15th November 2025 Lecture

Ultima Thule - the Zeitgeist, the Wheel of Fortune and mimesis and alterity. Where is psychoanalytic psychotherapy heading? -  Marica Rytovaara 

To be held online from 10.00am to 12.00noon on Saturday 15th November 2025, by Zoom. Attendance is free of charge for all FPC members and will count as 2 hours CPD. The lecture will not be recorded. To book a place please email admin@thefpc.org.uk 

Janet Malcolm called psychoanalysis an impossible profession in the New Yorker in 1980. I want to explore why we are still ardent disciples.

Ultima Thule is the Nordic equivalence of Cavafy’s Ithaca, cited at graduations to launch psychotherapists on their professional journeys. Ultima Thule is the ultimate unknown and the therapist/hero’s journey is at best filled with curiosity and creativity, though the shadow aspects can be hubris and omnipotence.

I invite the weary analytic sojourner to rest in ‘a mental posthouse’ to contemplate the impacts of the Zeitgeist, the capricious Wheel of Fortune and mimesis and alterity.

The Zeitgeist, according to the French philosopher, Tristan Garcia focuses on the search for ‘the life intense’ and primaveraism where only the high of the first encounter matters. Our Zeitgeist seems to align with the restlessness and temporality of the puer archetype, though James Hillman adds another perspective; that adolescence is not merely a developmental phase but runs through our lives as an undercurrent of transformation.

The interplay between mimesis (sameness, similarity) and alterity (difference) have been the leitmotif in my practice and writing. In times of rapid paradigm shifts and chaos, mimetic huddles offer temporary respite but lead to ‘othering’ and splits. We encounter the deep longing both in ourselves and in our patients for maternal containers where we can be deeply understood in all our mimetic and alteric aspects, but have to in the end face the disillusionment that Ultimate Thule remains an unobtainable shimmering mirage. The talk will be illustrated by clinical vignettes.

Marica Rytovaara is a Training Analyst for the SAP, and the Tavistock and IPCAPA Doctoral Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy trainings and she continues to supervise and consult in the NHS where she worked for many years as a Consultant in Adolescent Psychotherapy in an adolescent inpatient unit. She is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Analytical Psychology and won the Fordham prize in 2011.She also works in private practice in North London.