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Course options

  • Qualification

    MA - Master of Arts

  • Location

    Birkbeck, University of London

  • Study mode

    Full time

  • Start date

    OCT-24

  • Duration

    1 year

Course summary

COURSE OVERVIEW

The MA Psychoanalytic Studies allows you to study the origins of psychoanalysis, its history over its first 120 years of life, its main ideas and their applications, both within and outside the therapeutic context, and in particular how it has been taken up and contested in different social and cultural situations.

Taught by leading academics, the course explores how psychoanalytic thought has been used to illuminate pressing social and political concerns, and examines the controversies that have always surrounded it. It focuses on the interface between psychoanalysis as an evolving clinical practice, as a form of social knowledge, and as a mode of critique. The course examines key psychoanalytic concepts in detail and places those concepts in context. It will enable you to closely study the numerous modern developments within psychoanalysis, from Freud through to contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. You will also explore the methodological, epistemological and ethical issues that have resulted from diverse elaboration and extension of psychoanalytic ideas, not only in a clinical setting, but also in social and cultural inquiries, and in the interpretation of the historical past.

The course asks how far modern thought on war and other forms of violent conflict, fascism, terrorism, racism and xenophobia has had an influence on the way we think about the unconscious mind, and vice versa. It also investigates how psychoanalytic accounts of inter-personal and intra-psychic relationships have shaped - or been shaped by - wider cultural attitudes to love, intimacy and destructiveness, and about the place of these accounts in discussions of gender and sexuality, racism and postcolonialism.

This course links with the British Psychoanalytical Society through events, teaching staff and also through the Society's Foundation Course in Psychoanalysis, which you may apply to take as an option module on the MA. For those with strong clinical interests and the necessary experience, this arrangement provides an exceptional opportunity to be taught psychoanalytic theory by some of the most senior and eminent psychoanalysts in the country.

CAREERS AND EMPLOYABILITY

Graduates can pursue career paths in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, counselling, research, education, journalism and politics. Possible professions include:

psychoanalyst

psychotherapist

counsellor

clinical psychologist.

Tuition fees

Students living in United States
(International fees)

£ 19,030per year

Tuition fees shown are for indicative purposes and may vary. Please check with the institution for most up to date details.

University information

Birkbeck, University of London

  • Campus address

    Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London, Camden, WC1E 7HX, England

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