This pathway explores some of the classic texts of the psychoanalytic tradition, both the conceptual foundations elaborated in its metapsychology and the internal critiques and debates that surround it, together with some of the classical clinical case studies. Unlike academic psychology courses it will do this through an historical and textual approach. Students will be encourages to develop both a detailed, empirical knowledge of the main texts of Freudian metapsychology and as well a ‘symptomatic’ and literary mode of reading them as complex textual objects – as Freud himself reads dreams – whose rhetorical presentation, recurrent metaphors, repetitions and displacements betray their underlying problems and impasses as much as their official themes. Attention will be paid particularly to psychoanalytic models of textuality, fantasy and desire.

Structure of the Degree

Foundation Module plus at least two from the Core Modules and up to two from the Further Modules listed below

Or

Foundation Module plus two Core Modules and a dissertation on an approved topic

Or

Foundation Module plus at least two Core Modules plus up to one from the Further Modules and a dissertation on an approved topic

Core Modules

Freud’s Metapsychology

Modernism and Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis and Cultural Production

Optional modules from a list here.