First Year
101 On Becoming a Psychoanalyst: IPA Ethics and Analytic Attitude
In this introduction seminar, “On Becoming and Being a Psychoanalyst”, we will explore and clarify IPA Ethics Principles, Professional Self Image, and the Emotional Stress of doing psychoanalytic work. This discussion group gives the candidates an opportunity to reflect actively on their paths to psychoanalysis, and their futures as psychoanalysts…
102 Origins of Psychoanalysis: Core Concepts (1896-1901)
This course, in ten seminars, explores Freud’s discovery of the psychic unconscious and psychoanalysis as a theory of human nature and a clinical method for the treatment of psychopathology including: a new psychological theory of the origins of hysterical and obsessional symptoms and their treatment with free association psychotherapy…
103 Classics of Formulation
This course, in ten seminars, explores Freud’s discovery of the psychic unconscious and psychoanalysis as a theory of human nature as it reveals itself in the case studies which serve as the foundation for all later formulations of the clinical conditions and diagnoses for which psychoanalysis has proven to be the essential treatment modality…
104 Ethics
These two Seminars comprise the first section of an Ethics Course, which is taught over the four years of the Curriculum. The first seminar explores the importance of establishing the treatment frame, appropriate boundaries, and analytic neutrality, for the therapeutic relationship. Boundary configurations with different types of patients are described. The Course demonstrates the essential role of confidentiality in facilitating trust and growth in the therapeutic relationship…
105 Core Structural and Dynamic Concepts
These seminars build on the topographical model of the Interpretation of Dreams and the dream work that causes dreams and constructs symptoms. The seminars will be an opportunity to study the basic ideas and their consequences for clinical work of Freud’s theory of libido and psychosexual development. They will include drive vicissitudes, the stages of psychosexual development, pathology and health…
106 Introduction to Psychoanalytic Technique Part I
Through a study of Freud’s classic papers on technique, and some later papers, we will understand the origins of the psychoanalytic theory of psychotherapeutic technique, a basic technique which was the first talking cure, and the basis, at least in some of its elements, for all later forms of psychotherapy. We will look at the origins of these ideas, and at later, modern, discussions of them…
107 Psychoanalytic Technique Part II
The Introduction to Psychoanalytic Technique will teach basic concepts in psychoanalytic technique and their application to the psychoanalytic process: the analytic situation, the patient’s remembered history and unconscious past, the structure and objectives of the psychoanalytic interview, the initial stage (or opening phase) of a psychoanalytic process, the analysis of defence and resistance…
108 Assessment of Pathologies Part I and Part II
These four seminars will enable candidates to diagnose and assess patients for psychoanalytic treatment as well as their suitability as control cases. Candidates will learn to differentiate psychosis, neurosis and border-line conditions with focus on the main neurotic conditions (hysteria, obsessions, perversions, character disorders, narcissistic disorders) including severity and combinations. Attention will also be given to post-traumatic disorders and character disorders…
109 Core Concepts: Conflict and Compromise Formation
This course, in 4 seminars, focuses on conflict theory as it has evolved from Freud’s original formulations involving his structural/dynamic theories at a neurotic level of functioning to the present usage/understanding involving all levels of intrapsychic formation both conscious and unconscious…
110 Comparative Psychotherapies
This 3-hour course will cover ten major psychotherapies (including CBT, DBT, IPT, Integrative Psychotherapy, Mindfulness, Supportive vs. Expressive Psychotherapy, EMDR, Family and Marital Psychotherapy, Group Psychotherapy, Expressive Psychotherapies). The candidates will understand what these methods are, how they claim to work, and for which patients they are appropriate, and whether we combine aspects of them with psychoanalytic treatment…
111 Understanding DSM 5 and Psychiatric Medications
The goal of this 3-hour seminar is to help Candidates become familiar with the major classes of psychiatric conditions along with the medications to treat them. Candidates will learn about core interviewing techniques which will help them identify the main psychiatric conditions, including having an approach to dealing with psychiatric emergencies that may present during the assessment…
112 From Freud to Klein
This course introduces candidates to the psychoanalytic work of Melanie Klein. It traces both her continuity with and key departures from Freudian theory, such as her rejection of the concept of primary narcissism, her insistence on the existence of object relations from the beginning and the importance of the early mother-infant relation (in which mother is initially experienced as a part-object, good or bad)…
113 Relational Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Relational Analysis
This three-seminar series offers a review of the basic concepts of relational psychoanalysis and its application to the psychoanalytic process. These seminars focus on the role of the analyst, encompassing awareness of the patient’s dynamic conflicts and the complex relational aspects of the analyst’s subjectivity and intersubjectivity between analyst and patient. From its outset, despite theoretical differences, psychoanalysis was never non-relational. Psychoanalytic terms such as transference, counter-transference, resistance…
114 Group Supervision/Technique #1
The purpose of this course is to provide candidates, from the outset of their analytic training, exposure to clinical thinking and process, as well as ongoing participation in discussion about their own and their colleagues’ developing practices and skill acquisition. This is an important foundation and stimulus for the ability to sensitively and confidently enable patients to enter into and profit from psychodynamic therapy, with the goal of nurturing the unfolding therapeutic relationship, and increasing patients’ receptivity…
115 Core Concepts: Masochism, Sadomasochism, The Negative Therapeutic Reaction
This course will teach candidates to define and describe the many-faceted concept of masochism, so that they can identify, recognize, assess, and formulate masochistic character, and can identify sadomasochistic transferences and dynamics so as to effect change. Clinical material will be presented to facilitate the application of theory and concepts to the psychoanalytic therapeutic process…
116 Core Concepts: Depression
These two seminars examine Freud’s concepts of object loss, mourning and melancholia and psychoanalytic thinking on depression after Freud. Clinical depression has some of the same characteristics as mourning, but Freud suggested some of the significant differences between normal mourning and depression. Freud puts it in the following way: “The melancholic displays something else besides which is lacking in mourning—an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard, an impoverishment of his ego on a grand scale…
Second Year
201 Technique: Dream Interpretation
This 5 seminar course addresses the evolution of psychoanalytic dream theory and practice after Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams”. Seminar 1 reinforces the central technique of free association in working with dreams (and generally) in psychoanalytic treatment. Seminar 2 explores the uniquely catalytic role of dreams in facilitating work with developmental issues and their recapitulation within the treatment…
202 Psychoanalytic Process
This course will include the discussion of major contributions to psychoanalytic technique reviewing and extending concepts from first year. Concepts and clinical approaches to learn include initiating psychoanalysis, listening, transference, free association, interpretation, and the therapeutic alliance…
203 Theories of Development I: Infancy & Early Childhood
This course explores how understanding infant development and the emergence of foundational psychic structures is essential to working with adults in psychoanalysis. Ideas on infantile psychosexuality, object relations, intergenerational transmission, attachment, and intersubjectivity will be presented to facilitate a practical and theoretical understanding of this formative developmental period. Throughout each seminar, we will examine the complexity of the developing baby…
204 Theories of Development II: Oedipal
This course introduces candidates to oedipal stage development. It also covers some of the necessary preceding developmental processes. The Course teaches what is meant by object constancy and how to understand the way in which it is related to oedipal stage development. The Course teaches candidates to distinguish between phallic-narcissistic and phallic-oedipal stages of development and to understand differences between…
205 Theories of Development III: Latency
The Course teaches the stages in the Latency phase of development and applications of the theory to treatment. The concepts central to understanding Latency are clarified: attachment and autonomy, the play theory and metaphors of the body, specifics of the setting for psychoanalysis of a latency child, sexual differentiation, pre-oedipal transference transformations…
206 Theories of Development IV: Adolescence
This course in 2 seminars teaches candidates to understand adolescent development and its importance and relevance to adult psychoanalytic practice. The seminar explores and contrasts different psychoanalytic theoretical models to understand this development. How adolescents change over time and the factors that influence that change are also explored…
207 Clinical Concepts and Theoretical Developments I: Ego Psychology
The psychoanalytic term “ego psychology” refers to the understanding of the ego’s structures and of its interaction with the drives and with reality, and to the major theorists (such as Heinz Hartmann and Anna Freud) who wrote on these subjects. Despite their difficulty, the works of Heinz Hartmann and Ernst Kris (two foundational theorists) have clinical relevance to assessment, to interventions, and to an understanding of the nature of the analytic process…
208 CRPO Professional Practice Standards and Jurisprudence Overview and Review
This 3-hour seminar will provide an overview and familiarize trainees with the CRPO Professional Practice Standards and Jurisprudence for Registered Psychotherapists. Trainees will be introduced to the role of the college and will review the CRPO code of Ethics and professional standards, including professional misconduct, incompetence and incapacity…
209 Ethics II
The second section of the Ethics Course explores boundary concepts specific to psychoanalytic work, and optimal assessment of risks. Non-sexual boundary violations, in such areas as receiving gifts, money exchange and therapist self-revelation are considered, as well as misuses of boundary theory to explain problematic clinical outcomes. Boundaries are also considered in terms of their role…
210 Clinical Concepts and Theoretical Developments I: Ego Psychology/Superego
The goal of this course is to introduce clinicians to the very rich contributions psychoanalytic theory and practice have made to understanding the development and functioning of conscience in individual psychology and in society. Prior to Freud’s insights which were based on his vast clinical work, knowledge about conscience and morality came from philosophy, religion, history and literature…
211 Clinical Concepts and Theoretical Developments II: British Object Relations
This course is a ten-session introduction to some of the main British Object Relations theories, which began as two divergent schools of thought, the Independent or Middle Group and the Kleinians. There will be two seminars on Fairbairn, two seminars on Winnicott, four seminars on Klein, and two seminars on Bion. In all the seminars, we will trace the evolution and refinements that have led up to the current models of theory and practice…
212 Group Supervision/Technique #2
The purpose of this course is to provide candidates, from the outset of their analytic training, exposure to clinical thinking and process, as well as ongoing participation in discussion about their own and their colleagues’ developing practices and skill acquisition. This is an important foundation and stimulus for the ability to sensitively and confidently enable patients to enter into and profit from psychodynamic therapy, with the goal of nurturing the unfolding therapeutic relationship, and increasing patients’ receptivity to participating in psychoanalytic treatment…
213 Clinical Concepts and Theoretical Developments III: American Object Relations
This course of 10 seminars will teach candidates further developments in core clinical Object Relations’ concepts and theories, first elaborated in England and then in the US. New clinical approaches were developed by Sandler and others in England, and by Jacobson, Mahler, Kernberg in America. These elaborations of Object Relations theory differ substantially from the Object Relations theories of Kleinians and of the Middle Group in England…
214 Group Supervision/Technique #3
The purpose of this course is to provide candidates, from the outset of their analytic training, exposure to clinical thinking and process, as well as ongoing participation in discussion about their own and their colleagues’ developing practices and skill acquisition. This is an important foundation and stimulus for the ability to sensitively and confidently enable patients to enter into and profit from psychodynamic therapy, with the goal of nurturing the unfolding therapeutic relationship, and increasing patients’ receptivity to participating in psychoanalytic treatment…
215 Report Writing
Candidates will learn how to prepare written case reports demonstrating understanding of the psychoanalytic process. This writing seminar, in workshop format, will show candidates how to use session material as evidence for coherent formulations, interpretations, and observations of change and absence of change in the patient….
Third Year
301 Narcissism
This three-part course focuses on clinical theories of narcissism derived from Freud, Klein, post-Kleinians, Kernberg, Kohut and contemporary self-psychologists/inter-subjectivists. Part One of this series of seminars traces the history of narcissism in psychoanalysis from the seminal writings of Freud. In Part Two, the relevance of Kleinian and post-Kleinian theorists with Rosenfeld and Kernberg’s work on pathological narcissism will be addressed. In Part Three, Kohut’s development of introspection and empathy…
302 Group Supervision/Technique # 4
The purpose of this course is to provide candidates, from the outset of their analytic training, exposure to clinical thinking and process, as well as ongoing participation in discussion about their own and their colleagues’ developing practices and skill acquisition. This is an important foundation and stimulus for the ability to sensitively and confidently enable patients to enter into and profit from psychodynamic therapy, with the goal of nurturing the unfolding therapeutic relationship…
303 Comparative Dreams
This 5-seminar course will illustrate a diversity of clinical psychoanalytic practices in working with dreams through the examination of verbatim session material. Candidates will also present dreams from case material. Divergence between theory and actual practice will be explored in the hopes of fostering an attitude of flexibility in the candidates’ work with dreams. A shift will also be evident across decades of actual psychoanalytic practices with dreams…
304 Bion
These five seminars expand on the theoretical and clinical concepts of Wilfred Bion introduced in year Two. These seminars provide an outline of some of Bion’s main theoretical and clinical concepts both as extensions and modifications of Freud’s and Klein’s ideas. This course will address the group psychology developed by Bion (1959) and survey the development of Bion’s thought especially its relevance for clinical work and understanding of serious psychopathology…
305 Boundaries and Ethics
In these two seminars, we explore aspects of sexual boundaries and their modes of violation in treatment situations. Typologies of boundary violators are considered, to increase awareness of both the situations therapists can fall into, and the work that they can do to prevent these from occurring. Some analysts do not well understand the nature of transference in the area of ongoing boundary concerns. Therefore, a section considers post-termination boundaries…
306 Character and Character Assessment
Character is a concept that is integral to every part of psychoanalytic work, whether it is in the foreground, or a less obvious focus of the treatment. It is possible for character not to be recognized, under considered or overlooked in our analytic work. It shapes the content and expression of the patient’s transferences and resistances, as it contributes to the analyst’s counter-transferences and resistances. In this series of seminars, we will discuss readings that provide an introduction to the place of character in psychoanalytic thinking…
307 Depression and Anxiety
Patients often come to a psychoanalyst reporting that they are depressed or anxious. This course will review the many faceted psychoanalytic theorizing on depression and anxiety as affects, states, and agents in various pathologies. The course will have an emphasis on conceptual review, clinical formulation, and psychoanalytic technique…
308 Group Supervision/Technique # 5
The purpose of this course is to provide candidates, from the outset of their analytic training, exposure to clinical thinking and process, as well as ongoing participation in discussion about their own and their colleagues’ developing practices and skill acquisition. This is an important foundation and stimulus for the ability to sensitively and confidently enable patients to enter into and profit from psychodynamic therapy, with the goal of nurturing the unfolding therapeutic relationship, and increasing patients’ receptivity to participating in psychoanalytic treatment…
309 Gender Issues and Sexuality
The seminars will focus on the multiple facets of historical and modern psychoanalytic theory with an eye toward clinical practice. Matters such as gender embodiment, gender variation, gender regulation and perversion will be addressed. Gendered experience and identity will be viewed through a complex and nonlinear lens focusing on sexual subjectivity in the analytic dyad and psychic life…
310 Comparative Transference and Counter-Transference
This course will explore different psychoanalytic views on the nature and uses of the transference and counter-transference. We will look at classical, object relations and Kleinian views on the nature of transference and counter-transference, comparing and contrasting their theoretical views on the dynamics of these central psychoanalytic phenomena, on the uses to which they can be put in therapy…
311 Trauma
The purpose of these five seminars is to understand the historical underpinnings of the psychoanalytic approach to trauma and to integrate this knowledge of trauma on psychological functioning. Candidates will appreciate the neurobiological contribution towards a psychoanalytic model of treatment; understand Trauma and the Zero Process and the psychoanalytic treatment of dissociation; and learn to recognize the transference/counter-transference enactments that occur through trauma…
312 Research in Psychoanalysis
This class addresses the significance of empirical research for psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy—how crucial is it to its future, and what are its limits- at a time when there is growing public interest in the scientific evidence for psychotherapy. Contrary to a common misconception that there is little empirical evidence for psychoanalytic psychotherapies, we will survey the strong evidence supporting psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis…
Fourth Year
401 Unconscious Infant-Maternal Dynamics in the Adult Transference
This course traces the developmental origins of psychic life pertaining to internal dynamics and unconscious phantasies of the infant with the maternal object through Freud, Klein, Winnicott, and Bion. Clinically, it explores the transferential implications in adult work of the unconscious impact of internal maternal-infant dynamics on psychic structure…
402 Childhood Sexuality
This course will examine more recent ideas about the role of childhood sexuality in adolescents and adults from a variety of theoretical points of view. Some of the remaining debates about where to situate sexuality in relation to pre Oedipal and Oedipal development will also be considered…
403 Unconscious Fantasy/Phantasy
The Course teaches the major position papers on Unconscious Fantasy/Phantasy, which clarify core theories and clinical implications from American, British, French, and Kleinian perspectives. The Course explores the tracking of unconscious fantasies in the session as observed and understood from various points of view. The Course explores the interpretation of unconscious fantasy/phantasies to facilitate their becoming conscious as a major therapeutic action of psychoanalysis…
404 Psychosomatics: Hearing the Body’s Discourse
This course addresses the evolution of psychosomatics using a dual perspective. A conflict model initially elaborated by Freud, and subsequently others (Groddeck, Ferenczi, Klein), assumes symbolized communication becomes manifested physically. Freud also elaborated a nonconflictual deficit model of somatic expression, which was further elaborated by Alexander, Engel, McDougall and the French Psychosomatic School (Marty, de M’Uzan, Fain, Aisenstein)…
405 Group Supervision/Technique #6
The purpose of this course is to provide candidates, from the outset of their analytic training, exposure to clinical thinking and process, as well as ongoing participation in discussion about their own and their colleagues’ developing practices and skill acquisition. This is an important foundation and stimulus for the ability to sensitively and confidently enable patients to enter into and profit from psychodynamic therapy, with the goal of nurturing the unfolding therapeutic relationship, and increasing patients’ receptivity to participating in psychoanalytic treatment…
406 French Freudian Integration of Klein
This Course will help candidates to formulate an interventional strategy, especially with patients suffering from object loss and separation anxiety. The Course will focus on psychoanalytic theories, which demonstrate how to apply the concepts of “primal scene”, “narcissistic economy and primitive sexuality”, “melancholia”, “maternal depression”, “separation anxiety” elaborated by French Freudians, using the theories of Klein and Bion…
407 Psychoanalysis and Culture
This course examines the role of culture in the way we practice and think psychoanalysis. We will examine how internalized cultural/social biases can obstruct the appropriate use of self to effectively contribute to the development of a solid therapeutic alliance when working psychoanalytically with persons who are members of groups who have experienced oppression resulting from their demographic differences…
408 Clinical Klein in Contemporary Practice
This course situates Klein’s work as an extension and an elaboration of Freud’s in the psychoanalytic progression from Freud to Bion. With its origin in Klein’s development of the psychoanalytic play technique with children and its initial close ties to Freudian theory, this course outlines evolving contemporary Kleinian concepts as applied in clinical practice today, including the specific focus on unconscious phantasy, the role of internal objects and object relations, and Klein’s unique understanding and use of the concepts of developmental positions and characteristics modes of anxiety…
409 Lacan’s Contributions to the Treatment of Perversions and Addictions
This course is designed to give candidates a clinical view of Lacanian theory as it is put into practice with people with perversions and addictions. This course will try to cover a wide ground in little time. It will offer the candidates selected readings of the original Lacan, a presentation of the concepts by a contemporary author, and clinical examples that illustrate the theory. People with addictions of many types have been noted to have increased in the last thirty year…
410 Psychoanalytic Process: Initiating, Deepening the Analytic Process and Termination
This course focuses on initiating, deepening and the termination of the psychoanalytic process. It builds upon earlier courses in assessment for analyzability and consultation with a Supervisor on suitability of a control case…
411 Group Supervision/Technique #7
The purpose of this course is to provide candidates, from the outset of their analytic training, exposure to clinical thinking and process, as well as ongoing participation in discussion about their own and their colleagues’ developing practices and skill acquisition. This is an important foundation and stimulus for the ability to sensitively and confidently enable patients to enter into and profit from psychodynamic therapy, with the goal of nurturing the unfolding therapeutic relationship, and increasing patients’ receptivity to participating in psychoanalytic treatment…
412 Masochistic Character and Sadomasochism
This course will teach candidates to define and describe the many-faceted concept of masochism, so that they can identify, recognize, assess, and formulate masochistic character, and can identify sadomasochistic transferences and dynamics so as to effect change. Clinical material will be presented to facilitate the application of theory and concepts to the psychoanalytic therapeutic process. Developmental challenges and trauma can lead to excessive masochistic defenses, such as self-defeating or self-sacrificial behaviors…
413 The Difficult Patient
The seminar will study difficult cases in analysis by means of presentation and discussion. Patients with severe psychopathology can be impulsive, act out, suffer extreme mood shifts and have more difficulty in reality testing than is typical of hysterical and obsessional neurosis. The seminar will examine difficulties presented by their diagnosis and treatment and evaluate results. The seminar will explore whether such patients have a unique etiology or whether it is a question of the degree of their severity…
414 Advanced Clinical Seminar on Perversion
The aim of this course is to update the current thinking on perversion and perverse scenarios in order to become familiar with the subject of perversion, to identify the perverse structure, the aim and function of perversion; to diagnose perverse scenarios and treat perversion…
415 Ethics
In these two seminars, we explore aspects of sexual boundary violators, and whether being seen as a “lost cause”, can be a way to deny more common vulnerability to transgression. Also considered are the institutional responses to boundary violations by prominent analysts, and the impact this can have on our organizations. In the second seminar, we delve further into the possible constructive roles of ethics committees, codes of ethics, and the historical changes in this area…
416 Integrating Psychotherapy and Medication Treatments
This is a practical, clinically oriented seminar designed for psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychotherapists in active practice who deal with the problems of integrating psychotherapy and medication treatments. Participants will examine the history of integration and some significant turning points in thinking about them…