Politics and the Psyche from Sigmund Freud to Donald Trump

This combined lecture/discussion course explores the relation between politics and the emotions from Sigmund Freud’s discovery of the unconscious in Vienna around 1900 to the rise of populist and anti-democratic politics in the United States and Europe today. Historical knowledge generally focuses on civilizations, societies, systems, and events as they move, evolve, and transform through time. Psychoanalytic knowledge added the inner, mental (psychic) lives of people and cultures. Psychoanalysis redefined the humanities, the social sciences, and their relationships, paving the way as well for new approaches such as gender and sexuality studies. We will focus on the role of psychoanalysis as a political science, attuned to the modes of mass and media politics of the 20th and 21st centuries.