Applications for Psychoanalytic Training for the 2012 – 2013 academic year are being accepted.

2011-2012 Training Program Catalogue (PDF file)

ADULT PSYCHOANALYSIS

The didactic component of psychoanalytic training at the Center is informed by principles of theoretical pluralism and critical thinking. One sequence of seminars that runs through the four years of coursework is devoted to the study of psychoanalytic theory. This sequence takes the works of Freud as its starting point and follows an historically organized study of theoretical developments. The works of Klein and contemporary Kleinians, the British Independents, Bion, contemporary Freudians, French psychoanalytic texts, the American Relationalists and contemporary object relations theorists are taught in depth. Concurrent with this sequence, are courses in clinical practice that run throughout the four years. These courses begin with basic concepts having to do with therapeutic action, beginning psychoanalytic treatment, analytic process, and dreams and continue in later years to study primitive states, severe psychopathology, and trauma. Courses in the psychoanalytic understanding of development begin in the first year of coursework and continue through the early academic years. These courses include the study of infant observation, attachment theory, gender and object choice, oedipal and post-oedipal stages of development.

The close examination of ongoing cases in psychoanalytic treatment is undertaken in case conferences which continue throughout all years of the curriculum. The case conference offered in the first year is exclusively for first year candidates. The continuous case conferences offered in subsequent years include a mix of candidates from the second, third, and fourth years. This provides candidates the opportunity to work closely with candidates from different classes. This integration of candidate cohorts continues in three other seminar contexts: 1) the Visiting Professor week, in which a psychoanalyst outside the Center is invited to teach candidates and offer programs to graduate members of the Center; 2) Electives, in which candidates choose from courses offered by faculty of the Center which take up topics of special interest; and 3) the annual Intersession: a three week program that takes up a topic of applied psychoanalysis, e.g., psychoanalysis and film.

The curriculum concludes with a course offered after the four year sequence, in which candidates formulate and develop a paper in a working group of fellow candidates and with the participation of a faculty mentor.

Below is a list of the coursework, organized by year. For more detailed information and course descriptions, please refer to pages 20-44 in the Training Catalogue pdf here.

FIRST YEAR SEMINARS

• Theory of Technique: Introduction to Theory of Therapeutic Action
• Beginning an Analysis
• Psychoanalytic Understandings of Character
• Elements of Psychoanalytic Process: Listening for the Unconscious Mind
• Orientation to Theory
• Topographical Model
• Freud's Papers on Metapsychology
• The Structural Model and Freud's Later Works
• The Emergence of Object Relations Theories
• The Developing Mind: A Study in Infant Observation
• The Developing Mind: Early Childhood
• The Developing Mind: Oedipal Development
• Child Analysis
• First Year Clinial Case Conference
• Intersession
• Working with Dreams

SECOND YEAR SEMINARS

• Melanie Klein's Contributions to Psychoanalytic Theory
• Object Relations Theories of the British Middle School
• Bion
• An Introduction to Reading French Psychoanalytic Texts
• Contemporary Freudian Theory
• The Developing Mind: Adolescence
• The Developing Mind: Adulthood
• Electives^*
• Clinical Formulation: Writing as a Means of Thinking
• Intersession
• Psychosexualities & Object Choice
• Continuous Case Conference (Combined Child & Adult, or Adult Only)
• Technical Approaches in Psychoanalysis

THIRD YEAR SEMINARS

• Contemporary Object Relations Theory and Technique
• The American Relational School
• Interdisciplinary Studies and Therapeutic Action: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives
• Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Trauma
• Severe Disorders: An Object Relations Perspective
• Framing & Interpreting in Multiple Registers: Somatization, Adhesion, Dissociation, Splitting, Repression
• Obstacles to Change in Patient and Analyst
• Electives^*
• Clinical Formulation Part II: Making the Case Write-Up Come Alive
• Gender
• Intersession
• Continuous Case Conference (Combined Child & Adult, or Adult Only)
• Psychoanalytic Writing

FOURTH YEAR SEMINARS

• Ethics
• Advanced Psychopathology
• Electives^*
• Theory and Practice
• Intersession
• A Return to Freud
• Continuous Case Conference (Combined Child & Adult, or Adult Only)
• Seminar on Psychoanalytic Termination

ELECTIVES

• Imagined Conversations with Ruth Stein: A Retrospective
• Beginnings: Freud's Voyage into the Unconscious and the Analytic Encounter
• Aesthetic Impulses; Aesthetic Objects: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Beauty and the Aesthetic Experience and its Relevance to the Clinical Situation

CANDIDATES' COLLOQUIA

During the year, senior analysts are invited to meet with candidates to discuss on-going analytic cases. 6-8 colloquia will be scheduled throughout the year; topics and times to be announced.