Year 1: 30 didactic classes; 6 process groups; 2 workshops

Intro Series (4-5 classes)

09.16.25 Personal descriptions of analytic sensibility All faculty encouraged to come

09.23.25 The framing of psychoanalytic therapy Sharon Bernstein
Ethics and Sensibilities : and so we begin
Syllabus
Readings:
1. Mc Williams, Nancy. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner’s Guide, The Guilford Press , New York 2004 Chapters 1 and 2

2. Smith, Kevin R, Therapeutic Aims and Human Flourishing

09.30.25 The Framing of Psychoanalytic Therapy George Herrity

Syllabus
Readings:
Required:

McWilliams, N. (2004). Psychoanalytic psychotherapy: A practitioner's guide. Guilford Press.

- Chapters 3: The Therapist’s Preparation pp. 46 – 72.

- Chapter 4: Preparing the Client pp. 73 – 98.

Optional:

Briggs, S., Netuveli, G., Gould, N., Gkaravella, A., Gluckman, N. S., Kangogyere, P., & Lindner, R. (2019). The effectiveness of psychoanalytic/psychodynamic psychotherapy for reducing suicide attempts and self-harm: systematic review and meta-analysis. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 214(6), 320-328.

Shedler, J. (2020). Where is the evidence for “evidence-based” therapy? 1. Outcome research and the future of psychoanalysis, 44-56.

Tarzian, M., Ndrio, M., & Fakoya, A. O. (2023). An introduction and brief overview of psychoanalysis. Cureus, 15(9).

10.07.25 The framing of psychoanalytic therapy Kevin Smith

Syllabus

Readings:
Required Readings:

McWilliams, N. (2004). Psychoanalytic therapy: A practitioner’s guide. Chapters 5 & 6. Guilford Press.
Smith, Kevin R. (2025). Three aspects of therapeutic practice. (Handout for this class.)
Kepple, Alyson & Smith, Kevin R. (2025). Psychoanalytic theories answer four fundamental questions. (Handout for this class.)

Supplemental readings (not required):

Aron, L. & Atlas, G. (2019). Dramatic dialogue: Dreaming and drama in contemporary clinical practice. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 16, 249-271.

Bekes, V. & Hoffman, L. (2020). The “something more” than working alliance: Authentic relational moments. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 68, 1051-1064.

Geist, R. A. (2020). Interpretation as carrier of selfobject functions: Catalyzing inborn potential. Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 15, 338-347.

10.14.25 Introduction to Situatedness Patricia Donohue

Syllabus

Required Readings (3):

Crane, L. S. (2020). Invisible: A mixt Asian woman’s efforts to see and be seen in psychoanalysis. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 21(2), 127-135.

Jones, A. L. (2020). A Black woman as an American analyst: Some observations from one woman’s life over four decades. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 21(2), 77-84.

Burch, B. (2021). Engaging the whitewashed countertransference: Race unexpectedly appears for therapy. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 31(1), 28-37.

Supplemental Materials (3):

Dajani, K. G. (2022). The social unconscious: Then and now. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 19(2), 179-186.

Layton, L. (2006). Attacks on linking: The unconscious pull to dissociate individuals from their social context. In Psychoanalysis, class and politics (pp. 107-117). Routledge.

Aron, L. (2000). Self-reflexivity and the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic psychology, 17(4), 667.

Q1. Blending of How is the Human Mind Structured with What Motivates us and how do these motivations contribute to development

10.21.25 Process Group Landaiche

10.28.25 Freud Bill Cornell

Freud’s Theory of Mind: The Centrality of Repression and the Development of Unconscious and Conscious Mental Processes

Syllabus

References/Readings:

1. Shulman, M.E. (2021), What Use is Freud? Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 69: 1108-1113. For the purposes of this class, pages 1108-1110 are essential reading.

2. Ogden, T.H. (2020). Toward a revised form of analytic thinking and practice: The evolution of analytic theory of mind. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 86, 219-243. For the purposes of this class, please read pages 219-225. The remainder of this paper will be relevant over the course of subsequent classes.

3. Freud, S. (1915). Repression. The Standard Edition, Vol. 14, 141-158.

4. Freud, S. (1911). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. The Standard Edition, Vol. 12, 213-226.

Supplemental articles:

Alford, C. (2015). The obsolescence of psychoanalysis in the age of neuroscience. Free Associations, 16, 1-19.

11.04.25 Freud Bill Cornell

Evolution of American Ego Psychology from Freud’s Original Concepts

Syllabus

References/Readings :

1. Loewald, H.W. (1950). Ego and reality. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 32: 10-18.

2. Poland, W. S. (2002). The interpretive attitude. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 50: 807-826.

3. Novac, A. & Blinder, B.J. (2021). Free association in psychoanalysis and its links to neuroscience contributions. Neuropsychoanalysis, 23: 55-81.

Supplemental articles:

11.11.25 Freud Bill Cornell

Contemporary revisions of the nature of the unconscious and the functions of repression

Syllabus

Required Readings:

1. Bollas, C. (1992). Psychic Genera, chapter 4 in Being a Character: Psychoanalysis & Self experience.New York: Hill and Wang, pp.66-100.

2. Panksepp, J., Clarici, A., Vandekerckhove, M., and Yovell, Y. (2019). Neuro-Evolutionary Foundations of Infant Minds: From Psychoanalytic Visions of How Primal Emotions Guide Constructions of Human Minds toward Affective Neuroscientific Understanding of Emotions and Their Disorders, Neuropsychoanalysis, 39,1: 36-51.

3. Seligman, S. (2021). Winnicott, in Topeka: Ego psychology, American culture, and object relations. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 69: 469-489.

Supplemental articles:

Seligman, S. (2025). Tradition and change in psychoanalytic theory: Querying the infantile. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 106: 588-596.

11.18.25 Kleinian model of the mind Loren Sobel
Klein’s Becoming: The Kleinian World. Part 1

Syllabus

Video:

Klein, Melanie, and West Lodge. “Melanie Klein’s Technique Then and Now,” Melanie Klein Trust. 2016
You can watch this video at the following link, the pdf of the recording is provided: https://vimeo.com/174515650

Required Reading:

Klein, M. (1935). A contribution to the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 16, 145–174.

Klein, M. (1940). Mourning and its relation to manic-depressive states. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 21, 125–153.

Optional Readings:

Feldman, M. (2018). Lectures on technique by Melanie Klein: A commentary. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 99(4), 990–992.

Seidman, S. (2019). The psychological origins of the self: A reading of Melanie Klein. IJP Open, 6(28), 1–31.

11.25.25 Kleinian model of the mind Loren Sobel
Klein’s Becoming: The Kleinian World. Part 2
Syllabus

Video:

Introduction to Melanie Klein: Paranoid-Schizoid and Depressive Position- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnT8o1DF0VE

Required Reading:

Klein, M. (1935). A contribution to the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 16, 145–174.

Klein, M. (1940). Mourning and its relation to manic-depressive states. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 21, 125–153.

Optional Readings:

Feldman, M. (2018). Lectures on technique by Melanie Klein: A commentary. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 99(4), 990–992.

Seidman, S. (2019). The psychological origins of the self: A reading of Melanie Klein. IJP Open, 6(28), 1–31.

12.02.25 Process Group Landaiche

12.09.25 Kleinian model of the mind Loren Sobel
Klein’s Becoming: The Kleinian World. Part 2

Syllabus

Required Reading:

Klein, “Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms.” Klein, Melanie. “A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States.” The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 16 (1935): 145.

Optional Readings:

Soreanu, Raluca. “The Psychic Life of Fragments: Splitting from Ferenczi to Klein.” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 78, no. 4 (December 2018): 421–44.

Aguayo, J. (2018). D.W. Winnicott, Melanie Klein, and W.R. Bion: The controversy over the nature of the external object—Holding and container/contained (1941–1967). Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 87(4), 767–807.

12.16.25 Winnicott & Models of the Mind Miriam DeRiso
Mind and its Relation to the Psycho-Soma

Syllabus

Required Readings:

Winnicott, D. (1975) Chapter XIX. Mind and its Relation to the Psyche-Soma [1949], International Psychoanalytic Library (100): 243-254.

Anderson, J.W. (2014) How D. W. Winnicott Conducted Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Psychology, 31, 375-395.

Supplemental Readings:

Seligman, S. (2025) Holding and Containing: “The Metaphor of the Baby” in Winnicott, Bion and Klein. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, (35)(1), 46-54.

Ogden, T. (2013) Chapter 2 The Mother, the Infant and the Matrix: Interpretations of Aspects of the Work of Donald Winnicott. New Library of Psychoanalysis, (78): 46-72.

Ogden, T. (2018) The feeling of real: On Winnicott’s “Communicating and Not Communicating Leading to a Study of Certain Opposites”. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, (99)(6): 1288-1304.

Peltz, R. (2019) Tyler in the Labyrinth: A Young Child’s Journey from Chaos to Coherence. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, (29) (5): 627-631.

Little, M. (1985) Winnicott Working in Areas Where Psychotic Anxieties Predominate: A Personal Record. Free Associations: Psychoanalysis Groups Politics, Culture, 1D3: 9-42.

01.13.26 Winnicott & Models of the Mind Miriam DeRiso

01.18.26 Workshop 1 - Immigrant Fears (WPA Community) Miriam DeRiso & Patricia Donohue 10am-4pm

Syllabus

Required Media/Readings:

Film: Green Border/Zielona granica (2023) directed by Agnieszka Holland (2 hours, 27 minutes, streaming on Apple TV, Amazon, Kanopy). Be advised that the film includes realistic depictions of violence, trauma and death.

As you watch the film, be attentive to the cultural/political situatedness of different social groups (refugees, townspeople and guards, activists) and the ways people in fear move towards recognition, relationship, care and reparation.

Tummala-Narra, P. (2020). The fear of immigrants. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 37(1), 50. [12 pages]

Dajani, K., Rao, J. M., & Tummala-Narra, L. P. (2024). Race and Culture in Psychoanalytic Therapy. Textbook of Psychoanalysis, 15. [18 pages]

Supplemental Readings:

Ahmed, S. (2004). The affective politics of fear. The cultural politics of emotion, 62-81.

Caflisch, J. (2020). “When reparation is felt to be impossible”: Persecutory guilt and breakdowns in thinking and dialogue about race. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 30(5), 578-594.

Eng, D. L. (2016). Colonial object relations. Social Text, 34(1), 1-19.

González, F. J. (2016). Only what is human can truly be foreign: The trope of immigration as a creative force in psychoanalysis. In Immigration in psychoanalysis (pp. 15-38). Routledge.

Hollander, N. C. (1998). Exile: paradoxes of loss and creativity. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 15(2), 201-215. [24 pages]

01.20.26 Winnicott & Models of the Mind Miriam DeRiso

01.27.26 Waddel and the baby: tying Freud, Klein, Winnicott (Bion too but that will not yet have been covered) Sharon Bernstein

02.03.26 Process Group Landaiche

02.10.26 Waddel and the baby: tying Freud, Klein, Winnicott (Bion too but that will not yet have been covered) Sharon Bernstein

02.17.26 Waddel and the baby: tying Freud, Klein, Winnicott (Bion too but that will not yet have been covered) Sharon Bernstein

02.24.26 Neuropsychoanalysis (structure of mind, motivations and development) Noah Rahm

03.03.26 Neuropsychoanalysis (structure of mind, motivations and development) Noah Rahm

03.10.26 Neuropsychoanalysis (structure of mind, motivations and development) Noah Rahm

03.17.26 Process group Landaiche

03.24.26 Dissociative model (Interpersonalists and Relationalists: Ferenczi, Sullivan, Levenson, Stern, Bromber, Davies etc.) Mike Mervosh and/or George Herrity

03.31.26 Dissociative model (Interpersonalists and Relationalists: Ferenczi, Sullivan, Levenson, Stern, Bromber, Davies etc.) Mike Mervosh and/or George Herrity

04.07.26 Dissociative model (Interpersonalists and Relationalists: Ferenczi, Sullivan, Levenson, Stern, Bromber, Davies etc.) Mike Mervosh and/or George Herrity

04.14.26 Attachment Theory Kevin Smith

04.21.26 Attachment Theory Kevin Smith

04.28.26 Process group Landaiche

05.05.26 Attachment Theory Kevin Smith

05.12.26 Infant Observation, Self Psych, Intersubjectivity Theory Alyson Kepple

05.19.26 Infant Observation, Self Psych, Intersubjectivity Theory Alyson Kepple

05.26.26 Infant Observation, Self Psych, Intersubjectivity Theory Alyson Kepple

06.02.26 --1 additional class to hold open for now--

06.09.26 Process group Landaiche