Revisiting Freud: Guided Close Reading of Freud’s Central Texts for Senior Analysts

This seminar is based on the in-depth reading and analysis of complete texts of Freud, during weekly 1-hour long meetings, throughout the year and is conceived of as a long-term ongoing seminar.

The meetings will be led by Rachel Blass who will help bring out the meanings and significance of Freud’s ideas and place them in the context of the development his thinking over the years and its relevance to contemporary psychoanalysis. The seminar is intended for senior analysts, familiar with Freud’s writings from the start of their professional development, but who wish to revisit them to deepen their understanding from new perspectives and in light of their advanced experience.

The meetings will be held on Zoom, midday (ET) and will be recorded and made available for participants who were unable to attend or seek further study.

This term (and in several terms to come) we will continue to follow the gradual development of Freud’s thinking on object relations and their internalization in the mind. We will focus on some of Freud’s most important texts published between 1911 and 1923. Last terms we covered his papers on Schreber, narcissism and mourning and his Thoughts for the Times on War and Death. This coming term we will focus on Totem and Taboo (1912) and Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920).