Elizabeth Lunbeck (Department of the History of Science)
First-Year Seminar 74G (Spring Term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
Wednesday, 3-5:00 PM CANVAS SITE
Freud may be dead, but psychoanalysis as a perspective, resource, and—to a lesser degree—practice is very much alive, offering powerful accounts of paradoxical and difficult to understand aspect of human behavior and social relations. Freudian thinking has been assimilated into large swaths of our cultural life, even as it has been widely declared outdated and outlandish. Does Freud—and the discipline of psychoanalysis that he founded—still matter? In this seminar, we will address this question by first reading landmark Freudian texts. We will then turn to “Freud”—especially at several of his revisionist followers—to explore a range of contested topics on which the psychoanalytic voice is strong: attachment, loneliness, and anxiety among them. We end with the therapeutic chatbot, asking if Freud still matters in an age of AI. Throughout we will gather and share materials from the internet and various apps, always with an eye to finding Freudian resonances in contemporary culture.