NEWS
ABOUT
A space for psychoanalytic research
To offer a space for psychoanalytic research and new perspectives on the problems raised in contemporary, Freudian, and clinical perspectives of psychoanalysis via TV programs, seminars, colloquia and conferences.
The development of theoretical, clinical and experimental research
To encourage the development of theoretical, clinical and experimental research between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, and to promote activities that bring together the arts, science and psychoanalysis in mutual dialogue with a team of researchers, graduate students and post-doctoral students.
Unique, cross-disciplinary research
To perform novel research at the intersection of neuroscience and psychoanalysis with an approach where psychoanalysis not strictly reduced to neurobiological facts, but rather to pose new questions in neuroscience from a psychoanalytic point of view.
The creative process
To explore the creative process and in particular, its relationship to the unconscious. Psychoanalysis is like musical or theatrical improvisation, where experience, repetition, and traces are continually utilized in a synchronic manner in the vertigo of the instant, in the delicate moment where everything could be played differently.
The Backstory
The Agalma Foundation was founded in 2010 by Professors François Ansermet and Pierre Magistretti, with the support of Dr Christian de Saussure.
Professors Ansermet and Magistretti have co-written several texts on psychoanalysis and neuroscience, including the books “A chacun son cerveau” (Biology of Freedom), Odile Jacob 2004, and “Les énigmes du plaisir” (The puzzles of pleasure), Odile Jacob 2010.
The Agalma Foundation was created in order to further pursue their ideas.
Its aim is to offer a space to support research on the problems stemming from the confrontation of psychoanalysis with contemporary perspectives. This approach offers a new way to understand Freud’s ideas and clinical psychoanalysis.
Its task is to develop theoretical, clinical and experimental research between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, and to promote activities that bring together the arts, science and psychoanalysis in mutual dialogue.
The Foundation is thus a laboratory for problem-setting and ideas, lending support to projects, and organizing meetings and exchanges between researchers across different disciplines who share a common interest in the questions generated by psychoanalysis.
Founding Members
François Ansermet is a psychoanalyst and Professor of Children’s Psychiatry at the University of Geneva, where he is the director of the University’s Department of Psychoanalysis, as well as the Chief of Services for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Geneva University’s Hospital (HUG).
Pierre Magistretti is a neurobiologist and Professor at Brain-Mind Institute at the EPFL and at the Center of Psychiatric Neurosciences, CHUV-UNIL.
Address
Fondation Agalma
Campus Biotech
Chemin des Mines 9
CH-1202 Genève
THE TEAM
Agalma is composed of an administrative core, a foundation board, a scientific board, and a group of associated researchers. Feel free to explore our dynamic, live organigram.
The Foundation is guided by a board of two members. This is the strategic centerpiece of the foundation and determines the research directions, activities in art/science, budget, administration and governance. The scientific board guides the scientific activities of the foundation in collaboration with the partners and associated researchers.
The foundation maintains a web of international researchers and correspondents. They work on diverse projects across neuroscience, philosophy, psychiatry, history, music, communication science, psychology, anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, and art.
Foundation Board
Associated Researchers
Administration and Coordination
Scientific Board
Agalma is composed of an international network of collaborators called “correspondents”. Here is the full list of Agalma correspondents (as of Spring 2018):
SEMINARS
The Agalma Foundation organizes conferences and workshops at the interdisciplinary intersection between neuroscience, psychoanalysis and art. International participants and experts from various domains are regularly invited to these conferences.
Agalma workshops provide researchers the opportunity to meet, exchange, and present their work in relation to the principle themes of research at Agalma.