CERTIFICATE PROGRAM
CERTIFICATE PROGRAM: Two-year Training Program in the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies.
Acceptance into the Training Program requires a commitment to two full years of enrollment. Each year has three trimesters:
- September through November
- January through March
- April through June
Each trimester offers one course that meets on two weekends and is taught by two instructors. A third meeting, the Clinical Case Seminar, is held with a different faculty member, on an evening between the weekend sessions. The Clinical Case Seminar is intended to apply concepts being taught to case material.
Year One
- History of Psychoanalysis: The Evolution of a Profession 1900-present
- Psychoanalytic Diagnosis
- Transference & Countertransference
- Clinical Case Seminar
Year Two
- The Crunch: Challenging Moments in the Analytic Dyad
- Projective Identification in Clinical Practice
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Clinical Case Seminar
Continuing Education Credits
Psychologists, Social Workers, and Licensed Mental Health Counselors who complete each Course and Clinical Case Seminar will earn approximately 24 hours of Category 1 Continuing Education Credits per trimester. Continuing Medical Education Credits are not available for Physician participants. All participants will receive a Certificates of Course Completion, documenting credits earned each trimester.
Course Descriptions
The History of Psychoanalysis
This course covers the evolution of psychoanalytic schools of thought from 1900 to the present time through the development of major theoretical perspectives. Weekend I will encompass a survey of some of the ideas of Freud and Jung, Anna Freud and the fundamental elements of ego psychology, and Harry Stack Sullivan and the Interpersonalist tradition. We will consider the context within which their ideas were formulated including their personal relationships to each other, and how we might “hear” their ideas as they apply to case material.
Psychoanalytic Diagnosis
This course explores the theory and practice of psychoanalytic diagnosis, by examining various personality structures and types, and their relationship to clinical reasoning and intervention. An exploration of deeper and broader diagnostic constructions, this course explores the development of an understanding of personality structure as it is constituted by self-experience, object relations development, and ego psychological structure and defenses.
Transference and Countertransference
This course offers a comprehensive overview of transference and countertransference as they are manifested in clinical practice. It will cover the history and theoretical transformations of both dynamics. Clinical applications will be discussed and practiced.
The Crunch: Challenging Moments In the Analytic Dyad
This course addresses difficult and challenging moments that occur in the psychotherapeutic/ psychoanalytic process by first examining theories regarding the elements that create and transform such moments. Through the use of detailed published case studies, the course will also offer for discussion a variety of techniques applied in these moments. The analytic dyad’s phenomenology, the analyst’s clinical reasoning, and contextual/cultural influences on the clinical process will be considered. This course is designed to build on previous coursework in the program, including history/systems of psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic diagnosis, and transference/ countertransference theory and practice.
Clinical Uses of Projective Identification
The purpose of the course is to clarify the clinical set-up, in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, for recognizing and interpreting unconscious affective communication, especially projective identification. The term “projective identification” will be defined and clarified within its complex historical development. Similarly, the context of the ubiquitous psychoanalytic set-up or “frame” will be clarified as the means by which projective identification can become contained and therapeutic, as opposed to destructive and harmful, as it is in many ordinary human interactions and intimate relationships.
Because there are both different kinds and intensities of unconscious communication, we will emphasize how and why it is critical to understand, use and interpret the “iconic projective transference” in order for psychoanalytic psychotherapy to be transformative or mutative.
In the second weekend, we will especially examine the ways in which Freud’s vision of “psychic reality” evolved into Melanie Klein’s conceptions of projective identification and the formation of the super-ego through idealization and splitting.We will also examine Klein’s psychotherapy with children and applications of our approach to projective identification in couples therapy and the individual therapeutic dyad, as well as implications for sibling relationships and group dynamics.
Dreams and Dreaming
This course covers the theory and practice of psychoanalytic dream interpretation, using the writings of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Mark Blechner as basic texts. Emphasis will be placed upon discussion of key approaches to clinical work with dreams.