Spacing Freud: Space and Place in Psychoanalytic Theory

This project is interested in developing a spatial reading of Sigmund Freud’s work to understand how psychoanalysis employs a variety of different spatial categories. Proceeding by way of a close and analytical reading of Freud’s texts, I begin by surveying theories of space coming from both philosophy and geography before applying these understandings to consider Freud’s use of topographical metaphors, the formation of the subject as presented through descriptions of the fort-da game and the oceanic feeling, and Freud’s description of the limits of phantasy and reality. Freud’s writings on religion figure prominently here. I conclude by examining the deployment of individual relations through social space in Freud’s writings and the link between place and character laid out in Moses and Monotheism. The result demonstrates the importance of space in a number of aspects of Freudian psychoanalysis and frames Freud as a thinker with important contributions to make to the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences.Ph