MDCS40420 Psychoanalysis and Language

Academic Year 2023/2024

Sigmund Freud's account of the laws of unconscious mental functioning derives from his work with the formations of the unconscious: dreams, parapraxes, jokes and symptoms. This module studies Freud's account of the joke and the parapraxis and thereby builds on the study of the dream and the symptom in MDCS40410. The formations of the unconscious provide the material for psychoanalytic practice. Both modules cover the mechanisms of the unconscious as discovered by Freud and the recognition of these in terms drawn from linguistics by Jacques Lacan who proposed that the unconscious is structured like a language. Psychoanalysis works on the basis that the subject is constituted in language and it is linguistic material and its laws of operation that that constitute our subjective being and mental life. As Lacan puts it: 'the world of words makes the world of things'.

In this module students learn
- why psychoanalytic practice attends to the signifier
- the basis of Lacan's formulation that the signifier represents the subject for another signifier
- the application of the Lacanian principles of the function and field of speech and language in psychoanalytic practice.

The Freudian texts covered are:
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious

The Lacanian texts covered are:
'The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis'
Seminar Book V 1957 - 1958, The formations of the unconscious'
'The agency of the letter in the unconscious or reason since Freud'.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

On completion of this module students should be able to:1. Demonstrate a critical understanding of Freud's account of the mechanisms that produce jokes and parapraxes 2. Demonstrate a critical understanding of the Saussurian-Jakobsonian account of the laws of language as developed in the work of Jacques Lacan 3. Critically evaluate the difference between the Lacanian basis of psychoanalysis in speech and language and other approaches such as the `ego psychology' and interpersonal. 4.Demonstrate understanding of how attention to speech and language in light of Lacan's teaching makes Lacanian psychoanalysis a distinct clinical practice of consequence.

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

32
Specified Learning Activities

20
Autonomous Student Learning

56
Total

108
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
peer and group work; lectures; critical writing; reflective learning; in-class discussion case-based learning; student presentations 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Assignment: Essay; non-graded class presentation and written report, which is graded Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded Yes

100

Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Summer No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Students are invited to contact the Programme Leader following receipt of grades to learn from their work

Name Role
Mr Liam Barnard Tutor
Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.
 

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