SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH STUDIES
Psychoanalysis, Literature and Practice
Convenors - Jan Campbell (Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist)
Emma Francis (University of Warwick)
This group focuses on psychoanalysis in relation to contemporary debates about
sexuality, affect, time, trauma, memory, space, virtual life and the life of objects. We
bring texts under theoretical and clinical scrutiny, with the aim of creative
engagement and cross-fertilisation between ideas of what ‘practice’ might mean
within literature, culture and psychoanalysis. There is an emphasis on a return to
texts by Freud and his immediate circle as well as later 20th century theorists such as
Winnicott, Lacan, Klein, Milner and Bion. Contemporary work by such as
Laplanche, Bollas, Phillips, Lomas and Eigen also falls within our view. Our reading
of the theoretical work is inflected by attention to literary, art, dance, photographic or
theatre texts and other cultural practices. Each week a commentator makes c. 30
minutes of remarks on the reading and then the discussion opens to the seminar.
The group meets on Fridays 5-7pm, at the Institute of English Studies, School of
Advanced Study, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E. It is generously funded
by Warwick University’s Institute of Advanced Study and the Institute of English
Studies, School of Advanced Study, London. For more information email
e.j.francis@warwick.ac.uk or jan@brightonandhovepsychotherapy.com
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28th February 2014
Text:
Ian McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (Yale UP: 2012) Chapter 2, ‘What do the
Two Hemispheres Do?’
William Blake, Jerusalem (the long poem not the hymn in the Last Night of the
Proms!), Chapter 1, Plates 1-25
Commentator: Rod Tweedy, Editor, Karnac Books
(Those wishing to prepare more deeply might also read McGilchrist Chs 1, 6 and the
conclusion of Part 2)
14th March 2014
Text:
D.W. Winnicott, ‘Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena’, International
Journal of Psychoanalysis 34:2 (1953), 89-97; rept. In Playing and Reality
(Tavistock/Routledge: 1971), 1-25
Jane Rendall, ‘The Setting and the Social Condensor: Transitional Objects in
Architecture and Psychoanalysis’, in Adam Sharr (ed), Architecture as Cultural Artifact
(Routledge: 2013), 135-14
Cultural Practice: Architecture
Commentator: Jane Rendell, Bartlett School of Architecture
May 2nd 2014
Text:
Leo Bersani, 'Sociability and Cruising' in Is the Rectum a Grave? and Other Essays
(University of Chicago Press: 2009)
John Wieners and Frank O'Hara - selected poems
Commentators:
Barry Sheils, independent scholar and Julie Walsh, University of Warwick
(Those wishing to prepare more deeply might read Freud, 'Group Psychology and
the Analysis of the Ego, 1921 and Georg Simmel, 'The Sociology of Sociability', 1910)
May 30th 2014
Text:
Melanie Klein, ‘Envy and Gratitude’ [1957] in Envy and Gratitude and Other Works,
1946-1963 (rpt. Vintage: 1997), 176-235
Shakespeare: Othello
Commentator: David Bell, Psychoanalyst and past President, British
Psychoanalytical Society
(Those wishing to prepare more deeply might read Klein’s essay ‘Infantile Anxiety
Situations Reflected in a Work of Art and in the Creative Impulse’, in Love, Guilt and
Reparation and Other Works, 1921-1945 (rpt. Vintage: 1998), 210-18)
June 13th 2014
Text:
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space {1958] trans. Maria Jolas, (Beacon Press: 1994),
Chapter 1, ‘The House, From Cellar to Garret, the Significance of the Hut’ and
Chapter 5, ‘Shells’
Cultural Practice: Intimate space
Commentator: Isobel Armstrong, Birkbeck, University of London and FBA
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2011-12 series
21 October 2011
Text: Freud, ‘Psychoanalysis and Telepathy’ S.E. 18; Dreams and Telepathy’ S.E .18;
George Eliot, ‘The Lifted Veil’.
Commentator: Jan Campbell, University of Birmingham and Psychoanalytic
Psychotherapist.
18 November 2011
Text: D.W, Winnicott, ‘Dreaming, Fantasying and Living’ in Playing and Reality;
Sally Mann, Last Light and The New Mothers.
Commentator: Lesley Caldwell, Psychoanalyst and University College London.
9 December 2011
Text: Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle S.E. 18, Chs 4 and 5; Jean Laplanche ‘Why
the Death Drive?’ Chapter 6 of Life and Death in Psychoanalysis;
Emily Dickinson, selected poems.
Commentator: Josh Cohen, Goldsmiths, University of London and Psychoanalyst.
13 January 2012
Text: Freud: ‘Typical Dreams’ Section D, Chapter V of The Interpretation of Dreams;
Jean Laplanche ‘Implantation, Intromission’, in Essays on Otherness;
Shakespeare, Hamlet; Sophocles Oedipus Rex.
Commentator: John Fletcher, University of Warwick.
3 February 2012
Text: Susanne Langer ‘The Symbol of Feeling’ in Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art;
Kenneth Wright, Faces, Found Objects, Significant Form - selected photographs
Commentator: Kenneth Wright, Psychoanalyst.
16 March 2012
Text: Christopher Bollas, Hysteria;
Henry James, The Wings of the Dove.
Commentator: Nicola Diamond, University of East London and PsychoanalyticPsychotherapist.
1 June 2012
Text: Didier Anzieu, The Skin Ego pp. 71-87 and 109-111;
Laurence of Arabia (dir. David Lean, 1962)
Commentator: Steve Pile, Open University.
2012-13 series
1 October 2012
Text: Marion Milner, The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men: Forty-Four Years of Exploring
Psychoanalysis (London: Tavistock, 1987) Ch12 ‘1956: Psychoanalysis and Art’
(pp.192-215) and Ch 10 (excerpt) ‘1955: The Communication of Primary Sensual
Experience’ (pp 114-137)
Cultural text: art by William Blake and by Milner’s patients embedded in the text
Commentator: Maud Ellmann, University of Chicago
9 November 2012
Text: Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (SE XIV); Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam
(1855), selected lyrics
Commentator: Darian Leader, Psychoanalyst
7 December 2012
Text: Freud, ‘The Theme of the Three Caskets’ (SE XII); Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of
Human Destructiveness (London: Pimlico, 1973) Chapter 12 ‘Malignant Aggression:
Necrophilia’
Shakespeare, the Merchant of Venice
Commentator: Christian Smith, University of Warwick
25 January 2013
Text: Freud, ‘The Uncanny’ (SE XVII); Joseph Conrad, ‘The Secret Sharer’ (1910)
Commentator: Nicholas Royle, University of Sussex
23 February 2013
Text: Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought
Known (London: Free Association, 1987) Chapter 8, ‘The Normotic Illness’
Cultural practice: money
Commentators: Steve Cross, University of the Arts and Liz Moor, Goldsmiths,
University of London
15 March 2013
Text: Ella Sharpe, ‘Certain Aspects of Sublimation and Delusion’, International Journal
of Psychoanalysis 11 (1930), 12-23; Isadora Duncan, ‘The Dance of the Future [1902] rpt
in Sheldon Cheney (ed) Isadora Duncan: The Art of the Dance (New York: Theatre Arts
Books, 1969); George Balanchine, Chaconne (Farrell/ Martin, 1976)
Commentator: Kirsty Hall, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
10 May 2013
Text: D.W. Winnicott, ‘This Feminism’ and ‘The Pill and Moon’ in Home is Where We
Start From (Penguin: 1986),
Oral History text: Juliet Mitchell, 1965, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (short film)
Commentator: Sally Alexander, Goldsmiths, University of London and Institute of
Historical Research
28 June 2013
Text: Freud, ‘Remembering, Repeating and Working Through’ (1914) SE XII, 147-155.
Sharon Kivland, Reproductions I & II – selected images
Commentator: Sharon Kivland, Artist
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