02282 - History of Psychology

Learning outcomes

The aim of this course is to give students the skills in reading critically and contextualising texts and sources from different viewpoints, making them able to use the acquired historical competencies to examine several issues theoretically. Students will be able to express their well-founded point of view, thinking critically on the acquired competencies and confronting dialectically with other people.

Course contents

For a history of sexuality and sexual education. The beginning (1870-1914)

The history of sexuality is the history of our ideas about sexuality and history of the more or less repressive institutions that control it. At the end of 1800, human sciences threw light upon the part of sexuality in the development of our personality and our psychic life, examining it scientifically. The history of our sexuality starts from there: among science, pedagogy, sociology and politics. The course will be focused just on the emerging of sexuality in the history of science (medical, psychiatric, pedagogic, psychoanalytic sciences) and will take in exam some works and authors between nineteenth- and twentieth-century, trying also to point out the change brought in by Sigmund Freud in the definition and consideration of sexuality sphere. More precisely, the following topics will be tackled: sexuality as procreation in medical and hygienic publications (Paolo Mantegazza); sexual perversions in psychiatric publications (R. Krafft-Ebing, 1886); love-fetishism between psychiatry and psychology (Alfred Binet, 1887); sexuality development from the childhood to adult age (Freud, 1905); the problem of education and sexual morality in Italy (1910); the beginning of Neo-Malthusian movement for birth-control (1912); popular scientific of contraceptive methods and lawsuits for indecent behaviour (Florence and Turin, 1913-1914).

Readings/Bibliography

Provisional Bibliography. 1. texts: Besides the reading of some pages taken from many authors' works whose photocopies will be given, the following texts will be examined: Aldfred Binet, Il feticismo in amore (1887), tr.it. Etis, Pisa, 2011; S. Freud, Tre saggi sulla teoria della sessualità, in Freud , La vita sessuale, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2012, pp.41-131; Freud, Contributi alla psicologia della vita amorosa (1910-1917), ibidem, pp. 161-198. 2. critical essays: v. P. Babini, La psichiatria, in Storia delle scienze, vol.IV, Natura e vita. L'età moderna, Torino, Einaudi, 1994, pp.402-37A; Davidson, L'emergenza della sessualità. Epistemologia e formazione dei concetti, Quodlibet, Macerata,2010, pp. 59-132; G. Rifelli, C. Ziglio, Per una storia dell'educazione sessuale (1870-1920), La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1995, pp. 11-185; Bruno P. F. Wanrooij, Storia del pudore. La questione sessuale in Italia 1860-1940, Marsilio, Venezia, 1990, pp. 7-96. 3. suggested essays: M. Foucault, La volontà di sapere, Feltrinelli, Milano,1978.

Teaching methods

The course will be based on lectures and critical reading of the texts. Students will be encouraged to participate actively to the discussion.

Students who attend the ¾ of the lessons will be able to examine closely some arguments tackled in the course with original researches and to stand the exam on their own works.

Assessment methods

The exam will consist of a discussion starting from a topic chosen by the student: historical knowledge, critical approach and personal analysis will be held.

Teaching tools

Overhead projector; computer; dvd.

Office hours

See the website of Valeria Paola Babini