psychoanalysis

In our class we begun our semester-long discussion of the interaction of society, culture, art and ideas as they appear together in one period, the years 1890-1914 in Vienna. We have considered different ways in which the artistic and literary production of the period in particular has shaped (and been shaped by) the dynamism of a city entering modernity.

For your first paper, you will be asked to perform a comparison of two texts regarding the history of psychoanalysis. You have at your disposal (posted on Canvas) three essays about this history: George Makari from his book Revolution in Mind; Karl Schorske, “Politics and Patricide” from his book Fin de Siecle Vienna; and from Philip Rieff’s book Freud: Mind of a Moralist. In each essay, the authors propose different views on the importance of psychoanalysis historically, the role of Freud as a person and as a theorist of analysis, and of the history of analysis as it was established and spread in the fin de siècle period. You are to choose TWO of these three texts to focus on in your comparison. Specifically, you are to focus on the question of which, in your opinion, offers the best assessment of Freud’s work in terms of explaining its importance and the most convincing account of the development of the history of analysis.

To answer this question, you will need to do a few things. First, you will need to provide a clear assessment of the definitive qualities of each work which makes theirs a unique argument in comparison with the others. What is the approach each author takes? What types of evidence do they focus on, and what do they ignore? How does the style and approach of each article differ? How does the “home” discipline of each author impact their perspective? Second, you will need to define the criteria that you will use to assess the relative value — what makes the essay more or less successful than the others. Finally, you will need to clearly identify the specific primary points of comparison from each article that will be the data for your comparison. Once you have done these things, you will need, finally, to organize your ideas into an expository essay with a clear thesis that utilizes argument and evidence from the three essays to support your thesis.

Your first step in this project is to create an outline of your paper. The outline should include your thesis/theme, and the breakdown of the paper according to the topics of each paragraph that will ultimately make up your argument. For example:

Introduction
—-Question you are answering
—-Main theme or thesis which provides your answer
—-Thesis
Paragraph 1: First sub-theme (tied to thesis)
—-Evidence and explanation 1
—-Evidence and explanation 2, etc.
Paragraph 2: Second sub-theme (tied to thesis)
—-Evidence and explanation 1, etc.
Paragraph 3: Third sub-theme, etc.
Conclusion
—-How has thesis been supported by evidence?
—-Restatement of main idea of paper