A Social and Critical Introduction to Psychoanalysis

A 10 week online evening course hosted on Zoom

Join the Society for Social and Critical Psychoanalysis for a 10-week online introductory course. This is an opportunity to learn in a small group setting with psychoanalysts leading seminars on a range of topics relevant to contemporary life.

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 2025.

Taught by members of the Society for Social and Critical Psychoanalysis, this course will address questions including: In a world in which genocide and climate catastrophe are normalised, how can the therapeutic category of ‘trauma’ be mobilised ethically? What can Freud’s famous patient, the Rat Man, tell us about the relation between capitalism and masculinity? Is melancholia a concept that can help us think about the immigrant experience? Along the way, we will draw upon neglected figures from the history of psychoanalysis, such as Andre Green, whose work on borderline and narcissistic states has radical clinical implications, and Félix Guattari, whose anti-capitalist critique opens up new ways of thinking about the climate crisis. Over the past 125 years, encounters between psychoanalytic thinking and other disciplines such as Marxism, feminism, and queer theory have generated a rich, dense, heterogeneous body of thought that we will bring to bear upon topics that touch our daily lives, including dreams, addiction 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 will 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 18th September: Introducing Social and Critical Psychoanalysis (Dr Sally Sales and Dr G Lori Millon)

  • Thursday 25th September: Dreams: Pathology, Ideology or Creative Resource...? (Andrew Bryant)

  • Thursday 2nd October: The not so civil war: 2016, UK. What psychological factors may have influenced the UK to leave the EU (Madhu Nandi)

  • Thursday 9th October: Transference (Dr Sally Sales)

  • Thursday 16th October: Psychoanalysis & Masculinity (Ilric Shetland)

  • Thursday 23rd October: Hope in the dark – a radical rethinking of trauma (Hayley Gearon)

  • Thursday 30th October: Addiction and Psychoanalysis (Melissa Turnbull)

  • Thursday 6th November: Borderline & Narcissistic States: The Work of Andre Green (Anita Causer)

  • Thursday 13th November: The Becoming of Félix Guattari, Acid House & Donald Trump

    (Tom Greenall)

  • Thursday 20th November: Love Escapes Extinction: Melancholic Subject, Melancholic World (Dr G Lori Millon)

General Information

The course will run online over Zoom, on Thursday evenings (6pm-8pm UK time), over 10 weeks from 18th September to 20th November 2025.

Fees and how to book

The course fee is £250 (plus Eventbrite fee). Early bird discount available until 5th August! There are limited spaces on the course so early booking is recommended.

Book your place via Eventbrite here

General enquiries

For all general enquiries please email Lu at enquiries@sscp.uk and if need be, your message can be forwarded to the course lead Dr G Lori Millon.