The Ape & the Sea:
The Fragmented Legacy of Freud at the Dawn of Psychoanalysis

Instructor: Reza Negarestani Date & Time: May 20, 27, June 3, 10, 17, 24, July 1 10:30-13:00 ET

DESCRIPTION: Year 1920: Freud has published Beyond the Pleasure Principle and in the vein of Copernicus, Newton and Darwin before him, he has disturbed the peace of this world in yet another way. But this new perturbation seems to be even more troubling in that it has agitated the alleged perpetual peace of our given world at a deeper level thus far considered as unshakable and a haven—the last bastion of human comfort in the face of a crumbling world and the birth of a new one no less prone to further and stronger disconcertments. It is as if once the human loses this one last trench, the flames of the war against this world forged in the image of the human will spread and burn the cities of Man and God to ashes.

The focus of this eight-session Seminar is Freud and his legacy regarding three key topics, the unconscious, the nature of trauma in Freud’s work and his immediate legacy, and drive and drive-like behaviors. Other than the works of Freud pertinent to this Seminar, we will be reading comparable works penned by the members of the inner circle (Sandor Ferenczi and Otto Rank among others). During the Seminar, we will zoom in on such subject matters as the status of causal role or causal relevance, the hermeneutics of psychological etiology, the dynamics of memory and tongue and theories of unconscious motivations in Freud’s work and his collaborators. Covering both psychoanalytic and speculative dimensions of Freud and the inner circle’s project, the overall goal of this Seminar is twofold: (1) Rather than questioning the status of Freud’s version of psychoanalysis in relation to science or identifying it as a pseudo-science, we rather assume that Freud’s psychoanalytical method is compatible with the scientific method. Therefore, we instead seek to find out not only whether the findings of the Freudian theory of the unconscious and drive can be validated under scrutiny, but also whether such findings tell us something more than what natural and special sciences already tell us. (2) In tandem with 1, which parts of this project should be readopted, which should be fleshed out and which should be discarded.

IMAGE: Freud Couch, Freud Museum, London

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