Psychoanalysis

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 6

This module introduces key concepts of psychoanalysis, spread across Freudian, Kleinian, Winnicottian and Lacanian approaches.

The module presents an introduction to psychoanalytic theories and will take an eclectic approach towards the various psychoanalytic traditions. We will work thematically to cover key psychoanalytic concepts and will read psychoanalytic authors in a critical and historical context, continually exploring the ideological and social implications of psychoanalytic theory, as well as addressing the clinical context.

Indicative module content

• Fundamental Freudian Concepts: the unconscious and repression; psychic defences; drives and objects; the Oedipus complex; transference; the psychic life of the group; sexuality and sexual difference; dream interpretation; the case history; and hysteria, among others
• The Kleinian Story: fantasy; the death drive, envy and destructiveness; paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions;  guilt and reparation
• D. W. Winnicott and Object Relations: the maternal environment and the good enough mother; the transitional object and space; and play and creativity
• Lacanian Provocations: language; sexual difference and the subject; and the imaginary, symbolic and real
• Critical Responses to Psychoanalysis: feminist, queer and postcolonial readings and revisions of psychoanalysis