This seminar takes the structure of the psychoanalytic clinic as its point of departure. From here, we will ask a simple question, “How does one pay attention to one’s self?” While self-awareness might seem straightforward, psychoanalysis posits that there is always an element that escapes our capacity to apprehend ourselves: the psychical unconscious. This unconscious is commonly confused with a closed-off box of hidden memories or repressed experiences. But psychoanalysis understands the unconscious as a self-making mechanism. It is the catalyst that creates us and continuously re-creates us. Paradoxically, the unconscious is only ever understood by virtue of its absence. It is always missing.
How does one pay attention to that which is not apprehensible? In this seminar, we will explore the paradoxical topology of the self. We will ask ourselves what the practice of psychoanalysis can teach us about paying attention to the very part of ourselves — the unconscious — that we can never access. We will explore how this practice differs from other positivist, psychological techniques of self-evaluation. Finally, we will ask how the inclusion of an ‘Other’ orients our understanding of ourselves in the analytic dyad and beyond.
This course will be an entry into the historical, theoretical, and material underpinnings of psychoanalysis. It will introduce its participants to one of the most radical and committed modalities of sustained self-attentiveness.
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Taught by Anaís Martinez Jimenez, a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Princeton University and a psychoanalyst in training at the National Psychological Association of Psychoanalysis