Introduction to Psychoanalysis

The syllabus includes key concepts and developments in psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic therapy, and psychoanalytic investigation of culture.

Main topics:
- The emergence of psychoanalysis and its place in the history of ideas.
- Freud and the hysteric.
- Dream-work and dreams as wishfulfillment.
- Freud's essays on sexuality.
- Neurosis and psychosis.
- The Imaginary: Freud, Winnicott, Lacan.
- The Ego and the Other.
- Phantasy: Klein, Lacan, Žižek.
- Desire and love.
- Oedipus complex and structure of myths.
- Trauma and repetition: Lacan, Laplanche etc.
- Psychoanalysis and culture.
- Basic techniques of psychoanalytic therapy.

Special emphasis is put on the analysis of actual cultural phenomena and everyday-life practices.