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Preparing for Clinical Work

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Course Type Course Code No. Of Credits
Foundation Core SHS201732 4

Semester and Year Offered: 2ND Semester (1st Year)

Course Coordinator and Team: Neetu Sarin and Nikita Jain

Email of course coordinator: neetu[at]aud[dot]ac[dot]in

Pre-requisites: Completion of 1st semester courses

Aim: This course will introduce and help students to acquaint themselves with the field of clinical work.

Course Outcomes:

  1. To be able to listen to the whole self of the patient and formulate a case study. To be able to sensitively formulate and communicate a diagnosis, without making the therapeutic engagement diagnostic focused.
  2. To become more open to self-reflective experiences as a future clinician by acquainting oneself with the dynamics and vicissitudes of the human psyche and self.
  3. Thorough understanding of various healing traditions and historically examine insanity through important thinkers.

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

Unit 1

Learning to listen to the person instead of categorizing symptoms. A look at four interrelated healing traditions – Humanistic, Existential, Psychoanalytic, Buddhist and indigenous healing traditions.

Self in clinical Work: An introductory exploration of transference and counter- transference in life in general and within the particularities of the clinical situation.

UNIT 2

Revisiting the history of insanity: Re-examining madness from the writings of Laing and Szasz.

UNIT 3

Psychodynamic case formulation: Readings from Nancy McWilliam, Winnicott, Gobbard & Ogden.

UNIT 4

An introduction to the case study approach.

Assessment Details with weights:

For the first assignment students will be asked to take case history from psychiatric and psychodynamic perspectives. They are supposed to talk to an individual for 3-4 sessions and submit a write on the same. (weightage 40 %)

For the second assignment students will be asked to speak to any one 3-4 times and then formulate a case. They were also asked to write their experiential understanding on the concepts like transference, counter transference, empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard and also to locate them in the narrative. (weightage 40 %)

Class Participation: 10 %

Attendance: 10 %

Reading List:

  1. McWilliams, N. Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process. London: The Guilford Press, 1994.
  2. McWilliams, N. Psychoanalytic Case Formulation. New York: The Guilford Press. 1999.
  3. Winnicott, D. Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International Universities Press, 1965.
  4. Erikson H. Erik. Insight and Responsibility: Lectures on the Ethical Implications of Psychoanalytic Insight. New York: W.W. Norton. 1964.
  5. Foucault Michel. Madness and Civilization: A history of Insanity in the Age of Reason. London: Penguin, 1971.
  6. Laing R.D. Politcs of Experience and Birds of Paradise. London: Penguin Books, 1967.
  7. Laing. R.D. The Divided Self. London:, Penguin Books, 1962.
  8. Ogden H. Thomas, The Primitive Edge of Experience. London: Karnac, 2004.
  9. Szasz, Thomas. Ideology and Insanity. New York: Routledge, 1970.
  10. Winnicott, D. W. Collected Papers: Through Paediatrics to Psycho-analysis. New York: Basic Books, 1958.
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