2007 Handbooks

This unit is open to psychology and philosophy students. Dr McIlwain, Associate Professor Joan Kirkby and guest lecturers explore some implications of psychoanalytic theory and practice. It provides a general foundation in Freud, looking at the nature of unconscious processes, drives and affects and their implications for perception, memory and creative processes, as well as for certain forms of psychopathology. The unit covers an array of post-Freudian perspectives including Lacan, object relations theory, self-psychology and intersubjectivity. It then moves to look at the wider societal relevance of psychoanalysis to issues of femininity, charisma, cults, and political power. Some of the tensions between different genres of psychoanalysis will also be considered by laying bare the different assumptions made by different schools about the role of the body, emotion and our relationships to others in human development.