FYSP 028 - Freud and the Discovery of the Unconscious

Few thinkers have influenced how we approach the human mind as profoundly as Sigmund Freud, and yet his invention, psychoanalysis, remains deeply controversial to this day. What is it about Freud’s invention that continues to rattle us? In this seminar, we will explore this question by following Freud and his discovery of the unconscious, through his analysis of dreams, clinical cases, and other of his most influential texts. In doing so, we will also turn to literature, painting, and film, for Freud himself recognized in the aesthetic a unique way of approaching the very unconscious he had set out to discover.