Seminar Leaders: L. Barton, M.J. Esplen, L. Fleischer, T. Gofine, C. Levitt, S. Moore, K. Schneider and M. Vallabhaneni
Course Description
These seminars build on the topographical model of the Interpretation of Dreams and the dream work that causes dreams and constructs symptoms. The seminars will be an opportunity to study the basic ideas and their consequences for clinical work of Freud’s theory of libido and psychosexual development. They will include drive vicissitudes, the stages of psychosexual development, pathology and health, the nature of pathogenic conflict and its symptomatic consequences, the pleasure and reality principles, identification, the Oedipus complex in boys and girls, repression and other defences including repression and sublimation, early and late theories of anxiety and an introduction to Freud’s early and late theories of aggression.
Course Objectives
Candidates will learn:
- How to understand the importance of infantile sexuality in establishing the basis of psychic conflict which manifests in psychopathology in later childhood, adolescence and adulthood (1.1a, 1.3c, 1.3d)
- How to understand the importance of libido theory and the vicissitudes of the drives in neurotic and perverse pathological manifestations (1.1a)
- How to understand the stages of psychosexual development in relation to neurotic disturbances in childhood and adulthood (1.1a, 1.2f)
- How to understand Oedipal ambivalence and its resolution and to interperpret on the basis of dreams, phantasies, free associations in the analytic process and in neurotic symptomatology
- How to understand and work with the interpretations of ego defences
- How to understand the structural theory of the mind in terms of the relationship between id, ego and super-ego (1.1a, 1.1b)
- How to understand and work with the theories of anxiety in relation to inhibitions and symptoms
- How to understand the changes in Freud’s view of aggression from his earlier drive theory (self preservative/eros) through to his late theory (eros/death drive)
Seminar 1
Freud’s Theory of Libido
A brief review of the seduction theory, its inadequacy resulting in two fundamental postulates, the theory of infantile sexuality and the causal equivalence of unconscious memories and phantasies with experience and object relations, expressed in Freud’s complemental aetiological hypothesis. Why did Freud devote the first essay on the theory of sexuality to homosexuality? The study of Freud’s description of libido in infantile sexuality, perversions, neurosis, the Oedipus complex, in sublimations and aim inhibited expressions and the normative transformations of puberty with the advent of reproductivity.
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1897). Extracts from the Fliess Papers. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 1, 259-266.
Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 7, 135-183.
Recommended Readings
Freud, S. (1917). Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 16, 320-338, 347, 362, 370.
Seminar 2
Continuation of Freud’s Theory of Libido
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 7, 184-243.
Quinodoz, J.M, (2013). Reading Freud: a Chronological Exploration of Freud’s Writings (pp. 57-64). New York, NY; London: Routledge.
Seminar 3
The Two Principles of Mental Functioning: The Pleasure Principle and the Reality Principle
This seminar explores the two principles and the relations between them in neurosis, psychosis and health. It explores the origin of the fundamental differentiation between phantasy and reality that is fundamental to the development of the reality principle, hallucinatory pleasure and real pleasure, the nature of the conflict between pleasure and reality, the auto-erotism of narcissism, conflict between aggressive libidinal demands and the ego instincts in Oedipal ambivalence, its abatement and resolution, the work of the pleasure principle in dreams, phantasies and neurosis, the psychical disposition to neurosis, delay of pleasure and renunciation of pleasure in religious belief and art, the reality ego, delay and object love and the claim to reality by unconscious memories and phantasies.
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1911). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 12, 213-226.
Freud, S. (1924). The loss of reality in neurosis and psychosis. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 19, 183-187.
Laplanche and Pontalis. (1988). Pleasure principle. In The Language of Psychoanalysis (pp. 214-217). London: Karnac Books.
Seminar 4
On Narcissism
This seminar explores primary narcissism and its relation to autoeroticism, the development of secondary narcissism, types of anaclitic and narcissistic love attachment, the ego ideal and the ideal ego, and self-esteem regulation.
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1914). On narcissism: an introduction. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 14, 67-102.
Reich, Annie. (1960). Some pathologic forms of self-esteem regulation. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 15, 215-232.
Recommended Readings
Hanly, C. (1984). Ego ideal and ideal ego. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 65, 253-261.
Seminar 5
Drives and their Vicissitudes
The seminar will define the difference between instincts and drives and Freud’s analysis of the nature of a drive in terms of needs that arise from within and cannot be escaped and the analysis of the major components of drives. The vicissitudes of reversal and turning upon the self of sexual drives including sadism-masochism, scopophilia – exhibitionism and love and hate will be studied.
Required Readings
Strachey, James. (1957): Editor’s note for instincts and their vicissitudes in Freud, S. (1915). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 14, 111-116.
Freud, S. (1915). Instincts and their vicissitudes. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 14, 117-140.
Recommended Readings
Brenner, C. (1975). An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis (pp.16-33). New York, NY: International Universities Press.
Seminar 6
Repression
The seminar will include the study of primary repression, repression proper, thought and affect in repression, amnesia and the mechanism of repression, pleasure and unpleasure in the causation of repression, the contribution of repression to the mechanism of symptoms, the attraction of related mental contents to the core repressed thoughts and affect, and the indications of repressions in associations and transference. The seminar will review other defensive processes as outlined by Brenner. It will examine Freud’s early conversion theory of anxiety.
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1916-1917). Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 16, 286-302.
Freud, A. (1966). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (pp.3-65). New York, NY: International Universities Press.
Recommended Readings
Brenner, C. op. cit. pp. 86-105
Freud, S. (1915). Repression. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 14, 141-158.
Seminar 7
Continuation of Repression
Required Readings
Freud, A. (1966). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (pp.69-134). New York, NY: International Universities Press.
Seminar 8
The Unconscious
This seminar is a continuation of On Narcissism and Repression. It further explores the dynamic unconscious as defined in the three topics of the topographical model: conscious, preconscious and unconscious psychic activities and processes.
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1912). A note on the unconscious in psychoanalysis. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 12, 255-266.
Freud, S. (1912). Recommendations to physicians practising psychoanalysis. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 12, 120.
Freud, S. (1916) Fixations to traumas – the unconscious and resistance and repression. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 16, 273-302.
Recommended Readings
Freud, S. (1915). The unconscious. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 14, 159-204.
Seminar 9
Freud’s early theory of aggression
The seminars on aggression study Freud’s early theory of aggression up to 1920, as well as his later theory (1920 and later). Freud had earlier rejected the idea of an independent aggressive instinct, whereas in 1920, he proposed a dual theory of libido (eros) and aggression (death instinct).
The study of Freud’s early theory of aggression, its relation to libido and to ego instincts, to the pleasure and reality principles and its clinical implications.
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 7, 157-60; 198; 202-203; 220.
Freud, S. (1909). Analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old boy. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 10,129-141.
Seminar 10
Freud’s late theory and Klein’s use of it
The study of Freud’s theory of aggression as a death instinct and Klein’s use of it. American Freudians and the death instinct.
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 18, 12-43.
Klein M (1946). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. In The Writings of Melanie Klein Volume 3 (pp. 1-24). London, UK: Hogarth Press.
Recommended Readings
Segal, H. (1979) Chapter 9. In Melanie Klein (pp. 133-124). New York, NY: The Viking Press.
Hanly, C. (1978). Instincts and hostile affects. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 59, 49-156.
Seminar 11
The Ego Ideal
This seminar is a study of the role of identification in the formation of human groups. Like Mourning and Melancholy, it is a step toward the formulation of the structural model in which identification also plays a fundamental role. The crucial idea of a grade within the ego will be explored.
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1921). Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 11: Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 18, 88-116; 129-133.
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 19, 3-18.
Seminar 12
The Ego and the Id
This seminar is devoted to the psychoanalytic theory of psychic structure and the dynamics of the origin of the super-ego or moral conscience. These topics will be taken up: the revision of the conscious ego in the topographical model, the nature of the positive and negative Oedipus complexes, the contribution to the formation of conscience by the resolution of the Oedipus complex, the role of identification in the resolution of the Oedipus complex revised to provide for unconscious ego defensive processes, the genesis of conscience (super-ego) the relation of the ego to the id and to the super-ego and the dependent relations of the ego.
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1923). The Ego and the Id. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 19, 19-39.
Seminar 13
The Ego and the Id (cont’d)
This seminar focuses on castration anxiety as the primary source of the repression of Oedipal incest and matricidal and patricidal wishes leaving behind guilt as a signal of danger from persistent remnants of these wishes promoting strengthening of defences against them. It takes up the question of what motivates the formation of the super-ego in girls since Freud’s castration anxiety hypothesis and the hypothesis of the cross-inheritance of moral conscience in women from men are untenable. Freud’s later hypothesis concerning the psychological consequences of the anatomical difference between the sexes is explored. The seminar poses the question, “If castration anxiety in the form of penis envy precedes the Oedipal stage in girls what motivates and by what process of identification is the female super-ego formed?” “Oedipal girls have ambivalence toward the mother. Is there a fear of retribution by the mother in girls (e.g. a curse of the “maternal witch” bringing sterility or deformed babies) that does to girls what castration anxiety does to boys as penis envy undergoes a reduction as the result of the oedipal wish to have a baby?”
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 19, 40-66.
Seminar 14
The Ego and the Id (cont’d)
The seminar will explore the increased complexity of psychic conflict of the structural model. The ego is subject to the demands of the id, the super-ego and the world and these demands can be, and often enough are incompatible leaving the ego to have to satisfy their demands with compromises that reduce it to the status of a rider who has no choice but to guide the horse in the direction in which the horse is going. It will consider the place of the topographical model within the structural model. For example, do the distinctions between conscious, preconscious and unconscious, between primary and secondary process and the types or regression still apply? Is the main significant change the hypothesis of an unconscious within the ego of the inner processes, relationships and events that are at the roots of moral and aesthetic psychopathology, roots that need the benefits of the ego’s reality and humanity (value) testing. The seminar will explore the clinical ramifications of the structural model.
Seminar 15
Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety
The seminar explores Freud’s new theory of anxiety based on signal anxiety rather than on conversion anxiety. Specific topics will be the difference of inhibitions and symptoms, primal repression and after-pressure, the predicament of the ego in the Ego and the Id and anxiety, the “secondary gain from illness”, anxiety as a signal of danger, birth anxiety and the helplessness template, phase related development of anxiety in fear of the loss of the object, loss of the love of the object (shame), fear of the loss of self-approval (guilt), anxiety and defensive processes.
Required Readings
Freud, S. (1926). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 20, 87-172.
Recommended Readings
Brenner, C. (1992). The structural theory and clinical practice. Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis, 1, 369-380.
Quinodoz, J. M. (2004). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. In Reading Freud (pp. 217-226). London: Routledge.
Seminar 16
Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (cont’d)
Required Readings
Doidge, N. (2002). Classics revisited: Freud’s the ego and the ID and “Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety”. Journal of American Psychoanalytic Association, 50, 281-294.
Seminar 17
Review of Freud’s Theories: The core of psychoanalytic structural and dynamic theory of the neurosis
The seminar is a review of Freud’s theories and modifications of them and the clinical evidence he provided for them. It will integrate libido theory, the theory of aggression, the theory of signal anxiety and the structural theory in the psychoanalytic clinical theory of the neuroses. They include the study of the specific topics of compromise formation in the causation of inhibitions and symptoms; explore the strengths given to the ego by signal anxiety in relation to the instinctual unconscious; review arrestment and regression of libido and the problems posed for instinct maturation by a sadistic super-ego. These studies of clinical theory will be focused by reference to the role of anxiety in the animal phobias of Little Hans and the Wolf-man as well as other clinical material presented by the instructors or the candidates.
Required Readings
Hanly, C. (2014). The interplay of deductive and inductive reasoning in psychoanalytic theorizing. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 83(4), 897-915.