Psychology

In the first part of the course, students become familiar with the basic elements of psychoanalysis (Freud) and analytical psychology (Jung). Special attention is paid to depth psychological theories on art and literature. In the second part, students read a number of widely diverging depth psychological interpretations of literary texts, such as Sophocles’ Oedipus rex, Saint-Exupéry’s Le petit prince, Goncharov’s Oblomov, Hoffmann’s The Sandman, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, several fairy tales, myths, poems, and short stories. The last part of the course is devoted to some epistemological aspects of depth psychological literary criticism. There are three main questions in this course: What types of rules are to be observed when interpreting literary texts? To what extent does depth psychological literary criticism qualify as an academic discipline? And, finally, to what extent do depth psychological theories like psychoanalysis and analytical psychology qualify as academic disciplines?

Long before Western people in the sixties and seventies tried out psychedelics for recreational and therapeutic purposes, other cultures had already been using them for ages because of their therapeutic potential. This “psychedelic wave” in the West scared off politicians leading to a scheduling of these substances and a halt to scientific research into the effects of those substances. In the nineties, placebo-controlled studies emerged looking into the negative effects of these drugs due to reports that these users might be cognitively impaired after abundant use of a number of these substances. Two decades later however, after the negative effects had been demonstrated to be limited, when used in moderate amounts, and after the substances appeared to be relatively safe, research into the positive effects started rising and it is blossoming today. While previously only a handful of labs investigated these effects, new research labs in other countries are emerging. The therapeutic potential of psychedelics is now being widely investigated and two companies are now setting up trials in psychiatric patients in order to demonstrate the therapeutic potential of these compounds. Their aim is to have those substances approved as a psychiatric medicine within a few years. While psychedelic research is experiencing a renaissance, it is still treated as the “bad daughter” in psychiatric settings and frowned upon by the general public. From the patient side however, there is a large demand for effective and alternative treatments since treatment is not a “one-size-fits-all” thing and many of those patients fail to benefit from current treatments, leaving them in distress and despair with a pessimistic view on their future. This course educates students about the positive and negative effects of these substances. Through the course students are able to communicate to the lay audience and to patients in an objective way what the current state of affairs is.

This course on the psychology of education is divided into three parts: challenges and objectives for the psychology of education in the 21st century; informal education--family education, new information and communication technologies; formal education including motivation, diversity, and school management.

This course examines intervention and treatment in the fields of social, occupational, and educational psychology. 

The first part of the course introduces the concepts of evolution and adaptation applied to an animal and human behavior and the fundamental principles for the study of development, evolution, and genetics of behavior. Then follows the eco-ethology that deals with the ecology of behavior in natural environments, from territorial, predatory, alimentary, sexual, and social behavior both in animals and in humans. In the third phase, topics of sociobiology are explored. The adaptive value of sociability, sexual behavior, and reproductive strategies (both in animals and humans) is further explored. Wedding strategies such as polygamy, polyandry, and monogamy is investigated. The course compares the underlying genetics to the ecology of animal behavior and introduce evolutionary psychology. The course compares the underlying genetics to the ecology of animal behavior and introduce evolutionary psychology. The course requires students to have basic knowledge of genetics and biology as a prerequisite.