An innovative and experimental program, a joint venture of Yale University and the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, brings together psychoanalysts and scholars in the humanities in an effort to explore valid areas of interaction to the enrichment of both. The program attempts to meet its aim of mutual enrichment and development in a variety of ways. One of the most important is by giving advanced graduate students, who are doing research for dissertations in related areas, exposure to psychoanalytic theory and concepts. They derive support for this aspect of their work from full fellowships and partial research grants given by the program, which the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis oversees. The students may take some coursework at the Institute or tutorials with members of the Institute's faculty who are conversant with the humanities aspect of their work. The purpose is to provide exposure to psychoanalytic thinking early in the graduate careers of these scholars with the aim of aiding their future research and scholarly work.
Another joint venture brings together Yale scholars in the humanities and psychoanalysts in a monthly seminar which pursues a single topic over the course of a year. This year the topic is memory. The analysts and the scholars, who have a special interest in considering analytic ideas in relation to their work, present papers on the chosen topic for mutual discussion and criticism. The fellows and grantees attend these seminars. The program also includes funds to invite analysts and scholars to lecture in undergraduate courses, and support is provided to the Yale Library to develop its book holdings in psychoanalysis and the humanities.
An advisory committee of scholars and analysts on the Yale faculty plans, evaluates, and coordinates the program. The committee is currently headed by Dr. David Musto, Associate Professor of Psychiatry (Child Study Center) and History. An annual Freud Lecture series brings to the university scholarly presentations which span the fields of psychoanalysis and the humanities. The series was inaugurated in 1977 by Hans Loewald, whose lectures, Psychoanalysis and the History of the Individual, have been published in book form. This year's lecturer is John Mack, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard University and member of the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, whose book, A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence, was a recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Dr. Mack's lectures on “Governance of the Self: Medieval and Modern Perspectives” are being given on April 10th, 17th and May 1st.