How might one approach teaching psychoanalytic ideas to undergraduates?
Don’t be rigid or dogmatic. Focus on how psychoanalysis has expanded beyond Freud to fields such as self psychology and object relations. Teach what you are most interested in teaching. Teaching undergraduates is different because you have to make the concepts understandable for people who are not immersed to them. Translating concepts into plain English helps. Before you teach a course, learn about the culture of the school: subscribe to the student newspaper, observe a few classes in the department, and talk with full-time faculty and adjuncts. Speak in jargon-free language. Be prepared. Don’t just sit and read a paper to your students. Get supervision on how to teach if you aren’t familiar with teaching. Be a good team player. Learn about the counseling center and meet people there, partly in case you need to refer one of your students. Make connections with the center for learning-disabled students, and find out at the beginning of a course if students are learning disabled to arra
