Concepts in Psychoanalysis

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: to be confirmed
• Assessment: two 2000-word essays (50% each)

In this module we present fundamental psychoanalytic concepts drawn from the Freudian, British School and Lacanian traditions. You will gain a strong grounding in key psychoanalytic ideas and be introduced to the ways in which these ideas originated and have developed, and how they apply to social, historical and cultural issues.

Indicative syllabus

• The Freudian unconscious
• The drives: sex, aggression, life and death
• Repression and other defences
• The structure of the mind: id, ego, superego
• Oedipus, masculinity, femininity
• The principles of Object Relations Theory
• Mourning, melancholia, depression and loss
• The paranoid-schizoid position and other extremes
• Imaginary, symbolic and real in Lacanian psychoanalysis
• Interpretation and transference

By the end of this module, you will:

• understand key concepts of psychoanalysis
• be able to differentiate between psychoanalytic ideas characteristic of some of the main ‘schools’ of psychoanalysis
• be able to critically assess the significance and standing of these key concepts
• be sufficiently confident to use these concepts in further studies of psychoanalysis.