Art and Literature through a Psychoanalytic Lens:
A Course in Applied Psychoanalysis
Instructor: James Weiss, MD

Class participants will be encouraged to apply their developing psychoanalytic skills of observation, empathy, and imagination by immersion in the discussion of various works of art and literature. These will include Sophocles' Antigone; Keats' La Belle Dame sans Merci; Shakespeare's Richard III; the Brothers Grimm's Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella; James Joyce's The Dead; and Carr's A Month in the Country. Accompanying these texts, participants will read articles on the methodology of applied psychoanalysis as well as examples of it by Freud, Jacob Arlow, David Werman, Francis Baudry, Renato Almansi, Edith Jacobson, and Bruno Bettleheim. If possible, several of our classes will involve a group viewing of a movie followed by the class discussion. Movies under consideration include Richard III, Ordinary People, and John Houston's film of Joyce's The Dead. Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors is also a possibility.

The development of a psychoanalytic understanding of any work of art requires a turning of oneself intellectually and emotionally to the text with as few a priori ideas about it as possible, just as we might clinically listen to our patient rather than relying on documents or diagnoses from other people. This course seeks to foster this kind of emotional inquiry.  CE Credits offered: CME Credits: 18 / CE Category A Credits: 6 / NBCC: 18 clock hours / All others: Letter of Attendance

Registration Closed

About the Instructor: James Weiss, MD 

Training Program Credit: Students who successfully complete this course can earn elective credit in the psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy training programs.

Registration and Tuition Deadline deadline is January 19.  

$25 Registration Fee is due at time of application.
Tuition: $315 
$235 for students matriculated in the training programs 
$290 for residents and graduate students
Payment plans can be arranged with the Administrator
Matriculated students aren't charged a course registration fee.  Students who register for more than one course in a semester pay only one registration fee.  In special circumstances we may accept registrations after the registration deadline, but there will be an additional $20 late registration fee.

Course Cancellation Policy

Registration Closed

• Participants will analyze literary texts or films with as few a priori ideas about them as possible.
• Students will assess their emotional responses to the various characters and situations portrayed in the works under discussion.
• Students will analyze the ideas and "central themes" of a work of art.
• Students will describe the difference between interpretation of a work of art and the interpretations generated by the interactions between patient and therapist in the consulting room.
• Students will analyze and discuss the role of fairy tales in preparing young children to encounter life's existential challenges: separation and loss, sibling relations, love etc.
• Participants will discuss D.W. Winnicott's notions of the crippling effects on children of faulty mothering; the development of the false-self and of false-self bonds.

CE & CME Information: