A Social and Critical Introduction to Psychoanalysis

A 10 week online evening course hosted on Zoom

Join the Society for Social and Critical Psychoanalysis for a 10-week online introductory course. This is an opportunity to learn in a small group setting with psychoanalysts leading seminars on a range of topics relevant to contemporary life.

How might we take a critical approach to psychoanalytic thought and practice? In what ways can we ensure that psychoanalysis is grounded in the contemporary social field? This course is offered as an introduction to how the foundations of psychoanalysis can be examined and interrogated, a forum to discuss how psychoanalytic ideas can be put to work in new ways that help us understand and respond to the crises and challenges of life in 2024. Taught by members of the Society for Social and Critical Psychoanalysis, this course will address questions including: How might social inequalities produce states of abjection in working class communities? What can Freud’s famous patient, the Rat Man, tell us about the relation between capitalism and masculinity? Is melancholia an idea that can help us think about the immigrant experience? How have colonial norms of whiteness come to define the category of the human? Along the way we will draw upon neglected figures from the history of psychoanalysis, such as Sándor Ferenczi, whose radical ideas about mutuality challenge classical assumptions about clinical practice, and Félix Guatarri, whose anti-capitalist critique opens new ways of thinking into the climate crisis. Over the past 125 years, encounters between psychoanalytic thinking and other disciplines such as Marxism, feminism, and queer theory have generated a rich, dense, heterogenous body of thought that we will bring to bear upon topics that touch our daily lives, including dreams, time and politics.

This course will be of interest to those who are curious about the relevance of psychoanalysis to the dilemmas and questions posed by contemporary life. For those interested in embarking upon a full psychoanalytic training, the course will provide an entry point into psychoanalytic thought and practice within the culture of the SSCP. The course can also serve as CPD for counsellors and therapists who want to invigorate their clinical practice with new and diverse ideas.

Seminars will be led in different ways according to the different teachers: some will be lectures while others will be more unstructured. There will be ample opportunity for discussion and questions. There are no formal entry requirements for the course, but those who are able to engage with the set texts tend to be more able to participate in the seminars and subsequently benefit more from the course. Most core readings will be made accessible online.

Seminar Programme (Detailed programme available here)

  • Thursday 19th September: Introducing Social and Critical Psychoanalysis (Dr Guy Millon, Dr Sally Sales and Marie Dixon)

  • Thursday 26th September: What Brings You to Psychoanalysis? (Mel Perks)

  • Thursday 3rd October: The Becoming of Félix Guattari, Acid House & Donald Trump

    (Tom Greenall)

  • Thursday 10th October: The Abject(ed) and Psychoanalysis (Kerry St Leger)

  • Thursday 17th October: Becoming White: Psychoanalysis and the Processes of Racialisation

    (Dr Sally Sales)

  • Thursday 24th October: Psychoanalysis & Masculinity (Ilric Shetland

  • Thursday 31st October: Sándor Ferenczi – His Life and Works (Dr Anastasios Gaitanidis)

  • Thursday 7th November: The Unpast - in Search of Lost Time - an Overview of Psychoanalytic Perceptions of Temporality (Anita Causer)

  • Thursday 14th November: Dreams: Pathology, Ideology or Creative Resource...? (Andrew Bryant)

  • Thursday 21st November: Love Escapes Extinction: Melancholic Subject, Melancholic World (Dr Guy Millon)

General Information

The course will run online over Zoom, on Thursday evenings (6pm-8pm UK time), over 10 weeks from 19th September to 21st November 2024.

Fees and how to book

The course fee is £250 (plus Eventbrite fee). There are limited spaces on the course so early booking is recommended.

Book your place via Eventbrite here

General enquiries

For all general enquires please email Lu at enquiries@sscp.uk and if need be, your message can be forwarded to the course lead Dr Guy Millon.