The module provides an exploration of contemporary issues and debates in psychoanalytic theory and technique, focusing on some of the main post-Freudian clinical revisions that constitute the psychoanalytic imaginary of our times, but also on the development of a critical take on psychoanalytic theory.
While the clinical context is the main site of observation, the module is also committed to take psychoanalysis outside the clinic and to allow it to illuminate societal processes that mobilise our critical reflection.
The module focuses on themes such as: the relationship of the psyche and the soma, the creativity of the hysterical symptom, post-Freudian conceptions of memory and dreams, the phenomenon of submission to authority, the scene of trauma, psychic splitting, revised conceptions of the superego, innovations in psychoanalytic technique and un-represented states of mind.
The added value of the module is that is gives a special attention to lesser known, but highly consequential theoretical traditions in psychoanalysis, which offer important and productive revisions to the Freudian paradigm. The module works in a comparative manner with traditions that lie beyond the classical British object relations developments. The traditions the module draws on are the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis, the French tradition, and the American tradition. Some of the authors discussed are: Sándor Ferenczi, Michael Balint, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Lacan, Jean Laplanche, André Green, Julia Kristeva, Jessica Benjamin, Thomas Ogden.