HUM 3.10 Freud: Psychoanalysis, Literature and the Case Study
In this class, we will explore the key clinical case studies of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), whose discovery of the unconscious radically impacted modern knowledge. What we now talk about today in terms of trauma, the enduring impact of childhood, slips of the tongue, and the interpretability of dreams we largely owe to what initially occurred in these remarkable cases. And then some: there is still so much left unexplored in these cases which challenge our received ideas about perception, agency, and historical truth. Just as we also find in literary depictions, these case studies show us human beings who in moments of surprise discover how they continually find themselves caught up in ingenious traps of their own design. In the words of patients like Dora, the Ratman, little Hans and the Wolfman, we witness how subjects trivialize the most important decisions of their lives, how they act in ways that are not fully worked out in consciousness, how they run into the same problems, repeat the same love affairs with different partners, and take the same detours at first away from, and then toward, their greatest desires and fears. Alongside Freud’s case studies, we will also read literary stories and poems in the manner of psychoanalysts, including works by Kafka, Shakespeare, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Marlene Haushofer, and Sophocles. Along the way, we seek to answer some vital questions: Why is sex decisive for meaning–and for the ways in which sense breaks down? How does the unconscious articulate the truth of politics? How are each of us, in our singular experience of life’s difficulties, constructed precisely like a poem?
Department-Specific Course Categories
Humanities