This seminar is open to all beginning and experienced clinicians looking to fortify their theoretical and clinical understandings as related to psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
While this CLINICAL ISSUES seminar is a continuation of the Fall 2025 THEORETICAL seminar on A Basic Analytic Approach to Psychotherapy, it is not a prerequisite to have taken the fall 2025 seminar.
Learning Objectives:
Drawing on mythology, psychoanalytic investigation and sociocultural trends this seminar will explore the ever-changing landscape of masculinity from classical images to current-day sociocultural perspectives on the male gender.
Join me for a three-part course exploring the clinical challenges of working with narcissistically vulnerable clients. We will examine both traditional Kohutian and contemporary perspectives in Self Psychology, beginning with Freud’s original theory of narcissism and progressing to Heinz Kohut’s radical redefinition.
The MAMAL model of group supervision/consultation is an affect-focused, experiential consultation model based on Relational Psychoanalytic theory and technique as outlined in Roy Barsness' text Core Competencies of Relational Psychoanalysis: A Guide to Practice, Study, and Research. The consultation model was developed by Barsness and others and is described in Barsness’ most recent book Psychodynamic Supervision: In a New Key.
This is a seminar for those that are just starting out in the field of psychotherapy as well as for those who have been in the field for a while but want to consolidate their understandings of Freud’s basic concepts. We will be discussing basic psychoanalytic theory and technique. A text for each session will be sent to students. The instructor has a special interest in psychoanalytic history and will historically contextualize many of the ideas presented.
Instructor:
This four week course is an introduction to the work of Ronald Fairbairn, a key figure in the development of object relations theory. Fairbairn made a radical departure from Freud’s drive theory by reversing the relationship of aim and object. While Freud believed the object was secondary to the aim of the drive, Fairbairn asserted that it was the need and desire for the object that determined the aim of the drive. He introduced the notion that it is not pleasure we seek, but relationship.
This six-week, 9-CEU continuing education course offers an in-depth introduction to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory with direct relevance for clinical practice. Designed for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic oriented psychotherapists, the course will explore key Lacanian concepts including unconscious desire, the split subject, the Big Other, the three registers (Imaginary, Symbolic, Real), the four discourses, and Lacanian diagnostic structures (neurosis, psychosis, and perversion).
Harold Searles was an American analyst greatly influenced by the British writers Klein, Bion and Winnicott and also by the American interpersonal school. His writing is characterized by a deep honesty about the difficult nature of our work and a startling freedom in his thought. In this seminar we will read two of his most innovative papers, the first exploring what he regards as the fundamental human motivation, to heal, and the second a reworking of the Oedipal phase as one of real romance and love.
This course explores ‘enactments’ as a dynamic and unavoidable phenomenon in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Drawing on the seminal works of Owen Renik, Theodore Jacobson, Lewis Aron, Joseph Sandler, and other contemporary theorists, we will examine how enactments emerge at the intersection of transference, countertransference, and repetition compulsion.