INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOANALYSIS Spring 2017

PSYCH E-1650W

Wynn Schwartz, Ph.D.

288 Newbury Street

Boston, MA 02115

wynn_schwartz@hms.harvard.edu

Required texts:

Peter Fonagy Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis, Other Press, 2001

Stephen Mitchell Freud and Beyond, Basic Books, 1995

Auchincloss & Samberg (eds) Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts, Yale U Press, 2012

Additional reading will be supplied by instructor or posted on the blog:

http://freedomliberationreaction.blogspot.com

Psychoanalysis will be explored using a comparative Descriptive Psychology framework with the goal of understanding the fundamental psychodynamic concepts and theories as they historically unfolded and as they relate to contemporary practice. Various psychoanalytic perspectives on the unconscious, dreams, personality and emotional development, psychopathology, and treatment will be critically examined and historically positioned.

Central to the course are two fundamental psychoanalytic concerns: The first is to a vision of our animal nature and the second concerns the opportunities and boundaries of our freedom as persons.

Here's further orientation: Freud, Freedom, and the Human Animal

Course Objectives: Students will be expected to develop a basic mastery of the fundamental concepts and a critical eye toward evaluating the nature of psychodynamic thought.

Evaluation: Grades will be based on class discussion and essay questions assigned by instructor.

UNDERGRADUATES: five to seven pages on two of the essay questions found below.

GRADUATE STUDENTS: eight to twelve pages on two of the essay questions found below.

All students will also keep a notebook of their responses to the readings.

Class 1

Introduction to the subject matter. What is an action? What is psychodynamic psychotherapy?

Read: Schwartz, W. http://freedomliberationreaction.blogspot.com/2015/01/freedom-and-human-animal.html

Bergner, R. M., What is behavior? And so what? New Ideas in Psychology (2010).

Shedler, J., "The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy?" American Psychologist, Feb/March 2010

Class 2

Introduction continued The psychologies of drive, ego, object, and self.

Read: Fred Pine, “The four psychologies of psychoanalysis and their place in clinical work”. J.Amer.Psychoanal. Assn., 36:571-596, 1988

Class 3 and 4

The concept of “person” and the human animal. Intentionality and Freud’s psychobiology. The dilemma of reductionism, determinism, and therapeutic liberation.

Read: Joseph Caston, Agency as a Psychoanalytic Idea. J Am Psychoanal Assoc 2011 59: 907

Freud and Beyond: Roy Schafer pp 180-186

Class 5

The unconscious as concept, data and theory. The problems of demonstration and verification. Experimental and clinical evidence.

Read:

Drew Westin , “The scientific status of unconscious processes.” Amer.Psychoanal. Assn.,47:11061-1106, 1999

Wynn Schwartz, Bad Faith, Self-Deception, and Unconscious Motivation: Restrictions in Effective Choice

Wynn Schwartz, On the Interpretation of Unconscious Action and Self-Deception

Class 6

The psychoanalytic method. Free association, neutrality, empathy, and the interpretation of transference and resistance. The creation of a safe place.

Reading for the following two weeks:

Wynn Schwartz, “What makes something psychoanalytic” Psychiatry, 51:417-26, 1988

______ “From passivity to competence...” Psychiatry, 65:338-45, 2002

_______"The Parameters of Empathy...", Advances in Descriptive Psychology,Vol 10. Eds, Davis, et.al. DPPress, 2013

The Freud papers on technique (SE), 1911-1915 and Dora

Roy Schafer, The Analytic Attitude, Basic Books, 1983 chapters 1, 2, 3, and 8.

Les Havens, “Freud’s Invention” from Making a Safe Place , Harvard, 1989

Class 7

Method continued. Transference and Countertransference.

Merton Gill “The Analysis of Transference”, J. Amer.Psychoanal.Assn, 27:263-88,1979

Joseph Sander “Countertransference and Role-Responsiveness”, Int. R. Psychoanal. 3:43-47,1976.

Glen Gabbard “Countertransference: The emerging common ground”, Int. J. Psychoanal, 76:475-485,1995.

Class 8

A history of drive and ego theory.

Fonagy text chapter 1 and 2

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Class 9

The British Object Relations Theories.

Read: Ronald Fairbairn, “Synopsis of an object-relations theory of personality”, Int. J. Psychoanal.,44:224-25,1963

W. Winnicott, “The capacity to be alone” ( 1958) in The Maturational Processes and the Holding Environment. Inter. U. Press, 1965

Fonagy text chapter 3-5

Freud and Beyond: Cp 4&5

Wynn Schwartz, Demystifying Projective Identification

Class 10

The interpretation of dreams and the theories of dream formation. Freud’s theory and the current understanding.

Read: W. Schwartz, “A psychoanalytic approach to dreamwork” in Dreamtime and Dreamwork, S. Krippner, ed, Tarcher, 1990

Earnest Hartmann, “Making connections in a safe place: is dreaming psychotherapy?”, Dreaming 4:209-228, 1995

Ramon Greenberg, et. al. “A research based reconsideration of the psychoanalytic theory of dreaming”, J.Amer.Psychoanal.Assn., 0:531-550,1992

G William Domhoff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6qhwdTzilg

Class 11

Essentials of clinical theory. Clinical theory and metapsychology

Wynn Schwartz, Essentials of Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice.

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Class 12-15

Essestials of clinical theory continued.

Read: Fonagy text chapters 6-9

Fonagy text chapters 10-12

SUGGESTED ESSAY QUESTIONS:

Explicate the concept of intentional action. What is deliberate action? How do these concepts relate to the idea of unconscious action? Relate intentional action to conflict and provide 2 clear examples of conflicted action and /or compromise formation.

What does our primate/mammal form provide as essential issues, dilemmas and conflicts for our actionsas persons?

Discuss the concept of the unconscious and some dilemmas that attend this subject matter.

What is empathy? How does it relate to intentionality? To compassion and sympathy?Discuss the dilemmas of neutrality and empathy. How can analytic neutrality facilitate analytic empathy and how might it interfere?

Describe the psychoanalytic treatment situation, method, and attitude and discuss how it relates to the goals of interpreting transference and resistance.

Integrate the concepts of the Ucs, Pcs, and Pcpt-Cs (the topographic systems) into the id, ego, and superego (the structural model). Discuss the principle functions of each system. Why did Freud move from the topographic to the structural model?

Discuss the significance of dreams for psychoanalytic theory and practice. What might a person’s dreamstell us about that person’s personality or character? How might the phenomena of dreaming be of service in mapping the progress of a therapy?

Take any of the ordinary language essentials of clinical theory and elaborate, explicate, and reference with behavioral examples: Essentials of Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice

Discuss clinical theory vs. metapsychology.

What is a psychoanalytic history? What sort of histories do we construct when we are in a psychoanalytic therapy? What is the value of distinguishing between what Donald Spence calls “narrative truth” vs.“historical truth”.

Discuss the various meaning of “object” in “object relations”.

Discuss the various meanings of “self”.

What is meant by the “intersubjective” in psychoanalysis?

Discuss some fundamental distinctions between classical drive theory and relational theory. How can they both be considered psychoanalytic theories?