Energy, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis

This course fulfills a requirement for the Philosophy & Psychoanalysis Certificate.

Credits: 1

Format: Live Seminar
Prerequisites: None unless you are taking this seminar for credit.

Requirements: The researcher/participant in this seminar must complete the course either via: (a) a written examination; or (b) a 2,000 word research paper due no latter than June 15, 2021.

Language: English

Description:
This course examines some of the entanglements of energy and psychoanalytic theory from Freud to Zizek.

The physics of energy is understood thermodynamically around the turn of the 20th century, and we will see how Freud's metapsychology works based on a thermodynamic model of psychic energy. Around the middle of the 20th century, energy is less directly associated with thermodynamics and more in terms of information. This is confusing, due to the way that entropy is understood similarly but distinctly in thermodynamics as opposed to information theory. We will see how Lacan's structural psychoanalysis is deeply implicated in information theory, even as his later work pushes at the boundaries of it. With Deleuze, who both draws on and critiques psychoanalytic theory, we can see how he reformulates energy as intensity in Difference and Repetition in ways that correspond with the development of chaos and complexity theory, and this anticipates the development of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Finally, while Zizek is often read more subjectively and epistemologically, we will see how his conception of the Real opens onto an ontology of energy transformation in both material and psychical terms.

Enrollment Deadline: May 1

Professor Clayton Crockett, PhD

Dates: Sundays May 2, May 9, May 16, May 30

Time: 6pm GMT

Format: GCAS Zoom

Level: upper level BA and MA (with some additional requirements)

4 Lectures

I. Freud: Thermodynamics and the Energetics of the Unconscious

II. Lacan: Entropy, Information, and the objet petit a

III. Deleuze: Energy, Intensity, and Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics

IV. Zizek: Return of the Real--An Ontology of Physical-Psychological Energy Transformation

Books & Materials:

Sigmund Freud, General Psychological Theory, ed. Phillip Rieff

Peter Atkins, The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction

Jacques Lacan, Seminar II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and the Technique of Psychoanalysis

Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, chapter 5

Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life

Slavoj Zizek, The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters