Two-Year Core Curriculum

Core Curriculum

The Structural Model of the Mind and Modern Conflict Theory (12 weeks)

This course will cover Freud’s structural model of the mind and its contemporary elaboration in modern conflict theory. The course will introduce students to concepts of conflict and compromise formation, the components of conflict and the relation of affects and defenses to unconscious wishes (desires) and fantasy. This course will serve as a foundation for the assessment course and later for the technique courses. It will serve as an introduction to a later sequence of courses on elaborations of conflict in the models of theorists that followed Freud including Klein, Horney, Sullivan, Winnicott, Fairbairn, Jacobson, Kernberg, Kohut, and the relational theorists.

Early Treatment: Establishing the Frame, Rapport and the Initial Interviews (12 weeks)

This course will cover various strategies for conducting the initial interviews, the importance of using the initial interview to develop the beginnings of a sense of safety and a therapeutic alliance. It will also focus on gathering the necessary information to form a preliminary diagnosis and dynamic formulation that include integrating biological, psychological, and social factors throughout development. This course serves as a foundation for the assessment course.  This course will also cover such practical things that begin to establish the analytic frame. The course will cover the initial contact or phone call, office furnishings, policies for missed sessions, vacations, third party involvement, confidentiality and establishing the fee.

Technique: Introduction to therapeutic technique (12 weeks)

This course will teach the student how to create and maintain a safe space for the patient to explore their inner world and for the analyst to be able to listen to the patient and to themselves for unconscious dynamics emerging within the patient and the analytic relationship. This would require recognition of the patient’s tolerance for empathy and anxiety, flexible neutrality, abstinence, and anonymity on the part of the analyst or therapist, as well as the need to carefully construct communications respecting the patient’s defenses and the anxiety underlying them. It would also involve safeguarding the frame against actions by either the analyst or therapist that would interfere with self-reflection and undermine the analytic process. The course will also address the distinction between analytic and supportive interventions and their relationship to therapeutic action.

Assessment and Comprehensive Case Formulation (12 weeks)

This course expands upon the foundational principles introduced in the initial interviews course and delves deeper into assessment and case formulation within the psychodynamic framework, emphasizing the ongoing nature of assessment throughout the treatment process. Students will develop increased proficiency in synthesizing assessment data to formulate comprehensive psychodynamic case conceptualizations that integrate a range of considerations including patients’ identifications, environmental/socio-cultural contexts, developmental influences, defensive operations and unconscious conflicts, symptomology and constructive forces, relational dynamics, dream material, etc.

The Listening Process (12 weeks)

This course will focus on the listening process; how the analyst listens, and what the analyst listens for in the patient and in themselves. It will show how the analyst uses empathy, intuition, and life experience, along with a theory of mind and development, to inform his listening. This will include listening for feelings and fantasies close to consciousness, as well as those buried more deeply, such as painful affects of anxiety depression, shame and guilt, and the defensive strategies associated with them. It will also include listening for painful experiences of shame and humiliation associated with the breakdown of narcissistic equilibrium, and ensuing devaluation of the self and others. Special attention will be paid to the analytic relationship, listening for how the patient experiences and relates to us and how we experience and relate to the patient. The course will then focus on how the analyst selects from this array of observations those that allow him to formulate a conjecture or best guess as to the unconscious conflicts emerging in the patient’s associations and reactions as they relate to present and past conflictual situations. The last part of the course will address how to analyze and translate these conjectures into a communication that will enhance self-reflection and expand awareness of self. Clinical material will be presented to illustrate these aspects of the analytic process.

Race, Class, Culture and Difference in Psychodynamic Therapy (12 weeks)

This course addresses various ways issues of race, ethnicity, social class, and difference influence the process of psychodynamic and psychoanalytic treatment. Beginning with Karen Horney’s belief that social and cultural factors (rather than biological) were essential in shaping human personality and behavior, the course will then cover conceptualizations of racism and how the basic defensive functions of splitting, dissociation, projection, projective identification contribute to the dynamic process of “othering.” Factors that play a role in the clinician’s difficulty talking about race/class/culture and racial enactments or “othering” in the clinical encounter will also be addressed. Examples of transference and counter-transference fantasies and enactments will also be illustrated.

Year Two

Early Theoretical Elaborations: From Abraham to Klein and Horney (12 weeks)

This course will cover subsequent developments in conflict models of the mind, originating in the work of Karl Abraham and then in the work of his analysands, Melanie Klein and Karen Horney. They emphasized early pre-oedipal dyadic determinants and the centrality of early experiences of projected and introjected aggression resulting in the need for omnipotent defenses and control of others perceived as containers of dangerous undifferentiated parts of themselves. These theorists inform our understanding of the dynamics and treatment of narcissistic and borderline personality later elaborated by Kernberg.

Horneyan Theoretical Perspectives on the Spit and Conflicted Self (12 weeks)

This course will introduce Horney’s later theorizing organized around the need to achieve an integrated sense of self in the face of fragmenting basic anxiety leading to identification with an omnipotent idealized self – image and the need to externalize despised aspects of self into others. Compulsive interpersonal solutions aimed at achieving safety and measures for establishing inner harmony are described.

Introductory Clinical Seminar (12 weeks)

In this seminar clinical material from a psychotherapy patient will be presented and discussed with the aim of demonstrating aspects of the frame and listening process that are fundamental to psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It will provide the opportunity for students to learn to think psychoanalytically about a patient and to base their communications and structure of their relationship on their psychoanalytic understanding of the patient. The seminar will also illustrate how the understanding of the patient will change and be modified as the therapy deepens, and new experiences and perspectives emerge.

Psychoanalytic Models of Development (12 weeks)

This course offers an overview of the major psychoanalytic theories of development over the lifespan, from classical thought through the Ego Psychology movement, through the multifaceted British Object Relations schools, to contemporary perspectives. Developmental theorists covered include Klein, Bowlby, Sigmund and Anna Freud, Winnicott, and Fairbairn.  An in-depth focus on contemporary construction introduces the student to present day controversies in sexuality and gender issues. Case presentations in this course focus on the multiple therapeutic approaches from a developmental perspective.

Ethics and Boundaries in Psychoanalysis (12 weeks)

This course will present a historical overview of ethics codes in psychoanalysis.  Special emphasis will be placed on issues of privacy and confidentiality, and duties to protect and warn.  These will be discussed with case examples highlighting the ethical principles involved and the conflicts often encountered between the ethical and legal requirements and the therapeutic alliance.  Boundary violations will also be discussed. These will include sexual and non-sexual boundary violations. These will be considered from the standpoint of their potential for exploration and harm to the patient and the risk of loss of objectivity. Case examples presented by the instructor and participants in the class will be used to illustrate typical ethical issues that arise in psychoanalysis.

Dreams (12 weeks)

This course focuses on the understanding and use of the dreams in the analytic hour. Dreams reflect the patient’s psychic world, different stages of the therapeutic process, and mirror a variety of clinical issues. The ways in which dreams can be understood and made use of are approached from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Extensive clinical material will help illustrate the concepts. The dream is conceptualized as a road to the unconscious. Where the road leads will depend upon our theoretical underpinnings. Through readings and clinical material, students will explore Freudian, Horneyan and contemporary dream theory.  Specific attention will address how latent dream thoughts and wishes are converted into manifest content.

Gender, Sex & Sexuality (12 weeks)

This course aims to provide trainees with a comprehensive understanding of gender and sexuality from a psychoanalytic perspective, as well as a comprehensive framework for trainees to understand and engage with gender and sexuality issues in clinical practice. Beginning with Freud and then moving on to Horney’s seminal papers on Feminine Psychology, to more contemporary perspectives on gender and psychosexual development, trainees will develop the necessary skills to work effectively with clients across diverse gender and sexual identities.