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

Sexuality, sex and identity. From medicalization to "liberation" (1870-1980)

The history of the 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 the nineteenth-century, 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 first part of the course will reconstruct the emergence of sexuality in the history of science, starting from the analysis of some medical essays about "sexual perversions" written at the end of the nineteenth-century, until the Tre saggi sulla sessualità (Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality) published by Sigmund Freud in 1905. The second part of the course will take into consideration the debate on sexuality-psychoanalysis-culture relations, starting from 1930 until the so-called "sexual liberation" occured the sixties and the seventies. The construction of gender roles and the importance of feminisms in questioning the universal validity of the development patterns of the psychological theories and Freudian psychoanalysis will take into particular consideration.

Readings/Bibliography

Provisional Bibliography (the course will start in February 2015):

Students have to know all the texts indicated at the points 1. , 2. and one of the subjects indicated at the point 3. (the exam will start from that chosen subject).

1.Fonti:J.P. Moebius, L'inferioritÃÆ'  mentale della donna (1900), Torino, Einaudi, 1978 (introduzione di Franca Ongaro Basaglia); S. Freud, La sessualitÃÆ'  infantile (1905) in S. Freud, La vita sessuale,Bollati Boringhieri 2012, pp. 80-112; Freud, Il tramonto del complesso edipico (1924),ibidem, pp. 207-215; Freud, Alcune conseguenze psichiche della differenza anatomica tra i sessi (1925), ibidem, pp. 219- 229; SessualitÃÆ'   femminile (1931), ibidem, pp. 239-257; Freud, Lezione 33. La femminilitÃÆ' , in Freud, Opere, Bollati Boringhieri, vol. 11, pp. 219-241; Karen Horney, La differenza tra i sessi (1931), in Psicologia femminile, Roma, Armando Editore 1973, pp. 123-136; Horney, Fuga dalla femminilitÃÆ'  (1926), in J. Baker Miller, Le donne e la psicoanalisi, Torino, Boringhieri 1976, pp. 13-26; Alfred Adler, Il sesso (1927), ibidem, pp. 44-53; G. Zilboorg, Il maschile e il femminile: alcuni aspetti biologici e culturali, ibidem, pp. 93-124. G. Devereux, La rinuncia alla identitÃÆ' . Una difesa contro l'annientamento (a cura di A. Cerea), Mimesis 2015

2.  Studi critici:Valeria P. Babini, Fernanda Minuz, Annamaria Tagliavini, La donna nelle scienze dell'uomo, Angeli 1986 (in ebook);  Silvia Finzi Vegetti, Storia della psicoanalisi, Milano Mondadori, 1986, cap. VI,  Il bambino psicoanalitico (pp.69-87), cap. XII, Psicoanalisi e politica (pp. 157-170); M. Foucault, Gli anormali, Feltrinelli 2000, pp. 200-234; G. Rifelli, SessualitÃÆ' : nascita di un concetto e di una disciplina, in G.Rifelli, C.  Ziglio, Per una storia dell'educazione sessuale in Italia 1870-1920 (in fotocopie presso "Burchiellaro", Via Zamboni 66); Chiara Saraceno, Femminismo, in Enciclopedia delle scienze sociali (1994) http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/femminismo ); Silvia Finzi Vegetti, Marina Cattenazzi, "Introduzione" in Psicoanalisi ed educazione sessuale, Laterza 1994, pp. V- XXXV

3. Un testo(obbligatorio) da scegliere tra quelli elencati:  1.  Silvia Finzi Vegetti (a cura di), Psicoanalisi al femminile, Bari-Roma, Laterza 1993; 2. H. Marcuse, Eros e civiltÃÆ' , Torino, Einaudi1964 (materiale didattico di supporto alla lettura, utilizzato durante le lezioni, disponibile in fotocopie presso la copisteria "Burchiellaro"); 3. J. Mitchell, Psicoanalisi e femminismo. Freud, Reich, Laing e altri punti di vista sulla donna (1974), Torino, Einaudi 1978; 4. B.P.F. Wanroij, Storia del pudore. La questione sessuale in Italia 1860-1940, Venezia, Marsilio, 1990; 5. C. Bonomi, Sulla soglia della psicoanalisi. Freud e la follia infantile, Torino, Boringhieri 2007.    

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.

Only the achievement of a complete knowledge, mastery of expression, and clear reasoning and explanation will be assessed with a score of excellence.

Teaching tools

Overhead projector; computer; dvd.

Office hours

See the website of Valeria Paola Babini