DIDACTIC COURSES
DATE/TIME-FRIDAYS, 12:15 P.M-1:45 P.M.
Orientation: Getting to Know You Lunch
Week 1
Instructors: Shelly Goldklank, Ph.D. and Ethan Graham, Ph.D.
How to Keep Your Head When They’re Losing Theirs: Theory of Technique
Weeks 2-6
Instructor: Shelly Goldklank, Ph.D.
A Tavistock Approach
Week 7
Visiting Lecturer: Julie Friend, LCSW
Non-Verbal Register in Couples Therapy
Weeks 8 & 9
Instructor: Stacy Malin, Ph.D.
Uses of the Self in Couples Therapy
Weeks 10 & 11
Instructor: Ethan Graham, Ph.D.
When Couples Seek Treatment as Parents
Week 12
Instructor: Pasqual Pantone, Ph.D.
Unconscious Coupling: Taped Session Analysis
Weeks 13 & 14
Instructor: Shelly Goldklank, Ph.D.
Diversities in Work with Couples: Curiosity and Radical Openness
Week 15
Instructor: Anton Hart, Ph.D.
Race Matters in Couples Dynamics
Weeks 16 & 17
Instructor: Monique Bowen, Ph.D.
Dynamics in Lesbian Couples
Week 18
Instructor: Suzanne Iasenza, Ph.D.
Talking About Sex in Couples Therapy
Weeks 19 & 20
Instructor: Tiziano Colibazzi, M.D.
Dynamics in Gay Male Relationships
Week 21
Instructor: David Braucher, Ph.D.
Taped-session analysis: applying what we’ve learned
Weeks 22
Instructor: Shelly Goldklank, Ph.D. and Ethan Graham, Ph.D.
High Conflict Couples
Weeks 23-28
Instructor: Susan Flinn, Ph.D.
TBA: Navigating Dangerous Waters: Considerations in working with Interpersonal Violence in Couples
Week 29
Candidate Questions About Theory and Practice: Recapitulating Theory of Technique (Wrap Up)
Week 30
Instructors: Shelly Goldklank, Ph.D. and Ethan Graham, Ph.D.
Weeks 1-10
Faculty: Ethan Graham, Ph.D.
Weeks 11-20
Faculty: Shoshana Bulow, Ph.D.
Weeks 21-30
Faculty: Robert Bartlett, Ph.D.
1. Students will learn to use the information from the didactic course to increase their professional competence.
2. Students will learn how couples therapy compares with work with individuals.
3. Students will learn techniques for establishing trusting relationships between therapists and couples.
4. Students will be able to take a genogram for their patients and use it in such a way that the information anticipates transference/countertransference.
5. Students will be able to demonstrate in a case how the variables of membership, power and affection interact as a three-generational family goes through the phase of emerging adulthood.
6. Students will be able to explore how they can deal with the problem of favoring one person in a couple over another in their own treatment cases.
7. Students will learn how to present a couples therapy case giving the most relevant couples issues in order to obtain group input into their clinical work.
8. Students will be able to give positive feedback to each other when presenting clinical material.
Miri Abramis, Ph.D.
Bob Bartlett, Ph.D.
Don Brown, M.D.
Sheila Feig Brown, Ph.D.
Lawrence O. Brown, Ph.D.
Shoshana Bulow, Ph.D.
Roberta Caplan, Ph.D.
Tiziano Colibazzi, M.D.
Debra Farbman, Ph.D.
Richard Fulmer, Ph.D.
Deborah Glazer, Ph.D.
Francine Godet, Psy.D.
Ethan Graham, Ph.D.
Mara Heiman, LCSW
Sharon Kofman, Ph.D.
Elizabeth Krimendahl, Psy.D.
Stacy Malin, Ph.D.
Susan Shimmerlik, Ph.D.
Elena Skolnick, Ph.D.
Please note that the above may be subject to change.
1. After the first class, students will be able to list at least two constructs from psychoanalysis (e.g. transference/countertransference) and two from systems therapy (e.g. co-construction) that are integrated in the orientation of this program.
2. After the second class, students will be able to take a genogram, getting information about the family of origin of each member of the couple in such a way that the information anticipates transference/countertransference issues relevant to the presenting couple’s complaint.
3. After the third class, students should be able to diagnose which of three crucial components of couple functioning are relevant for their couple’s case.
4. After the fourth class, students should be able to analyze in a commitment difficulty in a couple.
5. After the fifth class, students should be able to analyze a power or an intimacy difficulty.
6. After the sixth class, students would be able to assess and make a plan about what to do when they are siding, unconsciously at first and collusively with the system, with one person in a couple over another.
7. After the seventh class, students should be able to present their couples’ cases giving the most relevant couple’s issues, rather than individual issues, that is, the students should begin to speak systemically as well as speaking their more familiar psychoanalytic language and conceptualization. Their descriptions should not only include complementarity and similarity, but also life cycle stage, triangulations, and horizontal manifestations of vertical (family of origin) unresolved issues.
1. Students will be able to recite the historical origins and development of three concepts central to family systems theory.
2. Students will be able to describe the historical origins and development of three interventions central to a systemic approach to couples therapy.
Students will be able to:
1. Recognize the importance of cultivating curiosity when working with couples to address issues related to diversity.
2. Conceptualize and understand a hermeneutic orientation to clinical inquiry.
3. Identify the central role of the unbidden and of relational freedom within the clinical encounter with couples.
4. Describe three central impacts of race and racism on a given couple, regardless of the particular ethnicities of the members of the couple.
5. Conceptualize diversities of sexuality and gender as requiring the same kinds of open-mindedness and sensitivity as other diversities where discrimination is often a feature.
1. After the first class, students will be able to identify client and therapist barriers to discussing sexual issues in couples therapy. Students will increase their comfort and skill levels to be able to assess and identify the sexual concerns of their clients.
2. After the second class, students will increase their ability to address the sexual concerns that their clients bring into therapy. Students will be able to conceptualize sexual concerns in the context of couples therapy, take a more thorough sexual history, and will begin to apply their newfound skills into their practice.
Explain how to broaden the focus of the treatment when practicing couples therapy with couples who are talking about their children.
1. Demonstrate in a case how the variables of membership, power and affection interact as a three-generational family goes through the phase of emerging adulthood.
2. Show in a case how the variables of membership, power and affection affect unresolved issues in a couple depicted in Classical Art.
Participants will be able to describe special issues when working with lesbian couples.
Week One: Candidates will be able to list at least 3 different theories about high conflict couples. ( Theories will include attachment, trauma, object-relations, systems and EFT).
Week Two: Candidates will be able to demonstrate to the couple members how their attachment anxieties fuel their problematic dynamics.
Week Three: Candidates will be able to design initial interventions for de-escalating high conflict behavior.
Week Four: Candidates will be able to create additional interventions to reduce repetitive cycles of high conflict.
Week Five: Candidates will be able to create a safer space for the couple to heal their attachment injuries and demonstrate to them how to do so.
Week Six: Candidates will be able to plan with the couple rules to interrupt and eliminate any violence.
1st Third (September- November)
1. Goldklank, S (2009) “The Shoop Shoop Song”: A Guide to psychoanalytic-systemic couple therapy, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 45, 1, 3-25.
2. Papp, P., Scheinkman, M, & Malpas, J. (2013) Breaking the mold: Sculpting impasses in couples’ therapy. Family Process, 52, 1, 33-45.
3. Wachtel, E. (2017) The Heart of Couple Therapy: Knowing What to Do and How to Do It. Guilford Press, N.Y., Chapter Eight, 136-155.
2nd third (December – mid February)
1. Iasenza, S. (2020). The sexual history: Conscious and unconscious narratives. In S. Iasenza, Transforming sexual narratives: A relational approach to sex therapy. NY: Routledge.
2. Matheny, B., Teng, B., & Hart, A. (2021). Radical Openness: An interview with Anton Hart (Part I). Room, 2:21, 14-17.
3. Knight, Z. G. (2013). Black client, white therapist: Working with race in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in South Africa. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 94:17-31.
3rd third (mid-February-May)
1. Antunes-Alves, S. and De Stefano, J. (2014). Intimate partner violence: Making the case for joint couple treatment. The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 22(1): 62-68.
2. Goldner, V. (2014). Romantic Bonds, Binds and
Ruptures. Couples on the Brink. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol.24 (4),402-418.
3. The relevance of pre-exposure prophylaxis in gay men’s lives and their motivations to use it: a qualitative study. Alcantar Heredia, J.L. and Goldklank, S., BMC Public Health, (2021), 21, 1829.
William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology 20 West 74th Street, New York, NY 10023 | (212) 873-0725