Post-Freud

This course examines movements in psychoanalysis that are considered to be post-Freudian or post-Freud. It begins considering Freud’s cultural and historical surround, the wartime diaspora of the European psychoanalytic community, and their repercussions for Freudian thought. The course then focuses on significant theories and schools of psychoanalysis that have emerged from the mid 20th century to the present. Through readings of key texts and selected case studies, it explores theorists’ challenges to classical thought and technique, and their reconfigurations, modernizations, and total rejections of key Freudian ideas. The course concludes by looking at contemporary theorists’ moves to integrate notions of culture, concepts of trauma, and findings from neuroscience into the psychoanalytic frame.