2024-2025 One Year Program Materials

Class Dates and Course Materials:

Class 1. 09.16.24
6:15pm-9pm

Location:
201 South Highland Ave
Suite 101
Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Title: Listening and Beyond Listening

Instructor: Miriam DeRiso, Ph.D.

Syllabus

Media:
Movie: C’mon, C’mon (2021) On: Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, Apple TV (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10986222/)
C'mon, C'mon is also available as a DVD from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Please watch the movie before class. Clips will be shown. 

Readings:  

Grossman, D. (2008) Writing in the Dark, Essays on Literature and Politics, pp. 29-38. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York.

Optional Reading: 

Ogden, T. (2019) Ontological Psychoanalysis or “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. Psychoanal. Q., (88)(4):661-684.

Peltz, R. (2020). Activating Lifeness in the Analytic Encounter: The Ground of Being in Psychoanalysis. Psychoanal. Dial., (30)(3):267-282

Class 2. 10.21.24
6:15pm-9pm

Location:
201 South Highland Ave
Suite 101
Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Title: The Lens of Rupture and Repair & The Sociocultural Lens

Instructor: Miriam DeRiso, Ph.D.

Syllabus

Media: C’mon, C’mon (2021) On: Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, Apple TV (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10986222/)
C'mon, C'mon is also available as a DVD from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

Assignment: 

Rewatch C’mon, C’mon through the lens of Rupture and Repair. Asking yourself the following questions:

What were the various Ruptures and Repairs that were demonstrated in the film?--Feel free to bring the video markers and we can watch as a group, (e.g., beginning at 30:05 ending at 33:10).

What leads to a Rupture? What Makes for a Repair?

What makes them difficult to do?

What are the benefits of Rupture and Repair? 

What if we never “ruptured”?

Why are we discussing this in a class about psychoanalytic psychotherapy?

Also consider the sociocultural lens with these questions:

How are women and men portrayed in the film?

How about motherhood?

What did the interviews add to the film?

How is race taken up in the film? 

Readings:

Ogden, T. (2018) How I Talk with My Patients. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, (87)(3):399-413

Corbett, K. (2021) Credo: So Our Lives Glide On, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 31:3, 253-261

Class 3. 11.18.24
6:15pm-9pm

Location:
201 South Highland Ave
Suite 101
Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Title: TO WITNESS

Instructor: Sharon Bernstein, PH.D.

Syllabus

Media:

The Incredible Shrinking Man. Available on Netflix

Cast Away .  Available on Prime Video

Readings:

Akhtar, S. (2002). Forgiveness: Origins, dynamics, psychopathology, and technical relevance. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 71(2), 175-212.

Stern, D. B. (2009). Partners in thought: A clinical process theory of narrative. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 78(3), 701-739.

Class 4. 12.16.24
6:15pm-9pm

Location:
201 South Highland Ave
Suite 101
Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Title: Destructiveness Reconsidered

Instructor: Michael Mervosh, M.Ed.

Syllabus

References/Readings/Media

Movie: Good Will Hunting (1997) On: Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, Apple TV

Please watch the movie before class. Clips will be shown. 

Main Reading:  

Ogden, T. (2016) Destruction Reconceived: On Winnicott's ‘The Use of an Object and Relating through Identifications’. The Int’l Journal of Psychoanalysis, (97)(5):1243-1262.

Supplemental Reading: 

Harding, C. (2006) Chapter One, Making Sense of Aggression, Destructiveness & Violence

Beritzhoff, L. (2018). Creating the freedom to move: Reply to Goldberg and Grusky. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 28(6), 727–732.

Cooper, S. (2018). Playing in the darkness: Use of the object and use of the subject. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 66(4), 743–765.

Class 5. 1.20.25
6:15pm-9pm

Location:
201 South Highland Ave
Suite 101
Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Title: Stories That Shape Us: The Therapist’s Transformation Through the Patient’s Lens

Instructor: Loren Sobel M.D.

Syllabus

Media:
Saint Omer

Available on multiple streaming platforms

https://www.amazon.com/Saint-Omer-Kayije-Kagame/dp/B0B8NK5TQ5

Readings:
Wilson, Mitchell. “Desire and Responsibility: The Ethics of Countertransference Experience.” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, April 1, 2013. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.2167-4086.2013.00036.x.

Optional Readings: 

McKay Ph.D., Rachel Kabasakalian. “Bread and Roses: Empathy and Recognition.” Psychoanalytic Dialogues 29, no. 1 (January 2, 2019): 75–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/10481885.2018.1560870.

Jones, A. “Starvation and ‘The Dead Baby.’” Fort Da 23, no. 2 (2017): 41–65.

Class 6. 2.17.25
6:15pm-9pm

Location:
201 South Highland Ave
Suite 101
Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Title: Transgenerational Transmission of Destructive Aggression: Urgent Voluntary Errands

Instructor: Tova Tarr, PhD

Syllabus

Media:

García Márquez, G. (2024). Until August (A. McLean, Trans.). Alfred A. Knopf.

Readings:

1. “Scripting” Inhabitations of Unwelcome Guests, Hosts, and Ghosts:  Unpacking Elements That Constitute Transgenerational Haunting.  Maurice Apprey interviewed by William F. Cornell.  Transactional Analysis Journal, published online: 09 Sept. 2019.

2. Transgenerational Haunting in Psychoanalysis: Toxic Errands by Maurice Apprey, Routledge, 2024.  Editor’s Introduction: In Consultation, My First Meeting With Maurice Apprey, by William F. Cornell.

Optional
1.“Urgent Voluntary Errands” by Maurice Apprey in Psychoanalysis.Today

Class 7. 3.17.25
6:15pm-9pm

Location:
201 South Highland Ave
Suite 101
Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Title: Paternal Eros: The place of fathers in psychoanalysis. The place of fathers in our psyches

Instructor: William Cornell, M.A. TSTA

Syllabus
Supplement to syllabus

Required reading:

1. Diamond, M.J. (2017). The missing father function in psychoanalytic theory and technique: The analyst’s internal couple and maturing intimacy. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 86, 861-887.

2. Snyder, G. (1974). The bath. Turtle Island. New York: New Directions Press.

3. White, T (2024). How My Dad Reconciled His God and His Gay Son:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/05/opinion/coming-out-evangelical-pastor.html

Recommended reading and media:

4. Cornell, W.F. (2004/2024). Erotic vitality and disturbance. [Originally published as The Impassioned Body: Erotic vitality and disturbance, British Gestalt Journal, 12, 97-104.]

5. Diamond, M.J. (2017). Recovering the father in mind and flesh: History, triadic functioning and developmental considerations. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 85, 297-334.

6. Film: C’mon, C’mon (2021), found on Amazon Prime, You Tube, Google Play and Apple TV+

7. Broome, B. (2021). Punch Me Up to The Gods. Boston: Mariner Books.

8. Diamond, M.J. (1998). Fathers with sons: Psychoanalytic perspectives on “Good Enough” fathering throughout the life cycle. Gender & Psychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 3, 243-299.

9. Thrul, S. (2023). The young man and the sea: Reflections on male infantile development, fatherhood and psychoanalytic training. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 39, 380-392.

Class 8. 4.21.25
6:15pm-9pm

Location:
201 South Highland Ave
Suite 101
Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Title: Troubling our thinking and feeling about embodiment and dis/abilities

Instructor: Patricia Donohue, Ph.D

Syllabus

Media: [3 videos]

Sins Invalid, the 10 principles of disability Justice [13 minutes] 

https://sinsinvalid.org/10-principles-of-disability-justice/

Alice Wong - "How Ableism Impacts People Who Need and Use AAC" [21 minutes]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erLtOogjpys

Short film: Feeling Through [19 minutes]  
Available to purchase for $3.00 on the film website:
https://www.feelingthrough.com
[also available for free via you tube]

Readings:  
Watermeyer, B. (2006). Disability and psychoanalysis. Disability and social change: A South African agenda, 31-43. [13 pages]

Dobrich, J. (2021). Prologue & ch. 5 “Answering the call to heal” in Working with survivor siblings in psychoanalysis: Ability and disability in clinical process. Routledge. [24 pages]

Supplemental materials: 

Watermeyer, B., Hunt, X., Swartz, L., & Rohleder, P. (2019). Navigating the relational psychic economy of disability: The case of M. Psychoanalytic Dialogues. [18 pages]

Samuels, E. (2017). Six ways of looking at crip time. Disability studies quarterly, 37(3). [2 pages] https://dsq-sds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/5824/4684

Class 9. 5.19.25
6:15pm-9pm

Location:
201 South Highland Ave
Suite 101
Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Title:

Instructor:

Syllabus

Media:

Readings: