The Freud Museum presents the book launch symposium for Raluca Soreanu's monograph The Psychic Life of Fragments: On Splitting and the Experience of Time in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2026). This evening event brings together leading contemporary psychoanalytic thinkers to explore Soreanu's groundbreaking rethinking of trauma and psychic fragmentation from the psychoanalytic clinic.
Drawing on Sándor Ferenczi's trauma theory, Soreanu develops an original vocabulary of fractures, splits, atomisations, pulverisations and psychic dematerialisation, alongside new formations, protective membranes and expansions. Through clinical and literary vignettes, she articulates what she calls a "minor psychoanalysis"—one emerging from the intersection of a psychoanalysis of scars, organs, events and a blue psychoanalysis. The work speaks to clinicians, trainees, mental health practitioners working with trauma, and psychoanalytic thinkers seeking new frameworks for understanding how psychic fragments are not detritus but active agents in memory and repair.
The symposium will be introduced and moderated by Lizaveta van Munsteren, with contributions from Raluca Soreanu and guest speakers including Patricia Gherovici, Katie Gentile, Matt Ffytche, Lisa Baraitser, Jakob Staberg, Laura Salisbury and Julianna Pusztai. The event runs from 6:00pm to 8:00pm, followed by a wine and canapés reception.
