Theories of the Mind week 1

 

The first assignment

It has been said that what Freud did was to invent a language for describing the mind. I have boiled this language down to 25 key words. If you really know and are comfortable with using all of those words, you've got the basics of Freud. Please make for yourselves a small Freud dictionary, with a meaning for each of those words expressed in a few sentences. Memorise the meanings. Become a native user of this language. Impress your friends.

Here are the words:

abreaction
castration complex
cathexis
death instinct
dreamwork
Electra complex
free association
genitality
id/ego/superego
introjection
latent/manifest content
Oedipus complex
oral/anal/genital stages
over-determination
penis envy
pleasure principle
primal scene
primary and secondary processes
reality principle
repetition compulsion
repression
secondary elaboration
sublimation
transference/counter-transference

Meet in your small groups (or communicate by email or mobile phone) and share out the following work: I would like each small group to have an agreed set of short definitions of each of these words, written out. So students in a group of four would prepare 5 or 6 definitions each. Meet in the small groups to discuss the definitions. If there's anything you don't understand, discuss it; if the group still doesn't understand it, bring the question to the seminar in week 2, along with the list of definitions.

This will be followed by a general discussion of Freud.

Useful sources for looking up the words:

Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, a Course of Twenty-eight Lectures Delivered at the University of Vienna, Ed. James Strachey. The Pelican Freud library. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) 1: Main Library 2 BF 175. Available in paperback.

Freud, Sigmund, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Ed. James Strachey. The Pelican Freud library. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) 2: Main Library 2 s BF 175. Available in paperback.

Rycroft, Charles, A critical dictionary of psychoanalysis, 1972 ed. (London: Penguin, 1968); not in the Library. Available in paperback. Useful extracts are here.

J. Laplanche, J.-B. Pontalis, The language of psycho-analysis, The international psycho-analytical library, (London: Hogarth Press, 1973) 94: Main Library s BF 173 (short loan). This is the best Freud dictionary, covering Lacan as well: a crucial text. Available in paperback.

There is a full reading list for Freud and literature here.

Reading dossier

The reading dossier for week 2 should contain:

1. the list of words with the definitions arrived at by your small group

2. brief notes (up to a page) of the group discussion

3. brief notes (up to two pages) on anything you learned in the seminar on the words in week 2

if you haven't managed to get into a small group, then I'm afraid you will have to do all the work in (1) by yourself, and and (2) will be your thoughts on the words. Best to work hard at getting yourself into a small group...

Please buy a book

One of the seminars on Jung in the second half of the term will be based on the following book:

Jung, C. G. Dreams. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974 (Routledge Classics, £9.99). Readily available from Amazon.

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