A Social and Critical Introduction to Psychoanalysis

A 10 week online evening course hosted on Zoom.

How might we take a critical approach to psychoanalytic thought and practice? In what ways can we ensure that psychoanalysis is grounded in the contemporary social field? This course is offered as an introduction to how the foundations of psychoanalysis can be examined and interrogated, a forum to discuss how psychoanalytic ideas can be put to work in new ways that help us understand and respond to the crises and challenges of life in 2023. Taught by members of the Society for Social and Critical Psychoanalysis, this course will address issues including: How might social inequalities produce states of abjection in working class communities? What can Freud’s famous patient, the Rat Man, tell us about the relation between capitalism and masculinity? Is melancholia an idea that can help us think about the immigrant experience? What do we refer to when we talk of feminine sexuality? Along the way we will draw upon neglected figures from the history of psychoanalysis, such as Sándor Ferenczi, whose radical ideas about mutuality challenge classical assumptions about clinical practice; we will ask questions about the nature of the bond between analyst and patient, discussing how to be open to difference and the dangers of colonising the other. Over the past 125 years, encounters between psychoanalytic thinking and other disciplines such as Marxism, feminism, and queer theory have generated a rich, dense, heterogenous body of thought that we will bring to bear upon topics that touch our daily lives, including dreams, time and politics.

This course will be of interest to those who are curious about the relevance of psychoanalysis to the dilemmas and questions posed by contemporary life. For those interested in embarking upon a full psychoanalytic training, the course will provide an entry point into psychoanalytic thought and practice within the culture of the SSCP. The course can also serve as CPD for counsellors and therapists who want to invigorate their clinical practice with new and diverse ideas.

Seminars will be led in different ways according to the different teachers: some will be lectures while others may be more unstructured. There will be ample opportunity for discussion and questions. There are no formal entry requirements for the course, but those who are able to engage with the set texts tend to be more able to participate in the seminars and subsequently benefit more from the course. Most core readings will be made accessible online.

Seminar Programme (Detailed programme available here)

  • Thursday 14th September: Introducing Social and Critical Psychoanalysis (Dr Sally Sales)

  • Thursday 21st September: Dreams - Pathology, Ideology or Creative Resource…? (Andrew Bryant)

  • Thursday 28th September: Melanie Klein: Clinical and Social Applications (Linda Buckingham)

  • Thursday 5th October: Psychoanalysis & Masculinity (Ilric Shetland)

  • Thursday 12th October: Transference Through the Social Field (Karen Jackson)

  • Thursday 19th October: Sándor Ferenczi – His Life and Works (Dr Anastasios Gaitanidis)

  • Thursday 26th October: The Genealogy of Feminine Sexuality (Dr Lesley Boswell)

  • Thursday 2nd November: The Unpast - in Search of Lost Time - an Overview of Psychoanalytic Perceptions of Temporality (Anita Causer)

  • Thursday 9th November: The Abject(ed) and Psychoanalysis (Kerry St Leger)

  • Thursday 16th November: Love Escapes Extinction: Melancholic Subject, Melancholic World (Dr Guy Millon)

General Information

The course will run online over Zoom, on Thursday evenings (6pm-8pm), over ten weeks from 14th September to 16th November 2023.

The fee is £225 plus a booking fee. Book your place via Eventbrite. There are limited spaces on the course so early booking is recommended.

For all general enquires please email enquiries@sscp.uk and if need be your message can be forwarded to the course lead Dr Guy Millon.