Fall 2019
REQUISITE COURSES:
PSP 760 - Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Comparative Theories of Clinical Psychoanalysis
Noëlle McAfee with Stefanie Speanburg
T 6-9
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 90 minutes of each class to the close reading and interrogation of psychoanalytic theory. The last 75 minutes 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 second 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:
Anthony Elliott, Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction, Third Edition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
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.
ELECTIVE COURSES:
PSP 789-001 - Freud for the Liberal Arts
Robert Paul
T 1-4pm
Freud created the theory and technique of psychoanalysis on the basis of his clinical treatment of the so-called "transference neuroses", that is, hysteria, phobia, and obsessional neurosis. It was not long, however, before this highly educated and well-read man turned his psychoanalytic gaze onto a wide range of human phenomena besides the neuroses. Among the topics to which he turned his attention were such fields as art, literature, anthropology, social critique, biography, everyday life, jokes, humor, creativity, and many more. Rather than dealing with Freud's well-known writings on clinical topics, his case studies, or his essays on aspects of psychology more generally, this course will instead focus on reading (some of) the very extensive and varied corpus of Freud's contributions to what used to be called "applied psychoanalysis" but which may more accurately be described as "psychoanalysis and the liberal arts".
Cross-listed with CMBC 700, CPLT 752, ENG 789, PHIL 789, REL 700R
Required Texts:
Readings will be available online via PEP Web.
PSP 789-002 - The Work of Memory
Angelika Bammer
T 1-4PM
This course will review some of the key texts and concepts in the emerging field of Memory Studies, with particular emphasis on the connections (and tensions) between history (what happened) and memory (what is remembered and how). In this context, we will explore some of the terms in which memory is talked about, including the distinctions between public, collective, social or cultural, memory, on the one hand, and private, personal, or autobiographical, memory, on the other hand. We will consider the political, ethical, social, aesthetic, and psychological dimensions of remembering - and its counterpart, forgetting - and consider some of the ways in which perspectives and approaches from the field of Memory Studies might offer useful analytic and hermeneutic tools for our work. Along the way, we will attend to some of the ways that the humanities and the natural sciences approach the study of memory differently to ask if and how dialogue across these fields can be generative.
Texts:
1. Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 0-521-27093-6
2. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. Hackett Publishing Co. ISBN: 0-915144-94-8
3. Loraux, Nicole. Mothers in Mourning. Cornell University Press. ISBN: 0-8014-8242-9
4. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 0-226-11596-8
5. Schachter, Daniel. Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past. Basic Books.ISBN: 0-465-07552-5
Recommended: Terdiman, Richard. Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis. Cornell University Press. ISBN: 0-8014-8132-5
Particulars:
Weekly responses to readings (in either analytical or creative form).
A semester project will identify a problem in the field of Memory Studies of particular relevance to each student’s research interests. Students will select materials and methods conducive to an exploration of this problem and choose a meaningful form in which to present their findings.
Cross-listed with CPLT 751 and HIST 585
PSP 789-003 - Fictions of Photography
Elissa Marder
T 1-4PM
Content: Since its invention in 1839, photography has been a source of fascination, reflection, inspiration, and revulsion for many nineteenth and twentieth century thinkers and writers. Because the medium of photography has the capacity to record images that are not available to the naked eye and to preserve and repeat them indefinitely, photography has given rise to many powerful written reflections about mourning, memory, time, history, fantasy, ghosts, death, and desire. In this course, we will examine a selection of literary, philosophical, and theoretical texts to help us think about how photographic writing affects our understanding of images, events, the imagination, and history.
Texts: Readings may include literary works by: Baudelaire, Balzac, Champfleury, Maupassant, Nadar, Edgar Allan Poe, Rodenbach, Villiers de L'Isle Adam, Proust, Cixous, and Marguerite Duras and philosophical/critical works by Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, and Jacques Derrida.
Particulars: TBA
PSP 789-004 - Literature on the Alert
Claire Nouvet
W 4:15-7:15
Content: To be on the alert implies not only foreboding in the face of danger, but also vigilance, an awakening of sorts, a warning even. Literature can be on the alert in all of those senses insofar as it is attentive to a "mal," an affliction, that confronts language to its very limits. As we shall see, the poetry of the troubadours alerts us to the presence of "something" that, as Lacan pointed ou, is not an object, but something else entirely and much more terrifying, which turns poetry into an infinite address and romances into an endless quest. Elevated through idealization or degraded into comical obscenity, this "something" can also make its presence felt as an enigmatic sickness, a devestating malaise at the core of the literaary space. As it attends to these afflictions, literature can become a strange wake-up call that breaks through everyday slumber to transmit what Julien Gracq called "something like a far-away alarm."
Texts:
--Troubadours (selections
--Guillaume de Lorris: Le roman de la rose
--Chrétien de Troyes: Perceval ou le Conte du Graal
--Villon (selections)
--Robert Desnos: A la mystérieuse
--Gracq: Le rivage des syrtes
--Lacan: Ethique de la psychoanalyse (selections)
Cross-listed with FREN 770