If words can hurt, words can also heal. Class members learn to use these forms for their own explorations and with their patients. Brief, relevant readings provide models by Paton, Cheever, and O'Connor, among others. This course explores issues central to this discussion, including the integrative aspects of family life, group dynamics, ethics, and the role of medicine within these constructs. This course explores films unique capacity to depict human disintegration and healing.
Attention is given to images of illness, caretaking, survival, and resurrection.
The course includes screenings of representative American, European, and Japanese films. Particular attention is paid to the career of Igmar Bergman. We use, among other texts, Seeing and Believing, by theologian Margaret Miles. Clinical experience has shown that there are universal meanings to certain symbols in dreams, but this crude symbolization understates our creative capacity to weave the story of our lives through the use of symbolic imagery. This course explores dreams in a psychoanalytic perspective.