ENGL 64.01 Hysteria, Paranoia, Schizophrenia: The Case Study as Literary Genre

Dora, Schreber, the Wolf Man: Freud’s famous psychoanalytic case studies are organized around his patient’s words and symptoms, and yet they all have the narrative complexity and lurid family drama of the greatest nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century novels. This course explores the psychoanalytic case study as a unique literary genre in its own right, one that falls between the medical case history and the novel proper. We will read Sigmund Freud's case studies through three modes of reading: psychoanalytic feminist criticism; paranoid and reparative reading from queer critique; and, symptomatic reading from Marxist criticism. The readings of the cases will therefore be supplemented by texts in queer and feminist theory, continental philosophy, and literary criticism. Throughout the quarter, we will use the cases to explore questions of racial and sexual difference, the body, trauma, the psyche, and memory.

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:LIT; WCult:W

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Department-Specific Course Categories

Junior Colloquium: Course Group IV