School of Philosophy and Art History 2011-2012

SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY AND ART HISTORY 2011-2012

Module Description, Reading List and Essay Questions

PSYCHOANALYSIS, SYMBOLISM AND THE UNCONSCIOUS (PY504-6-AU)

(15 credits) – Autumn Term only

Peter Dews Office No. 5B.123

This is a final year (Level 6) module. It is open to outside option students, but only with the Module Supervisor`s permission.

The School would like to encourage any student with a disability that needs to be taken into account to contact the Student Support Office, either by email on , or by telephoning internal ext. 2365 or 3444.

Assessment

Assessment is by means of one (2-3,000 word) essay and a two-hour examination at the end of the year.

The coursework mark and the examination mark each count for 50% of the mark for the module.

Students who submit their essay by the deadline and receive a minimum mark of 35, may if they wish submit a second (optional) essay. If an optional essay is submitted the best essay mark will count towards the final coursework mark.

The University operates a uniform Coursework Deadline policy on late submission of coursework: each piece of coursework must be submitted by the deadline published by the department in order to gain a mark. Work which is submitted after the deadline will be given a mark of zero. For further information on the submission of coursework and essay deadlines please see the list of essay questions/assignments and Philosophy’s ‘Undergraduate Student Handbook 2011-2012’. The handbook also contains information regarding late submission of coursework.

Module Outline

One of the central claims made by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, was that phenomena such as dreams and neurotic symptoms, which had often been dismissed as meaningless, could be understood in symbolic terms. According to Freud, these structures possess an existential meaning of which the subject is usually unaware. This module begins by examining Freud`s theory of symbols, especially in relation to dreams and symptoms, in the context of his thinking about the nature of the mind.

The module goes on to explore debates about the symbolic in subsequent psychoanalytic thinkers such as Erich Fromm, Charles Rycroft and Melanie Klein. We will then compare the differing versions of the claim that human beings inhabit a symbolic world or a symbolic order made by the neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer and the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Finally, we will assess Lacan’s critique of Klein. Throughout, we will be bearing in mind the following range of issues: the supposedly `archaic` character of symbols; the connection between symbolism and the unconscious; the symbol as a means of containing anxiety; the relation between the real, the imaginary and the symbolic; the tension between symbolic thinking and modern rationality.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the module students should have:

clear understanding of what is distinctive about Freud`s psychoanalytic theory of symbolism;
an awareness of the role which the interpretation of symbols plays in psychoanalytic treatment;
an understanding of the theoretical issues raised by contrasting psychoanalytic approaches to the nature of symbols;
a sense of the development of psychoanalytic theory through the work of three major figures: Freud, Klein and Lacan;
an ability to make connections between philosophical and psychoanalytical approaches to symbolism;
the ability to pose critical questions concerning the philosophy of symbolism, and about the relation between symbolic thinking and other forms of thinking.

By the end of the module, students shouldalso have acquired a set of transferable skills, and in particular be able to:

define the task in which they are engaged and exclude what is irrelevant;
seek and organise the most relevant discussions and sources of information;
process a large volume of diverse and sometimes conflicting arguments;
compare and evaluate different arguments and assess the limitations of their own position or procedure;
write and present verbally a succinct and precise account of positions, arguments, andtheir presuppositions and implications;
be sensitive to the positions of others and communicate their own views in ways that are accessible to them;
think 'laterally' and creatively- see interesting connections and possibilities and present these clearly rather than as vague hunches;
maintain intellectual flexibility and revise their own position if shown wrong;
think critically and constructively.

Autumn Term

Week 1: Freshers’ Week

Week 2: Freud’s Theory of the Mind

Required reading: Sigmund Freud, ‘Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 12; Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis’, Standard Edition, vol. 11; ‘An Outline of Psychoanalysis’, Standard Edition, vol. 23.

Further reading: Jonathan Lear, Freud (Routledge, 2005); Richard Wollheim, Freud (Fontana, 1991); Joseph Sandler, et al., Freud’s Models of the Mind (Karnac 1997); Anthony Storr, Freud: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2001).

Week 3:Freud’s Theory of Dream Symbolism

Required Reading: Freud: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Standard Edition, vol.15-16, chs 6-14; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, ch. 29, Standard Edition, vol. 22.

Further Reading: Lear, Freud, ch. 3 (‘The Interpretation of Dreams’); James Hopkins, ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’, ch. 3 in Jerome Neu (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Freud (CUP, 1991);

Week 4: Psychoanalytic Critiques of Freud’s Theory of Symbolism

Required Reading Freud: Erich Fromm, The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths (London: Gollancz, 1952); Charles Rycroft, The Innocence of Dreams(OUP, 1981)

Further Reading: C. G. Jung, ‘General Aspects of Dream Psychology’, in Jung, Dreams (Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1982 – republished as an ARK paperback); Freud, ‘The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales’, Standard Edition, col. 12; Freud, ‘The Theme of the Three Caskets’, Standard Edition.vol. 12; Bruno Bettelheim, ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, in The Uses of Enchantment (Penguin, 1991), Part II (‘In Fairy Land’); Adam Phillips, ‘In Your Dreams’ [interpreting ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’]at:

Week 5: Melanie Klein and the move to ‘Object Relations’

Required Reading: Melanie Klein, ‘A Contribution of the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States’ and ‘Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States’, in in Juliet Mitchell (ed.), The Selected Melanie Klein (Peregrine, 1986).

Further Reading: Hanna Segal, Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein (London: Heinemann, 1962); Julia Kristeva, Melanie Klein (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Robert Hinshelwood, A Dictionary of Kleinian Thouugh (London: Free Associations Press, 1989).

Week 6: Melanie Klein: The Death-Drive, Anxiety and the Genesis of Symbolism

Required Reading: Melanie Klein, ‘Early Stages of the Oedipus Complex’ and ‘The Importance of Symbol Formation in the Development of the Ego’, in Juliet Mitchell (ed.), The Selected Melanie Klein (Peregrine, 1986).

Further reading: Hannah Segal, ‘Notes on Symbol Formation’, in The Work of Hannah Segal: A Kleinian Approach to Clinical Practice (Free Association Books, 1986).

Week 7: Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms

Required reading: Ernst Cassirer,Language and Myth (Dover, 1946), Cassirer. An Essay on Man:An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture (Yale University Press, 1944), chs 2-3, and 7-8.

Futher reading: Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Vol. II, Mythical Thought (Yale University Press, 1955), Part I: ‘Myth as a Form of Thought’; Jürgen Habermas, ‘The Liberating Power of Symbols’, in The Liberating Power of Symbols: Philosophical Essays (Polity Press, 2001); John Michael Krois, Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History (Yale University Press, 1987); Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, The Notebooks on Primitive Mentality, (Blackwell, 1975).

Week 8: READING WEEK – no lecture/class unless notified otherwise by Peter Dews

Week 9: Introduction to Lacan: the ‘imaginary’

Required reading: Jacques Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’; ‘The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis:Introduction and Part I’, in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English (New York, W. W. Norton, 2006),.

Further reading: Alain Vanier, Lacan (Other Press, 2000); Elizabeth Grosz, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction (Routledge, 1990); Macolm Bowie, Lacan (Fontana); Peter Dews, Logics of Disintegration (Verso 2007), ch. 2 (‘Jacques Lacan: A Philosophical Rethinking of Freud’).

Week 10: Introduction to Lacan: the ‘symbolic’ and the ‘real’

Required Reading: Jacques Lacan, ‘The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis’, parts II and III.

Further reading: Juan-David Nasio, Five Lesson on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Lacan (SUNY Press, 1998); Peter Dews, ‘Imagination and the Symbolic: Castoriadis and Lacan’, Constellations, vol. 9, no. 4, 2002; Claude Lévi-Strauss, ‘The Efficacity of Symbols’ in Structural Anthropology (Penguin, 1972)

Week 11: Lacan’s critique of Klein

Required reading: Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, vol. 1:Freud’s Papers on Technique (1953-54) (Norton, 1988), chs VI and VII.

Further reading: Julia Kristeva, ‘The Immanence of Symbolism and its Degrees’, ch. XIII, and ‘Envy and Gratitude of Lacan’, ch. X., section 4, in Julia Kristeva, Melanie Klein (Columbia University Press, 2001); Bernard Burgone and Mary Sullivan (eds), The Klein-LacanDialogues (Rebus Press, 1997); Bruce Fink, Richard Feldstein and Maire Jaanus (eds), Reading Seminars I and II (SUNY Press, 1996)

Summer Term

Week 30: Revision session

PREPARATORY READING

Those wishing to do some preparatory reading over the summer should read as much as possible of Freud`s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.

SET TEXTS

Sigmund Freud, ‘Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953-74), vol. 12; Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis’, Standard Edition, vol. 11; ‘An Outline of Psychoanalysis’, Standard Edition, vol. 23; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Standard Edition, vol.15-16, chs 6-14; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, ch. 29, Standard Edition, vol. 22; ‘The Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words’, in Standard Edition, vol. 11; ‘The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales’, Standard Edition, col. 12; ‘The Theme of the Three Caskets’, Standard Edition.vol. 12. [The Standard Edition was reprinted by Vintage in paperback format in 2001; various other individual editions of these set texts are available.]

Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth (Dover, 1946):An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture (Yale UP, 1944)

Erich Fromm, The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths (London: Gollancz, 1952)

Melanie Klein, ‘A Contribution of the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States’, ‘Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States’ and ‘The Importance of Symbol Formation in the Development of the Ego’, in Juliet Mitchell (ed.), The Selected Melanie Klein (Peregrine, 1986).

Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, vol. 1:Freud’s Papers on Technique (1953-54) (Norton, 1988), chs VI and VII; ‘The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis’, in Écrits: the first complete edition in English (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006).

Charles Rycroft,The Innocence of Dreams (Oxford: OUP, 1981)