UCL DIVISION OF PSYCHOLOGY AND LANGUAGE SCIENCES

Module: PSYCGT10 Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Theory/Freud Reading Seminars

1.   The duality of the ego instincts and the sexual instincts gave way to the duality of the life and death instincts. Describe the reasons for this movement.

2.  In what ways does the case of ‘Little Hans’ confirm and extend Freud's theories of infantile sexuality as he first formulated them in 1905?

3.  In both Studies on Hysteria (1893-1895) and Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905) Freud presents a number of key psychoanalytic concepts that are relevant to the understanding and treatment of hysteria.   Please describe and critically assess how Freud's thinking has developed between the publication of the ‘Studies’ and the publication of ‘Fragment’.   

4. “The strangest characteristic of unconscious processes is due to their entire disregard of reality testing; they equate reality of thought with external actuality, and wishes with their fulfilment” (Freud, 1911, p. 225). It can be suggested that in this quotation from ‘Two Principles of Mental Functioning’ and later in ‘The Wolf Man,’ Freud lays the foundation for a psychoanalytic conceptualisation of unconscious phantasy and its role in the constitution of the psychic apparatus. Please discuss this development in Freud’s work.

5.  Discuss the interplay between ‘constructions’ and ‘reconstructions’ in Freud’s work, taking as a focus for the discussion one of his clinical papers.

6.  Discuss the changes that can be identified in Freud’s development of his conceptualisation of the Oedipus complex. Please make reference in your answer to bisexuality.

Module: PSYCGT11 Major Schools of Psychoanalysis

2. According to Klein, the girl's "...wish to have a penis of her own is secondary to her desire to receive the penis, and is greatly enhanced by the frustrations in her feminine position..." (1945, The Oedipus Complex in the Light of Early Anxieties). Discuss and compare to Freud's thinking on the Oedipus Complex in the girl.

3. Describe Bion's concept of 'thinking' and discuss his model of how this
function develops. In your answer include references to processes that can promote or impede 'thinking.' 

Winnicott

1. Does Winnicott's account of transitional objects and transitional phenomena offer a significant addition to psychoanalytic theory?

2. Critically discuss the place accorded to aggression in Winnicott's theory of early development. 

Anna Freud and the Classical Tradition         
1. What are the main features of Anna Freud's contribution to the understanding of psychic development? In what respects do her ideas seem most closely linked with Freud, and to what extent do you think that she was an innovator?

2. How did the change to the structural model of the mind affect psychoanalytic technique in terms of the analysis of character and resistance?

Lacan and the Modern French

1. One of Lacan's famous aphorisms is that "the unconscious is structured as a
language". What are the implications of this statement on the understanding of repression and symptom formation? How important is this view in the interpretation of dreams?

2. “The object of desire in the usual sense is either a fantasy which supports the desire, or a lure,” writes Lacan. How do you understand this statement? What theoretical developments are associated with this point of view in Lacanian theory?

3. Andre Green’s paper on ‘The Dead Mother’ is a theory of depression. Compare this theory with that put forward by Freud in ‘Mourning and Melancholia’.

Ferenczi

1. Describe and critically evaluate the differences between Freud’s classical analytic technique and Ferenczi’s clinical ‘being in the experience’ approach.

 2. What is the contemporary relevance of the historical closeness and split between Freud and Ferenczi?

Module: PSYCGT12 Core Psychoanalytic Theory

Contemporary Clinical Theory

1. Freud wrote that “so long as the patient’s communications and ideas run on without obstruction, the theme of the transference should be left untouched” (1913, p.13). Describe whether this conception of transference has changed in contemporary clinical theory and illustrate your answer with reference to two or more of the clinical presentations you have heard in the seminar series Contemporary Clinical Theory.

2. The aim of psychoanalysis is, according to Hans Loewald, to “turn our ghosts into our ancestors”. Discuss this view of the role of the patient’s history and narrative in psychoanalytic technique with reference to the clinical presentations you have heard in the seminar series Contemporary Clinical Theory.

Hysteria and Psychosomatic Disorders

1. Without hysteria there could have been no psychoanalysis.  Discuss.

2. There are differing psychoanalytic theories to account for the 'puzzling leap from the mental to the physical' as Freud initially described it.  Please describe two or more from the literature you have read and indicate whether you believe a drive or object relations based perspective is most helpful in understanding psychosomatic and/or hysterical disorders. 

Sexuality

1. Contrast Freud’s and Klein’s ideas on the development of sexuality in boys and girls. Please use a published clinical example to illustrate your answer.

2. The paternal and the law have been linked in the psychoanalytic literature to the father. Critically discuss how this link has been established.

Dreams

1. Freud appeared to think that the dream work, the process by which the latent or unconscious dream thoughts are converted into the dreamer's manifest dream, was not a particularly creative one. Using the work of at least two of the analysts studied, discuss and challenge Freud's view.

2. Are dreams still central to present-day psychoanalysts as they were to Freud in 1900? Referring to at least two of the analysts studied, discuss some of the theoretical and technical changes in the contemporary psychoanalytic use of dreams.

Trauma

1. In the Outline of Psychoanalysis Freud wrote: “…in the case of the war neuroses, in contrast to the pure traumatic neuroses and in approximation to the transference neuroses, what is feared is nevertheless an internal enemy”. Why is the focus on the external or internal nature of the danger an important aspect of the theory of trauma?

2.  In your opinion, was Ferenczi's approach to trauma an original contribution to psychoanalytic theory at the time it was introduced? Discuss critically in reference to Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory and in relation to the concepts of fantasy and reality.

Module: PSYCGT13 Applications of Psychoanalysis

Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Science

1. Should we regard Freud's analysis of his dream of Irma's injection as confirming the hypothesis that dreams are wish-fulfilments?

2.  Does Popper show that psychoanalytic hypotheses cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed?

Psychoanalysis and Cinema
1. Does a psychoanalytic perspective enhance or diminish the appreciation of a cinematic text? Discuss in relation to one or more of the films you have studied.

2. Both psychoanalysis and literature have identified a close, and in some cases perverse or pathological, relationship between love and death. Illustrate the nature of this link with reference to at least two of the films shown in the series on Eros and Thanatos.

Essential Issues in Psychoanalysis

1. a) On the basis of Freud’s propositions in “A difficulty in the face of psychoanalysis,” present two arguments as to why it would be impossible on the basis of theoretical study alone to gain a grasp of psychoanalysis. b) How could one try to counter these arguments?

2. a) Explain, referring to two psychoanalytic texts you have studied, how one could see psychoanalysis as a theory or practice that promotes self-indulgence.  b) Give possible counter arguments and make a case for your own point of view.

Psychoanalysis and Literature

1. "I have not always been a psychotherapist. Like other neuropathologists, I was trained to employ local diagnoses and electroprognosis, and it still strikes me myself as strange that the case histories I write should read like short stories and that, as one might say, they lack the serious stamp of science. I must console myself with the reflection that the nature of the subject is evidently responsible for this, rather than any preference of my own."  (Freud, Studies in Hysteria) What do psychoanalysis and literature have in common?

2. "Every member of the audience was once a budding Oedipus in fantasy, and this dream-fulfilment played out in reality causes everyone to recoil in horror, with the full measure of repression which separates his infantile state from his present one."* Critically discuss the role of identification in psychoanalytic readings of literature.

*Freud, S. (1897). Letter from Freud to Fliess, October 15, 1897. The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904, 270-273