Note: Links for optional readings are not included in the course bibliographies.
Child Continuous Case - Robert Kravis, PsyD & Ruth Fischer, MD
TBD
Adult division candidates will join child division candidates to hear a single child case, which is presented over the entire fourteen weeks. Issues of technique and understanding of the case are discussed. This course complements the Development course given this year.
* No advanced readings for this course.
Female Psychology - 10 sessions
Ruth Fischer, MD
This course examines female psychology beginning with Freud's initial formulation and noting modifications and innovations within the framework of psychoanalytic theory. Recent contributions from direct infant observation are studied.
Click here for the course bibliography.
Development: Infancy - 5 sessions
Barbara Shapiro, MD
This course focuses on development in the first year of life. For the first three sessions, we will read about and discuss normal development, including inborn and developing psychophysiologic, emotional and cognitive abilities; mutual and self-regulation; dyadic systems; attunement, dysregulation and repair; the development of the self; and moods and rhythms. The readings will include works by Beebe, Stern, Pine, and Tronick. We will then take the last two sessions to examine the role of trauma in the first year of life, including intergenerational transmission, and the effects of parental depression on development in infancy. The readings for this portion include Fraiberg, Stern, and Tronick. Candidates will write up their observations of a baby, and we will discuss some of those written observations in the class.
Development: Toddlerhood - 5 sessions
Ann Smolen, PhD
This course focuses on the developmental issues that emerge in the second and third years of life. These include: separation/individuation; autonomy; shame; aggression; words and symbolization; object constancy; the discovery of sexual differences; and the development of inner conflict. We will explore the above issues from a psychoanalytic theoretical perspective while simultaneously making use of a developmental perspective to further our understanding. In addition we will look at the multiple determinants of behavior; intrapsychic functioning; and the dynamic interaction between child and family/environment.
These factors provide the underpinnings for technique. While this is not a technique course, and we will concentrate on theory, it is useful to keep in mind how these factors speak to the therapeutic relationship, interpretation and intervention, and clinical challenges. It is useful to contemplate the interplay between theory, clinical concepts and practice.
Structure of Neurosis - 10 sessions
Lawrence Blum, MD
This course will attempt to impart an understanding of neurotic process, in particular in relationship to hysteria, phobia, and obsessive-compulsive neurosis. The class will read Freud’s cases on these subjects, as well as relevant contemporary literature; we will try to read, or at least infer, some of the intellectual history in the periods between then and now. It will also be important to try to understand something of the relationship of analytic ideas to current thinking on these topics in general psychiatry and psychology. The course will begin with a class on symptom and character formation. We will consider questions of how symptoms and character form, along with the relation between the two; how do symptoms affect, transform into, emerge from, character? These are questions we should continue to contemplate throughout the remainder of the course (and beyond).
We will proceed with four sessions covering hysteria and phobia, including Dora and Little Hans, followed by three sessions covering hysteria and phobia, including Rat Man. Some additional questions to consider: What distinguishes these diagnostic categories? How identifiable and discrete are they? Is it clinically useful to use these classifications? If so, how?
Symptoms are not limited to the traditional categories. For Session 9 I have introduced a class on sexual symptoms (impotence, premature ejaculation, anorgasmia, “frigidity”, etc.) which are very important in analytic practice, do not fall neatly into the preceding categories, and which seem seldom to be explicitly brought into analytic curricula.
Transference - 5 sessions
Ruth Garfield, MD
This course will sample a few of the many readings on transference in the analytic literature. The objective is to provide historical perspective, as well as to read some contemporary papers on the subject. To keep a clinical focus, the student will prepare a brief – no more than one page – vignette from a case, which demonstrates transference material.
Counter-Transference - 5 sessions
Barbara Shapiro, MD & Shireen Kapadia, PhD
This course will begin with an overview of the development of psychoanalytic thinking about countertransference. We will discuss the impact of analytic training on candidates’ countertransference. We will then move forward to various contemporary views of countertransference, including enactments, role-responsiveness, and the analytic third. We will explore the analyst’s love, hate, and erotic longing for the analysand, as well as various common contertransference formations: e.g. with analysands who are experienced as needful, demanding, loving, boring, appreciative, contemptuous, sadistic, hateful, or unappreciative. Participants are encouraged to bring in clinical examples of countertransference and enactments. The syllabus includes readings by Gabbard, Jacobs, Winnicott, Casement, McLaughlin, Ogden, Katz, and Davies.
Continuous Case Conference - 10 Sessions
Bruce Levin, MD
The central aim and focus of this continuous case is to learn from the case material, learn from each other and to share our analytic ideas, approaches and views. The case will be a springboard for discussion. The overarching theme will be looking at resistance from many different facets. It should be noted that this theme is loosely devised and we have the flexibility to move in the direction that is inspired by the case material and the group. In order to help facilitate these discussions we have organized a reading list. While we will touch upon the reading we do not want the reading to be a “resistance” to get into the case material. So the reading is there as a guide with the hopes that it exposes you to some material that can help further facilitate thinking, reflecting on the clinical material and our discussions.
* No advanced readings for this course.
Unconscious Fantasy - 5 sessions
Anita Schmuckler, DO
This course will examine the concept of fantasy in clinical work. We will explore the interplay of unconscious fantasies of analyst and patient and examine ways in which this dynamic can impede or advance analytic process. Fantasies of young children will be included, as we examine the concept of fantasy from a developmental basis as well. Candidates will have an opportunity to present clinical material in examining fantasies from patients.
Relational Theory - 5 sessions
Barbara Zimmerman-Slovak, PhD
In this course we will focus on some of the key topics and concepts in Relational Psychoanalysis. Relational Psychoanalysis is relatively new (beginning in the 1980s) and it draws from a range of psychoanalytic schools of thought, including object relations theory, interpersonal psychoanalysis, self psychology, neo-Kleinian theory, and contemporary Freudian theory. There has been some debate as to whether this is evolution or revolution. That is something you might want to consider as you read these papers. While this is a theory course, I think it is important to also keep a clinical focus. Therefore, as you read, think about your patients and what you might find useful for your own work. Consider also while reading how these shifts in theory result in shifts in the meaning of some central analytic concepts, and what are the implications for technique. For example: How do we come to know the patient? What is the mode of therapeutic action? What is the role of insight? How do we understand the nature of mind? How do we understand transference and countertransference?