Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis (PDPSA-GA)

The purpose of this course is to launch your psychoanalytic training. It will introduce you to the pluralism in the field of psychoanalysis and specifically at NYU Postdoc. We begin with reading articles and working on developing a credo: a personal theory of what psychoanalysis understands about problems in living and how theory and technique try to address the therapeutic action of our work. The next classes will take you through the underpinnings followed by important issues and ideas that buttress the practice of contemporary psychoanalysis. This course aims to facilitate growth in ways of thinking, acting and processing emotions psychoanalytically.

Psychoanalytic ethics are steeped in personality and professional cultures, and thus require ongoing attention. In this seminar, we address the complexity and nuance of commonly encountered ethical dilemmas in psychoanalysis, with an emphasis on clinical practice. These dilemmas include confidentiality, unconscious bias, analytic delinquencies, boundaries, and sexual boundary violations. We use readings and case examples to facilitate discussions and support you in the ongoing process of developing an ethical stance as psychoanalysts.

We deeply examine the body of psychoanalytic thought, with a focus on the important contributors of the 20th and 21st centuries. We explore schools of thought including classical psychoanalysis, ego psychology, object relations, self psychology, relational psychoanalysis, and currents from around the world. Contemporary psychoanalysis is pluralistic and there is “no party line.” We review cutting edge studies of the self, research, and ethics. This core area of study contains various course sections addressing selected topics.

These seminars focus on the in-depth study of the complexities and interactional nuances in clinical space. Students present clinical material which is followed over class sessions. Areas of study include but are not limited to working with the unconscious, the psychoanalytic relationship, interpretive interventions, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, language, listening and silence, dreams, race, ethnicity, and class, working with trauma, and the experience of the patient and the analyst. These core seminars contain various course sections addressing selected topics.

We address the clinical assessment and treatment of disorders such as anxiety, depression, problems in living, dissociative disorders, personality disorders, obsessions and compulsions, identity struggles, perversions, eating disorders, sexual and physical trauma, adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, post-traumatic stress disorders, narcissism, addiction, medical illness, psychotic disorders, and suicidal behaviors. The study of specific disorders is conducted in-depth. This area of study contains various course sections addressing selected topics.

We present psychoanalytic principles and core ideas with a particular emphasis on their impact on clinical practice. We cover topics such as unconscious processes, theories of motivation, transference and countertransference, defense and resistance, hate and destructiveness, affect regulation, intersubjectivity, dialectical constructivism, recognition and mutuality, enactments, and therapeutic action. This core area of study contains various course sections addressing selected topics.

With increasing frequency, psychoanalysts understand that cultural and societal realities saturate an individual’s subjectivity. Going beyond traditional “culture and personality" factors, contemporary psychoanalysis interrogates race and discrimination, ethnicity, class, religion, community, and climate change. We discuss and debate language, critical race theory, and the body. This area of study contains various course sections addressing selected topics.

Theories of gender and sexuality have evolved beyond dualities to multiplicities. We consider psychoanalytic feminism and the postmodern turn in addition to such complicated issues as sex, sexual desire, polymorphous perversity, and the normative imperative. Following contemporary queer and feminist interventions in the discipline, we consider subjectivities that had heretofore been repressed or relegated to the margins of white male privilege. We explore comparative perspectives on gender and sexuality. This area of study contains various course sections addressing selected topics.

Early relationships and mental representations orient psychoanalysts and inform their clinical thinking and actions. Contemporary developmental research is enjoying a renaissance with advances in infant and attachment research and their implications for adult psychoanalytic treatment. Similarly, life-span theories have added considerable understanding and ways of working with not only individuals and their aging processes, but also couples and families. This area of study contains various course sections addressing selected topics.