Traumatophilia: Notes on Libidinal Fugitivity with Avgi Saketopoulou, Psy.D.
This seminar explores how trauma, rather than simply fracturing the psyche, can open pathways for transformation. Dr. Saketopoulou introduces the concept of traumatophilia—an alternative to repetition compulsion that focuses on what subjects do with their trauma, rather than how to resolve it. In this framework, returning to the site of trauma becomes a space of potential, a complex psychic zone where agency and constraint coexist. Using the enduring trauma of slavery and racism as a central case, this lecture challenges traumatophobic approaches and highlights how psychoanalysis must confront its own entanglements with racial violence.
We will explore…
Jean Laplanche’s metapsychological insights on how trauma can be revisited in transformative, rather than retraumatizing, ways
The concept of passibility—a state of openness to being affected—as central to working with trauma
A rethinking of trauma through the lens of traumatophilia, which emphasizes the subject’s creative and conflicted relationship to their wounds
The psychic terrain of limit consent, where constraint and freedom co-exist in complex, generative tension
The role of desire and repetition in navigating racialized trauma and historical violence
How traumatophilia shifts our clinical attention from “resolving” trauma to engaging the subject's ongoing negotiation with it
Ways in which traditional psychoanalytic frames may unconsciously reinforce racial harm—and how alternative frameworks can resist this
Learning objectives:
Attendees will be able to discuss why notions of healing trauma and of repairing wounds is but one epistemological paradigm around trauma work
Attendees will be able to list two ways in which a traumatophobic sensibility short-circuits clinical thinking
Attendees will be able to show how traumatophobia is rooted in white logics and explain why a commitment to anti-racism benefits from a capacity to thinking traumatophilically
Attendees will be able to list two ways in which traumatophilia opens up new paths for thinking and working with trauma, including racial trauma
Attendees will be able to explain how traumatophilia bears on notions of psychic
freedom and psychic agencyAttendees will be able to compare the different models of the unconscious anchoring
traumatophobia as opposed to the one undergirding traumatophilia
Format
We’d love for you to join us for this virtual seminar with Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou, Psy.D. on Friday, September 26th, 2025 from 1:00pm to 4:00pm PST. Registrants will receive a link to join 24-hours prior to the event.