English and drama

Psychoanalysis and Literature

Module code: Q3318
Level 6
30 credits in autumn semester
Teaching method: Seminar, Workshop
Assessment modes: Coursework

What are the affinities, as well as the dissonances, between literature and psychoanalysis? What kinds of imaginative, creative and political possibilities emerge when we read psychoanalysis and literature alongside each other? What are the legacies of psychoanalytic thought and practice today?

In this module, you’ll read some of the foundational texts of psychoanalysis alongside literary texts from the same period. You’ll begin by considering the seismic shifts in thinking about gender and sexuality at the beginning of the 20th century.

The module also examines:

  • how psychoanlysis’s central ideas – fantasy, the unconscious, the dreamwork – might offer unique insight into literature and culture
  • how psychoanalysts and writers have sought to diagnose, cure or transform the racist pathologies and psycho-politics of the 20th and 21st centuries
  • the parallels and the differences between the present day and the historical moment in which psychoanalysis emerged.

Alongside the work of Sigmund Freud and writers from the late 19th century to the present day, we’ll also consider the work of other psychoanalysts, such as Melanie Klein, Joan Riviere, D. W. Winnicott, Marion Milner and Frantz Fanon.

Pre-requisite

This module offers an introduction to the creative and critical possibilities of reading psychoanalysis and literature together. The aim is not to apply psychoanalysis to literary texts, but to read psychoanalysis and literature alongside each other, and to see what happens to our ideas about reading, dreams, sexuality, the unconscious, literature, politics and culture when we do so. We will consider the ways in which Freud and other psychoanalysts have drawn on, and can be used to illuminate, literature and culture from the past. Thinking about psychoanalysis historically, as a clinical practice, and as a radical form of thinking and writing, this module also examines how psychoanalysts have sought to diagnose, and in some cases, to cure and to transform, racist and fascist mindsets. Pursuing both the parallels and the differences between the present day and the era in which psychoanalysis emerged, this module also asks: what are the legacies of psychoanalysis today? Alongside the work of Sigmund Freud, we will encounter a range of writers and psychoanalysts, some of which may include: Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott, Frantz Fanon, Shakespeare, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, and others.

Module learning outcomes

  • Demonstrate a thorough understanding of some of the central concepts of psychoanalysis
  • Reflect critically and (for creative-critical tasks) creatively on the historical relationship between psychoanalysis and literature.
  • Offer a close analysis of both the formal and thematic features of both psychoanalytic and literary texts.
  • Develop a portfolio of written work responding to the ideas and texts encountered on the module.