PSP Courses

Spring '10

PSP 760/ILA790
Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory
Gilman, Levy
W 10:40 to 12:30
Memorial Rich room
The course will emphasize the correlation between the development of psychoanalytic theory and practice.  Beginning with Freud we will read both the theoretical writing and the case studies.  Co-taught with Ralph Roughton , Director, Institute of Psychoanalysis.  Readings will be posted weekly on the Blackboard site. The first meeting will be WED JAN 13.


WS 585/PSP790
Wilson
The  Affective Turn: A User’s Guide to Silvan Tomkins
W 2-5:00, Max: 12
(Permission required from the Dept. of Women's Studies.)

Content:  There has been enormous interest in recent years in the emotions. The so-called “affective turn” is evident in a wide variety of disciplines: philosophy, literary criticism, psychology, psychoanalysis, the neurosciences and even computer science. Researchers have been interested in how affective dynamics can reinvigorate our theories of text, mind and matter. This course will focus on one key figure in this turn to affect: the psychologist Silvan S. Tomkins. His work draws on physiological data, evolutionary theories, psychological experimentation, biography, clinical anecdote, and textual analysis to generate one of the most important and comprehensive accounts of affect in the twentieth century. His writing has been particularly invigorating for humanities scholars who wish to follow the dynamics of emotionality in our own work and in the texts that we love and critique. We will read selections from Tomkins’ four volume major work Affect, Imagery, Consciousness. This work will be contextualized within the broader politics of the affective turn (e.g., the Deleuzian uses of affect; the value of empirical data for humanities scholarship; and the role of clinical data in critical analysis). Preliminary Reading:  Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, and Adam Frank. 1995. Shame in the cybernetic fold: Reading Silvan Tomkins. In Shame and its sisters: A Silvan Tomkins reader, ed. Eve K. Sedgwick and Adam Frank, 1–28. Durham: Duke University Press.
Requirements:  Written papers; class participation; no exam.

Fall '09

PSP 789R
Affect, Attachment, Intersubjectivity
Wilson
T 1-4, location TBA

Cross-listed with WS 585-02P
(Permission required from the Dept. of Women's Studies.)  

Content: In recent decades a new breed of psychodynamic and psychological theory has emerged that takes affect, attachment and intersubjectivity as its primary concerns. This work grew out of both clinical experience and the psychological laboratory, and it is now becoming increasingly relevant for feminist and queer scholarship.  This course will introduce students to these new psychological theories and how they might be used in research on sexuality. We will begin with psychodynamic research (Freud, Ferenczi, Klein, Winnicott, Bowlby), focusing on the early concerns with affect, attachment and intersubjectivity that have been forgotten in non-clinical uses of psychoanalytic theory.  We will also examine the more empirically oriented, and no less conceptually galvanizing, research in infant development.  The course will then look specifically at how this work can be used in critical scholarship on sexuality (intimate publics, pedophilia, adolescent and child sexuality).
 
Texts:
   1. Graddol, David and Swann, Joan. 1989. Gender Voices. Blackwell.
   2. Tannen, Deborah. 2001. You Just don't Understand: Women and men in conversation. Harper.
   3. Cameron, Deborah and Kulick, Don. 2006. Language and Sexuality Reader. Rutledge.
   4. Articles on electronic reserve.

Requirements:  Students will be expected to engage in scholarly discussion of the topics and readings as well as create and carry out their own research projects. Grading will be based on class participation, weekly journal entries, and a final research paper.  

Spring '09

P. Rudnytsky
Philip Roth and Psychoanalysis

Cross listed with Comparative Literature

This course will explore the conjunction between Roth and psychoanalysis from a variety of standpoints: the depiction of psychoanalysis in Roth’s fictions, a psychoanalytic study of the works themselves, and a consideration of the possible connections between Roth’s life and his art.  Among the texts likely to be read are: Goodbye, Columbus, Portnoy’s Complaint, My Life as a Man, The Counterlife, The Facts, Sabbath’s Theater, I Married a Communist, The Dying Animal, and Exit Ghost.  Ancillary sources will include accounts of Roth by his analyst, Hans J. Kleinschmidt, his lover, Janet Hobhouse, and his ex-second wife, Claire Bloom.  Course requirements include active participation in class discussions and a substantial seminar paper.

For a list of courses which count towards the PSP certificate, click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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