English 607 Topic 52 - Contemporary Psychoanalytic Theory
Winter 2010
Instructor: Dr. Lorraine Markotic
lmarkoti [at] ucalgary [dot] ca
Friday 12:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Course Objectives:
The goal of this course is to provide students with a critical grounding in psychoanalytic thought, beginning with the works of Sigmund Freud. We shall commence with Freud's Introductory Lectures, covering the concepts of the unconscious, repression, latent and manifest dream content, transference, and sexual identity. We shall also explore the relationship between rational and associative thinking, the role of language in the structuring of the unconscious, and the logic of Freudian slips. Then we shall turn to Freud's theoretically important metapsychological essays that include his work on melancholy, the uncanny, narcissism and the death drive. Next, we shall study Lacan's "return to Freud" in light of structuralist and post-structuralist thought. Finally, we shall consider a literary instance of psychoanalysis at work (Cardinal).
The texts for the second half of the course will be decided in conjunction with the students. I have listed possible texts.
Students are not expected to be familiar with Freudian thought, but are expected to have both open and critical minds. Please note that Adler and Jung will not figure in this course.
Required Texts:
Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud, On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis
Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Phase."
Marie Cardinal, The Words to Say It
Possible Texts:
Jacques Derrida, Resistances of Psychoanalysis
Jaques Lacan, "The Purloined Letter"
Jacques Lacan, "God and the jouissance of the woman"
Jacques Derrida, "The Purveyor of Truth"
Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology
Luce Irigaray "The Blind Spot of an old dream of Symmetry" in Speculum
Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
Mary Ann doanne "Feminity as Masquerade"
Paul Ricoeur, "Image and Language in Psychoanalysis"
Sarah Kofman, The Enigma of Woman
Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves
Gilles Deleuze, Anti-Oedipus
Christopher Lane, Ed, The Psychoanalysis of Race
Course Requirements:
One long paper, approximately 5000 words (worth 80%) and one class presentation (worth 20%).
