NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and
Psychotherapy
EVOLUTION OF FREUD’S THOUGHT I
Danielle Knafo, Ph.D., Instructor
Fall 2012
This course introduces candidates to Freud’s early psychoanalytic writings,
allowing them to share in the excitement and richness of his early breakthrough
discoveries: infantile and adult sexuality, trauma, repression and memory,
unconscious fantasies and dream work, defenses and psychopathology. Freud’s
technique papers and case studies (e.g., Lucy R, Katharina, Schreber, the Wolf
Man) will show how psychoanalysis developed into treatment and lay the
foundation for an entirely new way of understanding and encountering the human
mind. Additionally, we will examine and analyze subjects infrequently treated by
Freudian scholarship, including creativity and love, construction, afterwardness
and negative hallucination. The class will discuss the current understanding of
key Freudian theoretical and clinical concepts and their applicability to practice
while recasting them in today's perspective.
Week 1: Freud: The Man and His Times
No required reading
Optional Suggested Reading:
Schorske, C. 1981. Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. NY :
Vintage.
Gay, P. 1988. Freud: A Life for our Time. NY: Norton.
Makari. G. 2008. Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis. NY:
HarperCollins.
Week 2: Trauma Theory and Repression
Studies on Hysteria. Breuer and Freud, 1893-95, SE II
Preliminary Communication. SE. II, pp. 3-17.
Optional Suggested Reading:
Knafo, D. 2009. Freud’s Memory Erased. Psychoanalytic Psychology,
26(2):171-190.
Week 3: Women, Hysteria, and the Beginnings of Psychoanalytic
Psychotherapy
Miss Lucy R. pp. 106-124.
Katharina. pp. 125-134.
The Psychotherapy of Hysteria. pp. 255-305.
Optional Suggested Reading:
Anna O. pp. 21-47
Dora. SE VII, pp. 7-122 (1905)
The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904
Trans & Ed. J.M.Masson. Harvard, 1985.
Week 4: The Place of Diagnosis and Defense in Psychoanalytic Theory and
Therapy
Neuro-Psychoses of Defense I (1894). SE III, pp. 45-61.
Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defense (1896). SE III, pp. 162185.
Optional Suggested Reading:
Freud, A. The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. Revised Edition. CT:
International Universities Press.
Ramachandran, V.S. & Blakeslee, S. 1998. Phantoms of the Brain:
Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. NY: Harper.
Week 5: Unconscious Fantasy and Memory
Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning, 1911. SE XII, pp. 213226.
Screen Memories (1899), SE III, pp. 303-322.
Family romances, 1908. SE 9, pp. 235-241.
Optional Suggested Reading:
Knafo, D. & Feiner, K. 2005. Unconscious fantasies and psychic structure.
In: Knafo & Feiner. Unconscious Fantasies and the Relational World.
Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, Ch. 1 (pp. 11-29) and chapter 4 (pp. 71-96).
Loewald, H. 1974. Psychoanalysis as an art and the fantasy character of
the analytic situation. In Papers on Psychoanalysis. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1980, pp. 352-371.
Week 6: Dreams I: The Royal Road to the Unconscious
The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900. SE IV.
Chapter II: The Method of Interpreting Dreams: An Analysis of s Specimen
Dream, pp. 96-121.
Chapter III: Dreams as Wish-fulfillments, pp. 122-133.
Chapter IV: Distortion in Dreams, pp. 134-162
Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920. SE XVIII, pp. 32-33
Week 7: Dreams II—Theory of Mind
The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900. SE V
Chapter VII: The Psychology of the Dream Process, pp. 509-587.
Optional Suggested Reading:
New introductory lectures in psychoanalysis. 1933. Lecture 29. Revision of
the theory of dreams. Standard Edition, 22: 8-13.
Solms, M. 1995. New findings on the neurological organization of
dreaming: Implications for psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, LXIV
(1): 43-67.
Ogden, T. 2004. The art of psychoanalysis: Dreaming undreamt dreams
and interrupted cries. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 85: 857878.
Week 8: Dreams III: Technique
Freud, S. 1911. The Handling of Dream-Interpretation in Psycho-Analysis.
Standard Edition, 12: 213-226.
Freud, S. 1923. Remarks on the Theory and Practice of Dream Interpretation.
Standard Edition, 19: 109-122.
Optional Suggested Reading:
Knafo, D. 2012. Dreams of Genius: Sigmund Freud and C.G.Jung. In
Dancing with the Unconscious: The Art of Psychoanalysis and the
Psychoanalysis of Art. Routledge. Chapter 6.
Week 9: Psychosexual Development
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality—Essays 2 and 3 (1905) SE VII, pp.
173-230.
Optional Suggested Reading:
Knafo, D. 2006. Castration Fantasies, Sexual Difference and Mind-Body
Matters. In Unconscious Fantasies and the Relational World, pp.125-142.
Mason, E.L. 1985. “Everybody must be just like me:” Observations on
female castration anxiety. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 66:
331-347.
Fogel, G. 1998. Interiority and inner genital space in men: What else can
be lost in castration? Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 67: 662-697.
Freud, A. 1966. The ego and the id at puberty. In The Ego and the
Mechanisms of Defense. Revised Edition. CT: International Universities
Press, pp. 137-172.
Week 10: Perversion
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality—Essay 1 (1905) SE VII, pp. 135-172.
Optional Suggested Reading:
Stoller, R. 1975. Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred. London: Karnac.
Bach, S. 1994. Sadomasochistic Object Relations. In The Language of
Perversion and the Language of Love. Northvale, NJ: Aronson: 3-25.
Week 11: Creativity
Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming. 1908(1907). SE IX, pp.141-153.
Optional Suggested Reading:
Ehrenzweig, A. 1967. The Hidden Order of Art. U of California Press, pp.
3-33.
Segal, H. 1991. Art and the depressive position. In Dream, Phantasy and
Art. London: Tavistock, pp. 85-100.
Knafo, D. 2002. Revisiting Ernst Kris’s Concept ‘Regression in the Service
of the Ego.’ Psychoanalytic Psychology. 2002, 19(1): 24-49.
Week 12: Love
A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men (Contributions to the
Psychology of Love I), 1910. SE XI, pp. 163-177.
On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions
to the Psychology of Love II), 1912. SE XI, pp. 177-191.
The Taboo of Virginity (Contributions to the Psychology of Love III), 1918/17. SE
XI, pp. 191-208.
Optional Suggested Reading:
Kernberg, O. 1995. Love Relations: Normality and Pathology. New Haven:
Yale.
Eagle, M. (2007). Attachment and sexuality. In D. Diamond, S. J. Blatt, &
J. D. Lichtenberg (Eds.), Attachment and sexuality (pp. 27-50). New York:
Taylor and Francis.
Mitchell, S. 2002. Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance Over Time. NY:
Norton.
Week 13: Psychosis
Psycho-analytical notes on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia
(Schreber), 1911. SE XII, pp. 3-82.
Optional Suggested Reading:
Winnicott, D.W. 1954/1975. Metapsychological and Clinical Aspects of
Regression within the Psycho-Analytical Set-Up. In. From Pediatrics to
Psychoanalysis. Basic Books, pp. 278-294.
Bion, W.R. 1967. Differentiation of the Psychotic from the Non-Psychotic
Personalities; Attacks on Linking. In Second Thoughts. Aronson, pp. 4364.
Searles, H. 1988. Transference Psychosis in the Psychotherapy of
Chronic Schizophrenia. In. Essential Papers on Psychosis. Ed. Peter
Buckley. NYU Press: 177-232. .
Fink, B. 1997. Psychosis. In A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian
Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Cambridge: Harvard, pp. 79-111.
Week 14: The Wolf Man: Primal Scene, Dream Analysis, Construction,
Infantile Neurosis, Foreclosure, Afterwardness and Negative Hallucination
From the history of an infantile neurosis (The Wolf Man), 1914/1918, SE XVII, pp.
3-122.
Constructions in Analysis. 1937. SE XXIII, 255-269
Optional Suggested Reading:
Gardner, M. 1971. The Wolf Man by the Wolf Man. 1971. NY: Basic
Books. Pp. 3-22 (“Recollections of my childhood” by the Wolf-Man); 135152 (My recollections of Sigmund Freud” by the Wolf-Man); 263-310 (“A
supplement to Freud’s History of an Infantile Neurosis by Ruth Mack
Brunswick).
Knafo, D. & Feiner, K. 1996. The Primal Scene: Variations on a Theme.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 44 (2): 2001-2021.
Freud, A. 1971. The Infantile Neurosis—Genetic and Dynamic
Consideration. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 26: 721-741.
Chasseguet-Smirguel, J. 1984. A re-reading of the Wolf-Man. In
Perversion and Creativity, Ch. 5 (pp. 44-54).
LaPlanche, J. & Fletcher, J. 1999. Notes on afterwardness. In Essays on
Otherness. NY: Routledge, pp. 264-269.
Green, A. 1999. Negative hallucination. In The Fabric of Affect in
Psychoanalytic Discourse. Routledge, pp255-57. (Originally published in
1973).
Week 15: Early Technique Papers
Recommendations to Physicians Practicing Psycho-Analysis (1912). SE XII, pp.
111-12.
On Beginning the Treatment (1913). SE XII, pp. 123-144.
The Dynamics of Transference (1911). SE XII: “pp. 99-108.
Optional Suggested Reading:
Schafer, R. 1983. The Atmosphere of Safety: Freud’s ‘Papers on
Technique’. Chapter 2 in The Analytic Attitude, Basic Books.
Busch, F. 1995. Beginning an Analysis. JAPA, 43 (2): 449-468.
Bollas, C. The Infinite Question. 2009. Routledge. Chs 1-4.
(Technique Papers continued in Spring Semester)