THE NATIONAL AND KAPODISTRIAN UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS
School of Philosophy, Faculty of English Studies
MA Program in Literature, Culture and Ideology
Option #43: Literature as PsychoanalysisPsychotherapy: Contemporary Anglophone Texts—
Fall 2012
Instructor: Dr. Christina Dokou
Mondays, 12-3, room 642
Office hours:
Mondays, 11:00-12:00,
Thursdays 12:00-13:00, room 703
COURSE PROFILE
This course aims at showcasing and exploring the
extensive and deep links between the art of literature and
the science of psychology which has long been used as an
analytical tool and source of inspiration for the former.
Students shall be familiarized with the major
psychological approaches to the analysis of literary texts,
their terminology and limits, and then will be guided to apply this knowledge to the critical
analysis of selected short stories and novels from the American and British canon. The outcome
for the students shall be not only a greater capacity in producing informed and profound critical
discourses regarding literature, but a deeper understanding of the American mind of the 19th,
20th, and 21st century, as revealed through literature. Furthermore, questions of narrativity shall
be engaged, such as the correlation of the inner world (and its representational mechanisms) to
that put on paper, the transformations of the Imaginary once it enters the Symbolic, and the
effect of the written word—and its affective "forepleasure"—to our unconscious syntax. The
course shall be implemented through various projects, discussions, lectures, and the writing of a
final research paper (12-15 pages).
READINGS
Students are responsible for obtaining the novels for the course on their own (any edition will
do). Short stories and primary theoretical/critical texts will be available online, at the library, at
the Faculty library (Graduate Reserve), and at the photocopy shop (2nd floor). Additional
theoretical/critical bibliography items to help you with your understanding and research will be
available at the library (Reserve) and on my website (at http://users.uoa.gr/~cdokou). This
bibliography does NOT encompass the total material available from the UoA library services,
either in print or via electronic sources.
EVALUATION
Students will be required to participate regularly in class discussions, which presupposes a
systematic and careful pre-reading (or pre-viewing) of the material assigned for the date due.
Each student shall implement a 15-minute class presentation on assigned topics and will
individually produce a final research paper (3-4000 words), according to the guidelines put forth
in the graduate Student Guide, on a topic of his/her own choice approved by the instructor (see
also list below). All work shall be submitted also in electronic form to the instructor on the date
due. Student performance will be rated as follows:
 Final paper: 60% (thesis: 10%, outline: 5%; early bibliography: 5%; final draft: 40%)
 Presentation: 20%
 Participation: 20%
Note: Plagiarism in any of the written assignments in any form will result in an automatic fail
for the entire course. In addition, failure to report to class within the first 10 minutes shall be
marked as a half absence (for absences becoming ground for termination of student status,
please consult the M.A. program handbook). Should any other problems arise, you should
contact the instructor as soon as possible.
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CLASS SCHEDULE
(N) indicates that the text is available in the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
(available at the Library). Surnames in parentheses indicate the editors of the volumes where the
photocopied theoretical articles are found
DATE
THEME
READINGS DUE
October 8
Introduction—Creative fantasies Thurber (preread online)
and daydreaming
October 15
Freudian Psychoanalysis
Yalom, chapters 1-12; Freud, From The
Interpretation of Dreams (N);
“Psychoanalysis” from Character and
Culture; all Freud excerpts from Lemert
except “Oedipus the Child”; and “Creative
Writers and Daydreaming” (Adams)
Supplementary
Hall, “Psychoanalytic Analysis: Overview”; Malpas, Overview of Freud (up
Texts (optional) to p. 72); Freud, chapter II (Dream analysis example) from The
Interpretation of Dreams; Felman, “The Dream from Which Psychoanalysis
Proceeds” from What Does a Woman Want?;
October 22
The dialectic method—narrative Yalom, chapters 13-end; Miller
(un)consciousness
(Lentricchia); Freud (Richter); Freud,
chapters VI-VII and XIII from Character
and Culture; Brooks (Richter); Trilling
(Lodge)
Supplementary
Melzer, “Unconscious” (Lentricchia); Pateli, Georgilis (EnSign I);
Texts
Liakopoulou, Kontogiannakis, Stefanou (EnSign II)
October 29
Psychiatric institutions—Jung
Kesey, Part I; Jung (Lodge); “On the
Relation…” (N); and “The Principal
Archetypes” (Richter)
Supplementary
Jung-von Franz, chapters I and III from Man and His Symbols; Bettelheim,
Texts
from The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning an Importance of Fairy Tales;
Lianos, Lianou, Kollintza, Axiotelli (EnSign I)
November 5
Cultural neurosis
Kesey, Parts II-IV; American Psycho;
Foucault, From Discipline and Punish
(N); Freud, “The Uncanny” (N)
Supplementary
Tzilavi (EnSign I); Maniatopoulou, Daningeli (EnSign II)
Texts
November 12
Psychiatric institutions—Szasz
Burroughs; Shaffer; Frye (N); Irigaray
and the Anti-Oedipus question
(Warhol); Freud from Civilization and Its
Discontents
Kaplan, “Introduction”
November 19
Lacanian lack
Malpas, pp.72-79; Lacan, “The Mirror
Stage”; “The Instance of the Letter in the
Unconscious”
Supplementary
Freud, from Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious; Winnberg, “The
Texts
Portrayal and Criticism of Existentialism in…American Psycho”
November 26
Psychoanalytic literary
Fineman (Feldstein); Lacan, “The Object
criticism—Lacan
Ophelia” (Felman); Belsey;
Thesis choice due
December 3
Feminist psychoanalysis
Walker; Cixous, “Crime, Forgiveness”;
Kristeva, From Powers of Horror
Supplementary
Jameson, “Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan” (Kaplan); Cojec, from Read
Texts
My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists; Gallop, “Where to Begin” from
Reading Lacan; Cixous-Clément, “Sorceress and Hysteric” from The Newly
Born Woman
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December 10
Supplementary
Texts
December 17
December 20
January 7, noon
Fight Club; Kristeva, “The Semiotic and
the Symbolic” (N); Kristeva from Desire
in Language; Bibliography and outline
draft due
Foucault, from Madness and Civilization; Linden (Diamanti); Skouta, Louca
(EnSign II); Kristeva, From Tales of Love
Behaviorism—narrative
A Clockwork Orange; Skinner, chapters 1conditioners
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Student seminar: presentations: Room 821, 12:00-15:00
Final drafts due
Does language suffer from
Dissociative Personality
Disorder?
PRESENTATION ASSIGNMENTS:
Students shall present a short, 12-15 minute version of their paper, complete with visual aids, at
a mini-conference to be arranged as the 12 session of our course. Each presenter shall be graded
a. on the content and effectiveness of their presentation (given that the other qualities of your
argument shall be graded with the final paper), b. on the mechanics of the presentation itself,
and c. on the feedback and response to questions elicited.
PRIMARY TEXTS
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. London: Penguin, 1999.
Shaffer, Peter. (1973) Equus. Penguin Plays. London: Penguin, 1977.
Skinner, B. F. (1948) Walden Two. Reissued. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976.
Thurber, James. (1939) “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”. WISP series. New York: Collins
Design, 2006. (online)
Yalom, Irvin D. When Nietzsche Wept. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005.
Walker, Alice. Meridian. New York: Pocket Books, 1976.
PRIMARY FILMS:
American Psycho. Dir. Mary Harron (2000)
Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher (1999)
A Clockwork Orange. Dir. Stanley Kubrick (1971)
Note: The three films are to be viewed by you independently and before the relevant class
session. Should you have any problems obtaining a copy, please contact the instructor for help.
SECONDARY LITERARY TEXTS (OPTIONAL)
Auster, Paul. Man in the Dark. London: Faber and Faber, 2008.
Ballard, J. G. (1973) Crash. London and New York: Harper Perennial, 2008.
Carter, Angela. (1979) The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. New York: Penguin, 1987.
Doolittle, Hilda (HD). (1956) Trubute to Freud. New York: New Directions, 1984.
Doxiadis, Apostolos. Logicomix. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009. Print.
Ellison, Ralph. (1947) Invisible Man. New York: Vintage, 1995.
Hemingway, Ernest. (1926) The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner, 2006.
James, Henry. (1898) The Turn of the Screw. New York: Signet Classics, 2007.
---. (1881) The Portrait of a Lady. Penguin Classics Rev. ed. London: Penguin, 2003.
Palahniuk, Chuck. (1999) Survivor. New York: Vintage, 2003.
Roth, Philip. (1969) Portnoy’s Complaint. New York: Vintage, 1994.
---. The Breast. New York: Bantam, 1972.
---. (1987) The Counterlife. New York: Vintage, 1996.
Steinbeck, John. (1937) Of Mice and Men. Steinback Centennial ed. New York: Penguin, 2002.
Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. Slaughterhouse Five. New York: Dell, 1968.
Wallace, David Foster. (1999) “The Depressed Person.” Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. London:
Abacus, 2009. 31-58.
Weldon, Fay. (1993) Affliction. London: Flamingo, 1995.
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Yalom, Irvin D. Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy. New York: Harper Perennial
Modern Classics, 2000.
---. (1999) Momma and the Meaning of Life: Tales of Psychotherapy. London: Piatkus, 2009.
SECONDARY CRITICAL/THEORETICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, Michael V. The Fantasy Principle: Psychoanalysis of the Imagination. Hove: BrunnerRoutledge, 2004.
Barnaby, Karin, and Pellegrino D’Acierno. C. G. Jung and the Humanities: Toward a Hermeneutics of
Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Bettlelheim, Bruno. (1975) The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.
London and New York: Penguin, 1991.
Bodkin, Maud. Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination. London: Oxford
University Press, 1974.
Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Vintage, 1985.
---. Psychoanalysis and Storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994.
Campbell, Joseph. The Portable Jung. New York: Viking, 1971.
Caplan, Ann E., ed. Psychoanalysis and Cinema. AFI Film Readers. New York and London: Routledge,
1990.
Cixous, Hélène, and Catherine Clément.(1975) The Newly Born Woman. Trans. Betsy Wing. With an
Introduction by Sandra M. Gilbert. Theory and History of Literature 24. Minneapolis: The
University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
Coon, Dennis. Introduction in Psychology: Exploration and Application. Rev. ed. Chicago: West
Publishing Co., 1995.
Cooper, David. Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry. London: Routledge, 2001.
Copjec, Joan. Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists. London and Cambridge, MA: OctoberMIT Books, 1994.
Deleuze, Giles, and Félix Guattari. The Anti-Oedipus. Minneapolis: Minnessota UP, 2000.
Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1996.
Feldstein, Richard, and Henry Sussman, eds. Psychoanalysis and…. New York and London: Routledge,
1990.
Felman, Shoshana. What Does a Woman Want? Reading and Sexual Difference. Baltimore and London:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
---, ed. (1977) Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading: Otherwise. Baltimore and
London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Fireman, Gary D., et al, eds. Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology and the Brain. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Foucault, Michel. (1961) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans.
Richard Howard. New York: Vintage, 1965.
Freud, Sigmund. The Complete Psychological Works. Standard ed. 24 vols. Ed. and trans. James
Strachey. New York and London: Norton, c1990. ESP. SEE The Interpretation of Dreams
(1900)
Gallop, Jane. Reading Lacan. Ithaka, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Gelpi, Albert. The Tenth Muse: The Psyche of the American Poet. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1991.
Girard, René. Deceit, Desire, & the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Trans. Yvonne
Freccero. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press,1961.
Gomez, Lavinia. The Freud Wars: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. NY:
Routledge, 2005.
Guerin, Wlifred L, Earle Labor, et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 5th ed. New
York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Hall, Calvin S., and Vernon J. Nordby. A Primer of Jungian Psychology. New American Library. New
York: Mentor, 1973.
Heller, Sharon. Freud A to Z. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, 2005.
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Hoffman, Frederick J. Freudianism and the Literary Mind. New York and London: Grove Press, 1957.
Hogan, Patrick C. Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists. New York:
Routledge, 2003.
Holland, Norman N. Holland's Guide to Psychoanalytic Psychology and Literature-and-Psychology.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Homer, Sean. Jacques Lacan. Routledge Critical Thinkers. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Hull, R. F., and William McGuire, eds. C. G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1978.
Irigaray, Luce. (1977) This Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.
---. (1974). Speculum of the Other Woman. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1985.
Jones, Ernest. Hamlet and Oedipus: A Classic Study in the Psychoanalysis of Literature. New York:
Doubleday Anchor, 1954.
Jung, Carl Gustav, et al. Man and His Symbols. New York: Laurel, 1964.
---. Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Ed. Carrie Lee Rothgeb. Washington: DHEW, 1978.
---. The Undiscovered Self. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. New York: Mentor, 1958.
---. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Trans. F. C. Hull. London: Routledge, 1980.
---. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Trans. F. C. Hull. London: Routledge, 2000.
Kiell, Norman. Psychoanalysis, Psychology, and Literature: A Bibliography. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow
Press, 1990.
Kristeva, Juia. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Ed. and trans. Leon S.
Roudiez. European Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.
---. (1980) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. European Perspectives.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton,
2007.
Laing, R.D. The Divided Self: A Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. London: Penguin, 1990.
Lahey, Benjamin B. Psychology: An Introduction. Dubuque: Brown & Benchmark, 1995.
Lindauer, Martin S. Psyche and the Literary Muses: The Contribution of Literary Content to Scientific
Psychology. John Benjamin’s Publishing Company, 2009.
Mattoon, Mary Ann. Jungian Psychology in Perspective. New York: The Free Press, 1985.
MacAfee, Noëlle. Julia Kristeva. London: Routledge, 2004.
Neu, Jerome. The Cambridge Companion to Freud. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Szasz, Thomas S. The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. NY:
Harper Perennial, 1974.
Von Franz, Marie-Louise. Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales. Studies in Jungian Psychology by
Jungian Analysts 76. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1997.
Wright, Elizabeth. Psychoanalytic Criticism: Theory in Practice. New York: Methuen, 1984.
Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. London and
Cambridge, MA: October-MIT Books, 1991.
---. How to Read Lacan. NY: Norton, 2007.
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