural Studies and Society for the Humanities and the German academic exchange service DAAD.