PSP 760 - Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Comparative Theories of Clinical Psychoanalysis

Noëlle McAfee with Stefanie Speanburg

Thursdays 6:00-8:30pm

This seminar will introduce students and candidates to basic concepts in Freudian theory; the various schools of thought and techniques that have proliferated in the 100-plus years since, including ego psychology, object relations theory, contemporary relational theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic feminism; and clinical technique associated with each school of thought. For most sessions, we will devote the first half of each class to the close reading and interrogation of psychoanalytic theory. The last half  of each class will be an opportunity to observe the ways in which clinical material demonstrates the theories discussed. Most sessions will feature guest speakers, about half of whom are practicing analysts and the other half being scholars of the various psychoanalytic schools. Some are both. The goals of the seminar are (1) to introduce students to basic psychoanalytic concepts, (2) to familiarize them with the plurality of approaches that have been developed and employed since Freud, (3) to help them peer into the clinic of each of the various approaches, and (4) to help students find and develop their own psychoanalytic point of view. While this is a required course for the certificate in the Psychoanalytic Studies Program and for first year candidates in the Emory University Psychoanalytic Institute, all PhD students in the Laney Graduate School, including those not pursuing the certificate, are welcome.

Required Texts:

Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black, Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought, updated with a new introduction (New York: Basic Books, 2016).

Other readings available on Canvas or via the PEP archive, a database available through the Emory libraries. For the first meeting, students should read part one of Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (all three parts are in volumes XV and XVI of the Standard Edition). You can find the entirety of the Standard Edition of Freud's work in the PEP database of the Emory Libraries. These are rather long, so please give yourself plenty of time. 

Recommended: 

Anthony Elliott, Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction, Third Edition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

PSP 789-1 - Ethnography of Mind and Experience (cross-listed with ANT 585)

Chikako Ozawa-de Silva

Tuesdays 2:40-5:40pm

This graduate seminar explores current ethnographic work on issues of mental well-being and mental illness in cross-cultural perspective, with a focus on global mental health, subjectivity, identity and selfhood, morality, disability, embodiment, and contemplative practice. This seminar is especially appropriate for, but not limited to, individuals interested in psychological and psychiatric anthropology. In recent years, anthropologists have been increasingly interested in exploring agency and internal subjective experience in addition to and in relation to social, political and economic structures. We will critically engage selected monographs to examine what these authors successfully accomplished from their ethnographic methods and conceptual approaches, and where they encountered limitations and challenges. The format of the seminar will include: (1) weekly presentations that are led by one or two students; (2) weekly responses to the class discussion and presentation from the previous week; (3) a final paper on an approved topic. 

PSP 789-2 - Revolutionary Perversions: Literature, Sexuality, Anachrony (cross-listed with CPLT 751R)

Elissa Marder

Wednesdays 1:00-4:00pm

In this course, we shall examine how representations of “non-normative” sexuality in several major nineteenth-century works relate to the problem of representing history in the aftermath of the French revolution.  Many of the most famous canonical literary texts written in French prior to 1871 include references to impotence, lesbianism, hysteria, cross dressing, bestiality, masturbation and prostitution in the context of narratives that re-write or un-write the legacy of the French revolution. By focusing on the literary treatment of these “perverse” forms of sexuality, we shall attempt to see how they encourage us to think differently about questions of historical transmission, language, gender, and sovereignty. Possible texts include: La Philosophie dans le boudoir (Sade), René (Chateaubriand), Ourika, Mme de Duras, Armance (Stendhal), Le Père Goriot and La Fille aux yeux d’or (Balzac), L’Education sentimentale (Flaubert), “Le Secret de l’Echafaud” (Villiers de L’Isle-Adam), and selections from Baudelaire’s prose poems. Critical readings may include works by Freud, Marx, Benjamin, Blanchot, Daniel Arasse, Derrida, and others. 

The course will be taught in English although we will focus on the works in the original French texts.  Reading knowledge of French recommended but not required as (almost) all of the works are available in translation. 

PSP 789-3 - Ideologies of Theory (cross-listed with FREN 780)

Claire Nouvet

Tuesdays 1:00-4:00pm

This course will focus on Laplanche’s reevaluation and extension of Freud’s “seduction theory,” an extension that allows him to propose an original interpretation of the Freudian corpus.  As we shall see, Laplanche’s “generalized” theory of seduction affirms the primacy of the other against a certain theoretical self-centering, and proposes new understandings of key notions such as: 1) the unconscious and its genesis 2) repression 3) the drives 4) time (the temporality of “Nachträglichkeit” or “afterwardsness” in Laplanche’s reformulation) 5) gender 6) trauma.  

The course will be entirely online.  

Texts may include: 

Freud:  

• “Aetiology of Hysteria”  
• “The Hysterical Proton Pseudos” in Project for a Scientific    Psychology 
• Three Essays on Sexuality  
• Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood  

Laplanche:  

• New Foundations for Psychoanalysis 
• Essays on Otherness [selections] 
• Freud and the Sexual [selections] 
• Life and Death in Psychoanalysis [selections] 
• The Unconscious and the Id [selections] 

PSP 789-4 - Feminism and Deconstruction (cross-listed with WGS585) 

Elizabeth Wilson

Mondays 1:00-4:00pm

What happens when we deconstruct a text, a theory, or an identity? What does it mean to say “there is no outside-text” (il n'y a pas de hors-texte)?  What are the critical effects of putting something “under erasure”?  What is at work in Derrida’s infamous neologism différance?  This course in an introduction to the logics and methodology of deconstruction and their implications for feminist and queer readers. The course will begin with close readings of early texts by Derrida (e.g., Of Grammatology, “Différance”, “Freud and the Scene of Writing”) and will examine key hinge terms generated by his deconstructive readings: writing, gram, trace, pharmakon, différance.  The course will then investigate how this work has been taken up by influential feminist and queer readers (e.g., Judith Butler, Penelope Deutscher, Lee Edelman, Barbara Johnson, Vicki Kirby, Gayatri Spivak).  Students will emerge from this course with a proficiency in the methodology of deconstruction and an understanding of the scope of deconstruction's influence on feminist and queer theory.

Set readings

All reading will be available on Canvas and on Course Reserves in Woodruff Library