Instructor: Dr. Jason Childs

Schedule: Sunday, Jul 7, 14, 21, 28 (2024)

11am New York time

Online, live with discussion sessions

Description:

The drive—‘der Trieb’ to Freud, ‘la pulsion’ to Lacan—is a fundamental concept of the psychoanalytic theory of subjectivity. It is also a vital component of analytic practice: one possibility—though never a promise—of the psychoanalytic clinic is that it can help us to “live out the drive” (Lacan) or turn into “a being of drive” (Žižek). Yet, despite (or because of) its importance, the drive has been a topic of great disagreement and confusion. The “doctrine of the drives”, wrote Freud in Civilisation and Its Discontents, is the part of analytic theory “that has edged its way forward most laboriously”, and the drive remains an elusive, enigmatic notion today.

This seminar will review key moments in the theorisation of the drive, especially in the Freudian-Lacanian tradition, with attention to landmarks in both Freud’s and Lacan’s work, as well as to contributions from such contemporary psychoanalytic thinkers as Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupančič, Todd McGowan, Bruce Fink, Adam Phillips, and Leo Bersani. We will consider the drive in terms of its connection to the themes of sex and death; its relation to trauma and enjoyment; its positionality at the border of the body and the mind; its tension with the concept of desire; and its potential as an engine of radical individual and social transformation.

You may take this course to fulfill a course requirement for the GCAS Psychoanalysis Certificate Programme.