The Invention of Psychoanalysis

Undergraduate

Psychoanalysis is a critical theory of society that, confronting asocial and anti-social behavior, at first largely in women, became a science of the self that promised to explain and treat its maladies. From its earliest phases, this science and practice thought of itself as a route to human freedom, through special kinds of interactions. Along the way, it produced theories of personality, human development, drives and inhibitions, the membranes and mechanisms linking an internal space to an external space, and the possibility of an improved Mitwelt , of living together well. We read writings by early diggers in the garden of the psyche—Freud, of course, but also Klein, Ferenczi, Jung, Horney, Deutsch, Rank, and Anna Freud—to feel the possibilities they felt and to understand how the theory was constructed, taught, learned, and critically modified. We pay special attention to two aspects relevant today: narcissism and aggression, or the death drive. Our readings span the end of the 19th century, roughly to the second World War. HU W 3:30pm-6:30pm