Postgraduate Certificate in Psychoanalysis

The programme joins some of the most reputable contemporary thinkers in psychoanalysis, to introduce different positions in the psychoanalytic landscape. Its aim is to create a dialogue between different understandings of psychoanalysis, apply psychoanalysis to problems beyond the individual subject and develop models of understanding the human mind in its interaction with the world beyond single psychoanalytic positions. This is achieved by not capitalising on any single figure in the psychoanalytic tradition and instead providing perspectives of classical and contemporary approaches to the understanding of psychoanalysis. These perspectives include, but are not limited to, Jungian, Freudian, Lacanian, Deleuzian, Winnecotian positions - interpreted by contemporary figures like Bruce Fink, Todd McGowan, Jamieson Webster and others. Additionally, the course explores the perspectives of contemporary non-Lacanian scholars such as Jeffrey Masson, Dylan Evans, Stuart Schneiderman, and Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen. The programme empowers students to understand psychoanalysis as a tool allowing a critical analysis of the human condition in its meanings and crises. United by this aim, the program navigates through topics such as the analysis of religious phenomena such as Daoism, Buddhism and Christianity; literature and film; clinical cases of the mind and the body, contemporary and historical political crises, classical metaphysical problems and possible future developments of psychoanalytic theory. Students are encouraged to apply the psychoanalytic paradigms introduced in the programme to tackle research questions of pressing relevance to the contemporary human condition.