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Working with States of psychic disintegration: A focus on psychosis, disintegrating self-states, break down

Home/ Working With States of Psychic Disintegration: A Focus On Psychosis, Disintegrating Self-states, Break Down
Course Type Course Code No. Of Credits
Foundation Core SHS303839 2

Semester and Year Offered: Semester 4 Year: 2021

Course Coordinator and Team: Dr Ashis Roy

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

Pre-requisites: Completion of prior courses

Course Objectives/Description:

The course is a theoretical and application based course which creates an engagement with the experiential and metapsychological dimensions of psychotic and disintegrated mental states. Through clinical vignettes and narratives of disturbed individuals the world of psychosis will be explored to enable in the student the development of a psychotic wavelength which enables their clinical work in understanding the psychotic parts of the neurotic structure and the world of the psychotic individual

Course Outcomes:

On successful completion of this course students will be able to:

  1. Understand the difference between neurotic, borderline and psychotic mental structures
  2. Understand the mental structure of psychosis
  3. Examine primitive defense mechanisms existing in psychosis
  4. Learn about how to clinically work with psychotic patients
  5. Understand the psychoanalytic perspective on the origins of psychosis

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

  1. Creating links between the psychoanalytic and psychiatric understanding of psychosis through texts such The Psychotic Wavelength by Richard Lucas, Sidney Tarachow The Psychoanalytic theory of Hospital Treatment. Explaining psychotic defenses and their clinical manifestation.
  2. Looking at Psychoanalytic applications in the hospital setting in acute cases of disorganisation
  3. Understanding the Psychotic transference and Counter transference
  4. Exploring dismembered parts of the self through the works of Eigen, Andre Green and Salomon Resnik
  5. Examining Central Phobic Position, maternal enthrallment, Pre Oedipal Castration Anxiety, and the Basic Fault
  6. Borderline and Narcissistic Psychopathologies

Assessment Details with weights:

  • Assessment 1: Written assessment: 50%
  • Assessment 2: Written assessment : 50%

Reading List:

  • Bion, W (1967) Differentiation of psychotic from the non-psychotic personalities
  • Eigen, M. (1986). Psychotic core / Michael Eigen.
  • Freud, S (1924) ‘Neurosis and Psychosis’, Complete Works of Freud,
  • Freud, S. (1923) ‘The Ego and The Id’ in Complete Works of Freud,
  • Freud, S (1924) ‘The loss of reality in Neurosis and Psychosis’, Complete Works of Freud,
  • Freud, S. (1911) ‘Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)’ in Freud-complete works
  • Green, A. (1999). The work of the negative. Free Association Books.
  • Lucas, R. (2009). The psychotic wavelength: A psychoanalytic perspective for psychiatry. Routledge.
  • Pinto, J. (2015). Em and the Big Hoom. Penguin.
  • Resnik, S., & Alcorn, D. (2018). The delusional person: Bodily feelings in psychosis. Routledge.
  • Resnik, S. (2018). The logics of madness: On infantile and delusional transference. Routledge.
  • Rosenfeld, H (1952) ‘notes on the psychoanalysis of the superego conflict of an acute schizophrenic patient’ Melanie Klein Today Vol
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