ABSTRACT

I should already have known. It had been problematic enough teaching about psychoanalysis within the frame of the university as a form of psychotherapy, and now it was to be just as problematic teaching about psychoanalysis as a form of research. The academic context demands an objective appraisal of knowledge that is quite impossible, and I discovered that many psychoanalysts are so attached to their favourite form of knowledge that a subjective engagement with the topic is also hedged around with dangers. The process of constructing a psychoanalytic studies degree course did, however, at least give me access to some debates about what it would mean to ‘return to Freud’ and, along the way, to debates about the nature of ‘trauma’ in Freudian theory.