Ship of Thought

Learning is the most basic means by which we can change oursleves. Of all the activities of the mind, learning is perhaps the most fundamental, yet one of the most provocative and difficult to understand. In this fourth volume of the Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis, ten new essays by an interdisciplinary array of educationalists, psychoanalysts and academics confront head-on the many problems associated with the mystery of learning. What is learning? How are ideas 'transmitted' from the mind of one person to the mind of another? What makes a good teacher? Like all the preceding volumes in The Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis, ideas and opinions are presented from a contrasting variety of viewpoints within contemporary psychoanalytic theory. Individual chapters are devoted to the theories of learning implicit in the work of Freud, Jung, Klein, Bion, Winnicott, and Lacan. Other topics explored in this extremely comprehensive and thought-provoking collection include: how to teach 'psychoanalytically'; the relationship between learning difficulty and 'writer's block'; and the problems inherent in teaching psychoanalysis itself.

Barford, Duncan

Foreword -- Introduction -- Psychoanalytic Research on Learning: An Appraisal and Some Suggestions -- Is Anything More Interesting Than Sex? The Freudian Perspective on Learning and Teaching -- Learning: A Jungian Perspective -- On 'Learning' and 'Learning about': W.R.Bion's Theory of Thinking and Educational Praxis -- The Hazards of Curiosity: A Kleinian Perspective on Learning -- The Dog's Temper: An Essay on the Vicissitudes of Learning -- From the Desire for Knowledge to the Jouissance of Learning: An Approach to Lacan's Theory -- Psychological Problems of Writer Identity: Towards a Horneyan Understanding -- Winnicott and Education -- Lifelong Unlearning -- Appendix: Quotations and Aphorisms