Aion Institute

The content of this class is organized around the historical development of different perspectives in psychoanalytic theory, tracing the development of Freudian drive theory into object relations, including Klein’s perspectives on the paranoid-schizoid versus depressive position, as well as special topics including observing ego capacity, the development of object relations, the idea of primitive mental states, and Kernberg’s developmental models. The discussions will include discussions of readings by Klein, Bion, and Winnicott, Kohut, the feminist critique of psychoanalysis, and the “developmental tilt.”