Introductory description

EN2E8-30 Literature and Psychoanalysis

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Representative Syllabus

Week 1: General Introduction

Week 2: Trauma: the Beginnings of Psychoanalysis

1. Breuer and Freud, Studies on Hysteria (1895), in SE vol. 2 (PFL, vol. 3):
   Chap. I, “On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena: Preliminary Communications” (1893); Chap. 2, Case Histories : “Miss Lucy R,” “Katarina.”
2. Freud, “Psychopathology of Hysteria” (the Case of ‘Emma’), Project for a Scientific Psychology, Part II, sections 1-5, (1895), SE vol. 1.
3. Jean Laplanche, “Afterwardsness” in Essays on Otherness. ed. John Fletcher (London: Routledge, 1999).
4. James Joyce, “Eveline.”

Week 3: Seduction: Theory and Practice

1. Freud, “Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence” (1896), SE vol. 3.
2. John Fletcher, “Of Primal Scenes and Primal Fantasies”, from chapter 9. Freud and the Scene of Trauma (New York: Fordham University Press. 2013), pp. 220-224.
3. Sheridan Lefanu: Carmilla from In a Glass Darkly (1872), OUP, 1993. Also available as a free download.

Week 4: Sexuality and the Drives

1. Freud, “Infantile Sexuality”, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), SE 7 (On Sexuality, PFL 7).
2. Freud, “On the Sexual Theories of Children” (1908), SE 9, (On Sexuality, PFL 7).
3. Freud, Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy (“Little Hans”, 1909), SE 10 (Case Studies I, PFL 8).

Week 5: The Ego as love-object: Body Ego, Skin Ego versus ‘Reality Ego’

1. Freud, “On Narcissism” (1914), SE 14 (On Metapsychology, PFL 11).
2. Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923) SE 19.
3. “If I continue gazing” (the mirror aria), Semele (1743), G.F. Handel. (see YouTube for a range of performances of this aria).
4. Excerpt from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Narcissus and Echo
5. Short lyrics by Emily Dickinson (tba).

Week 7: Ego, Narcissism, Masochism

1. Freud, “Economic Problem of Masochism” SE 19
2. Didier Anzieu, “The Skin Ego’’, Psychoanalysis in France, ed. S. Lebovici and D. Widlocher, NY,1980.
3. Jacques Lacan “The Mirror Stage”
4. Nella Larsen, Quicksand

Week 8: Freud's Copernican Revolution and its Problems/ Laplanche’s General Theory of Primal Seduction

1. Freud, letter to Wilhelm Fliess, 21st September, 1897, The Complete Letters of Freud to Fliess: 1887-1904, ed. J.M. Masson, (Harvard U.P., 1985).
2. Letter to Fliess (on the concept of translation), 6th Dec. 1896, Freud-Fliess Letters, ed. Masson (pp. 207-9).
3. Jean Laplanche, “Towards a General Theory of Seduction”, ch. 3, New Foundations for Psychoanalysis (Basil Blackwell, 1987).
4. William Blake, "The Mental Traveller" (any edition / internet).

Weeks 9-10: Hamlet Workshop

“Hamlet Wavered for All of Us” –Emily Dickinson

Week 9:

1. Shakespeare, Hamlet.
2. Freud, extracts on Oedipus and Hamlet from The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and letter to Fliess, 15/10/’97 (ed. Masson).

Week 10

1. Jacques Lacan “Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet” in Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading: Otherwise (S. Felman, ed., Johns Hopkins UP, 1982).
2. Jean-Michel Rabaté, “Freud’s Theatre of the Unconscious: Oedipus, Hamlet, and ‘Hamlet’” in J. M. Rabaté, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis (Cambridge UP, 2014) (available as e-book through our library portal).

TERM 2

Week 1: Interpreting Dreams

1. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), (SE 4 and 5, PFL 4), chapters 2, 3,4, 6 (sections A, B, C, D, H, and I) and 7 (C-F).

Weeks 2-3: “Wolfman Workshop”

Week 2: Freud, “From the History of an Infantifle Neurosis” (aka “The Wolfman”); SE 17.

Week 3:
Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonomy, (preceded by “Fors: The Anglish Words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok).
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Plateau 2: 1914: One or Several Wolves?” in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (available as e-text through library portal).

Week 4: The Permutations of Fantasy

1. Freud, “A Case of Paranoia Running Counter to the Psychoanalytic Theory of the Disease” (1915), SE vol.14 (On Psychopathology, PFL 10).
2. Freud, “‘A Child is Being Beaten’: A Contribution to the Study of the Origin of Sexual Perversions” (1919), SE 17 (On Psychopathology, PFL, 10, SE 17).
3. Anna Freud, “Beating Fantasies and Daydreams” (1922), in The Writings of Anna Freud, vol.1, 1922-35, London: The Hogarth Press, 1974.
4. Laplanche and Pontalis, “Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality.”
5. James Joyce, “An Encounter.”

Week 5: Gender and Sexuality (1)

1. Freud, S. [1925], ‘Some psychical consequence of the anatomical distinction between the sexes,’ SE 19.
2. Freud, S. [1932], ‘Femininity’ in “New Introductory Lectures,” SE 22.
3. Mitchell, J. [1974] from Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Chapter 1: Freud: the Making of a Lady (1), pp. 5-91
4. Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

Week 7: Gender and Sexuality (2)

1. Freud, “A special type of object choice made by men,” SE 11.
2. Freud, “Fetishism,” SE 21.
3. Jacques Lacan, “The Signification of the Phallus.”
4. Samuel Beckett, “First Love”

Week 8: Gender and Fantasy

1. Joan Riviere, J. [1929], ‘Womanliness as Masquerade’ in International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. (pp303-313) (available on PEP).
2. D. W. Winnicott, “Creativity and its Origins” from Playing and Reality (PEP)
3. Butler, J. from Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Chapter 2: ‘Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix’ (available as e-book).
   Leo Bersani, ‘Sociability & Cruising from Is the Rectum a Grave? (U. of Chicago Press, 2010).
   Poems by John Wieners and Frank O’Hara (handout).

Week 9: Psychoanalysis and the Non-European (1)

1. Freud, Moses and Monotheism: Three Essays (SE 23);
2. Edward Said, Freud and the Non-European (Verso, 2014).

Week 10: Psychoanalysis and the Non-European (2):

1. Frantz Fanon, “Algeria Unveiled” and excerpts from Black Skin, White Masks
2. Diana Fuss, “Interior Colonies: Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Identification,” Diacritics vol. 24, 2/3, 1994: PP. 19-42.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate an advanced and detailed critical understanding of some of the core concepts of psychoanalytic theory and its key figures.
• Conceptualise and draft an extended research paper investigating issues raised by the module, based on a topic that the students construct themselves in consultation with tutor.
• Develop the ability to read narratives, statements, and events in light of the psychoanalytic concept of the symptom, with clear comprehension of the historical evolution of analytic categories, and differing and competing models of understanding within the discipline.
• Understand the political implications of the mobilisation of unconscious desires in the creation and maintenance of oppressive and exploitative political and bureaucratic structures, and be able to apply this understanding to specific examples from their daily experience.
• Acquire an awareness of specific texts, figures, and debates in current criticism of psychoanalysis as an intellectual discipline, as well as their historical evolution.

Indicative reading list

see syllabus

Subject specific skills

-Demonstrate an advanced critical understanding of some of the core concepts of psychoanalytic theory and its key figures, as well as of how the discipline of psychoanalysis can be used to read literary and broader cultural texts.
-Develop an advanced analytic and symptomatic mode of reading of texts, with special attention to the manifestation of unconscious desires and structures of meaning, and how these interact with specific cultural and historical formations.
-Develop the ability to read cultural texts for unacknowledged and disavowed fantasy structures, and to understand the political implications of the mobilisation of unconscious desires in the creation and maintenance of oppressive and exploitative bureaucratic and political structures. Develop an ability to apply these ideas to examples from daily life.

Transferable skills

-Conceptualise and write an extended research paper on a topic devised by student in discussion with tutor, using secondary sources in appropriate fashion; contribute critical readings and interpretations to seminar discussion; engage with peers in seminar discussion.