Program Overview

Our four-year BA Psychoanalytic Studies (including foundation year), will be suitable for you if your academic qualifications do not yet meet our entrance requirements for the three-year version of this course and you want a programme that increases your subject knowledge as well as improves your academic skills in order to support your academic performance.

This four-year course includes a foundation year (Year Zero), followed by a further three years of study. During your Year Zero, you study three academic subjects relevant to your chosen course as well as a compulsory academic skills module, with additional English language for non-English speakers.

You are an Essex student from day one, a member of our global community based at the most internationally diverse campus university in the UK.

After successful completion of Year Zero in our Essex Pathways Department, you progress to complete your course with our Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies.

From year one you will continue developing your academic skills alongside discovering the different schools of psychoanalysis and explore its applications to different settings and objects of study - from individual clinical work, to groups, culture and society. At its core, psychoanalysis believes that understanding human experience is not just about looking at external factors, from the places we live and work to the people we talk to, but also at internal ones - our inner motivations, fantasies, and defence mechanisms, to name a few.

Beginning with an introduction to psychodynamic concepts as applied to individuals, relationships and organisations, the course goes on to provide a comprehensive account of child and adult development and critical overviews of both Freudian and Jungian psychology. From this foundation, psychodynamic approaches are then applied thematically to diverse areas including:

• The psychological factors that influence our emotions, behaviours and relationships
• The forces that drive human behaviour and interaction
• Literature and film
• War and trauma
• Sexuality