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Course Outline
There are four
major components to our training program in psychoanalysis:
1) The personal analysis
2) Infant Observation
3) The didactic program
4) Conducting supervised analyses or ‘control cases”
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Personal Analysis
Perhaps the most formative element of the psychoanalytic training is the experience of the personal analysis which in psychoanalytic training is known as a training analysis. This experience, conducted in complete confidentiality with one of the training analysts on our Faculty, allows the student to experience the psychoanalytic investigation into his/her own unconscious processes. Typically via the processes of the transference the many aspects of one’s personality, some of which have remained silent for some time, ‘come alive’ in the analytic experience in vivid ways. A training psychoanalysis consists of 50-minute sessions four or five times per week. Fees are arranged with the analyst. A minimum of 400 hours of psychoanalysis is required, but most analyses go much longer.
Infant Observation
This
experience, crucial to the intellectual and emotional appreciation of
the impact of early mental states, entails weekly observation of a mother
and her newborn from as close to birth as possible through the first year
or so of life. The observations are discussed in weekly seminars with
three or four other observers and with a seminar leader. Many feel this
course along with the personal analysis to be the most formative experience
in the psychoanalytic training program.
Didactic
Program
The
course work component reviews the development and evolution of thought
among the major psychoanalytic traditions beginning with Sigmund Freud
and following especially the line of development of the Kleinian tradition.
Some of the aspects of Sigmund Freud’s work include his developing
thoughts about the nature of unconscious processes including dreams the
nature of infantile sexuality, the repetition compulsion and its expression
in the phenomenon of transference, internal conflict, defenses against
psychic pain, the nature of anxiety, and in later life his considerations
about the forces for and against growth and change.
The works of Melanie Klein and her followers (Segal, Rosenfeld, Meltzer,
etc) illustrate a focus on very early formative processes of mental structure:
an ego shaped by the influence of projective and introjective processes
operating especially within the experience of the mother-infant dyad;
the function of unconscious phantasy in shaping the nature of this increasingly
complex internal world; and the inevitable conflicts between the aspects
of the personality which yearn for growth and those which actively operate
to maintain the status quo. Ways of understanding narcissistic, perverse
and psychosomatic mechanisms as defenses against the pain of emergence
into the reality which embaces separateness also have roots in the understanding
of Klein and her followers.
A third major thinker is Wilfred Bion whose creative contributions cover
a vast range. Among his many contributions are his notions on the origins
of thinking and knowing, which emerge out of the relationship with the
mothering other, wherein one’s unknowable aspects are transformed
into the knowable. Bion’s understandings encourage us to resist
the safety and loyalties of the pasts not out of recklessness nor blind
rebellion but out of courage to brave the uncertainties of the future
and the unknown.
Thus Bion’s work circles us back to our second basic emphasis: developing
the capacity to think for oneself, based upon learning from emotional
experience. Besides these three giants we study many other psychoanalytic
authors and draw upon the wealth of our faculty whose interests range
widely across the spectrum of thinking in the psychoanalytic world of
today.
Supervised Psychoanalyses
Conducting psychoanalyses under supervision or taking on ‘control cases’ comprises another aspect of psychoanalytic training. The goal here is for the student, through careful attention and weekly supervision, to be able to observe, understand and begin to interpret the unconscious processes from the analyst’s perspective. Three cases are usual in the training, and supervision on a weekly basis for two years for the first two cases is generally required. Careful attention is paid to the student’s growth included monitoring his capacity to utilitize his counter-transference experiences as an analytic tool.
Oral Presentation
Final Paper and Graduation
The candidate must write a final paper which demonstrates an understanding of psychoanalytic theory and technique or which shows the application of this understanding to an allied field. The final paper committee is composed of three members of the faculty. Upon graduation, the graduate is awarded the designation FIPA, which means Fellow of the International Psychoanalytical Association.
Schedule
Please note: Infant Observation is a weekly seminar for one year or 40-44 seminars conducted at a time separate from the Friday class time.
Cost
of Training
Training costs are currently
based on $30 per seminar. Required for a typical trimester are 2 didactic
courses of 6-8 seminars each and 1 clinical case conference of 6-8 seminars.
Personal psychoanalysis and supervision fees and method of payment are
negotiated between the candidate and analyst/supervisor.
Refund Policy
Refunds for withdrawal from courses are made on a pro-rated basis according to NPS policies and procedures.
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