Module: ENG6111-20 Literature and Psychology

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor:  Samantha Walton

Module Tutor Contact Details:  s.walton@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

This module explores the rise of psychology and its relationship with literature from the nineteenth century to the present day. This timescale will give us space to explore the development of the study of the mind in order to better understand the dramatic changes which have taken place in science, medicine and culture and to assess their relevance in the present day. The course addresses significant modern and historic trends in psychology, including neurology, psychoanalysis, and behaviourism, looking at how they are represented in literature, and at how literature might have informed their development. We will address literature that has tested or challenged theories, diagnoses, and treatments such as The Yellow Wallpaper or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and also consider how medical and philosophical understandings of the mind have influenced literary aesthetics and innovations in form and the writing of the self. The purpose will be to consider how literature and psychology are not worlds apart, but are both - in conflicting, compatible, and interconnected ways - concerned with unraveling the mysteries of the human mind. 

The module complements the study of the set texts with lectures on psychological and literary history. It assumes no previous background in psychology, and will be as engaging for students who are new to psychological study as to those with existing strengths in this area. Methodologically, the module is informed by the interdisciplinary field of Health Humanities, which proposes a holistic health model, in which culture, history, beliefs and social factors (like inequality, marginalisation and civil rights) be considered in the theorisation, diagnosis and treatment of illness and ‘dis-ease’. As readers, we do not set out to diagnose characters or use literature to substantiate or refute psychological theories. Instead, texts provide a starting point for conversations about medical ethics, patient experience, the role and responsibilities of health care professionals, cultures of medicine and medicalisation, and how (and why) the lines have been drawn between sanity and insanity

2. Outline syllabus: 

• Unit 1: Gendering Hysteria

• Unit 2: Mad, Bad and Sad: Writers on Mental Illness

• Unit 3: The Politics of Madness: Race, Class and the Anti-Psychiatry Movement

These units are interspersed with lectures on psychological history and literary criticism and each text and activity comes with full contents notifications and trigger warnings. Students will be given training in how to provide content information for their own work.

 3. Teaching and learning activities: 

Seminars, lectures, workshops, film screenings, close reading of historical sources, digital archive training, field trips.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Case study presentation, or written report (1500 words or equivalent)

• % Weighting: 30

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Essay (3000 words)

• % Weighting: 70