Strangers to Ourselves: An Introduction to Freud (Chicago)

Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic thought and practice shifted the ground under the modern subject’s feet. Rather than the calm, rational, calculating individuals post-Enlightenment culture tends to celebrate, people were discovered to be driven by biological needs; pushed and pulled by impersonal social forces; buffeted by psychological impulses and repressions they can barely discern. To paraphrase Freud, we humans are not even “masters in our own houses.” Yet Freud also saw the possibility of integrating life’s difficult experiences through narrative techniques. The “talking cure” became his clinical method and the case history a form for developing and testing his theories. While Freud’s work has been transformed, critiqued, and reevaluated numerous times, many of his key insights and ideas are still (uncomfortably) central to our contemporary understanding of psychology, the arts, and everyday life. How can we understand ourselves, our society, and our desires and drives? And how do we account for that which we don’t know or cannot access about ourselves?

In this course, students will be introduced to Freud’s theory of mind through close readings and discussion of some of his major works. Our central texts will likely include The Interpretation of Dreams; The Psychopathology of Everyday Life; Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality; “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”; Civilization and Its Discontents; and at least one of the case histories. Each week we will read key texts by Freud as well as Freudian commentary and interpretation by interlocutors from multiple disciplines and approaches, including some combination of literary theory, political and critical theory, philosophy of mind, and visual art history and criticism. We will engage collectively in interpreting Freud, contextualizing his work, and tracing its implications and influence through a wide field of thought and culture.

This course description is adapted from a text originally written by Adriana Garriga-López.

Course Schedule

Tuesday, 6:30 - 9:30pm CT
November 18 — December 16, 2025
4 session over 5 weeks
Class will not meet on Tuesday, November 25th.

$335.00

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