Psychoanalytic Required Courses


Year 1


Evelyn Hartman, Ph.D.

110: Evolution of Psychoanalytic Concepts I: The Development of Freud’s Theory

10 sessions

This course provides an overview of Freudian Theory from 1893 thru 1915. It is the first trimester of a year-long review of Freudian theory. The course will demonstrate Freud’s evolving conceptualizations of his mind and of clinical technique and will offer an appreciation of Freud, as a developing clinician and theoretician as well as an appreciation of how his ideas continue to apply to our work. We will learn how Freud’s examination of his own life through his self-analysis contributed to the evolution of his thinking. Freud’s theoretical and clinical struggles will be elucidated and shown to resemble those conceptual and technical challenges with which we continue to grapple.

Victoria Malkin, Ph.D.

110b. Freud II

10 Sessions

This class takes up Freud after his Lectures on Technique (1911–1915) to explore how Freud expanded and elaborated his basic ideas of the fundamental rules of psychoanalytic work—transference, resistance, free-association, neutrality and working through. Taking his papers on character and a case study (the Ratman) we will read with these concepts in mind to explore how Freud continues to develop his ideas and grapple with clinical questions that lead him to elaborate further to move “Beyond the Pleasure Principal” and into newer territories that continue to be taken up in later psychoanalytic thinking.

Gary Schlesinger, Ph.D.

112: Beginning the Treatment – Conceptual and Clinical Approaches

10 Sessions

This course will attempt to familiarize candidates with the complex issues involved in beginning a psychoanalytic treatment. I will try to provide a comparative, contextual approach to the clinical issues involved as one’s beliefs about what facilitates mutative experience may determine how one seeks to begin a treatment. I will use a combination of readings discussing conceptual and practical matters and clinical material from both my practice and cases presented by candidates.

Donald Troise, LCSW

114a: Sullivan in Time: His Life and Thought

7 Sessions

Harry Stack Sullivan’s extraordinary contributions to psychoanalysis have been undervalued even as they constitute a significant substratum for the elaboration of interpersonal and later, relational theory. This course will explore Sullivan’s life and thought as intersecting, correspondent experiences. In particular, the influence of his marginalized identities on his developmental theory and his practice techniques will be considered in detail. Sullivan’s life story and the commensurate theories he devised from it, reminds us that psychoanalytic theories are, essentially, stories too, and that
psychoanalysis itself stands most securely in the Humanities than in any other realm.

Roger Frie, Ph.D., Psy.D., R. Psych

114b: Erich Fromm: Clinical Practice in Social Context

3 Sessions

Given Fromm’s stature as a public intellectual, it is easy to overlook the fact that he was first and foremost a pioneering psychoanalyst who founded psychoanalytic institutes and organizations in Germany, the US and Mexico. This short course sheds light on Fromm’s key clinical contributions. Fromm’s clinical ideas are discussed in their historical context and parallels with contemporary relational psychoanalysis are considered. Fromm’s work helps us to understand that clinical practice, like human experience, can never be separated from the social and political surround.

Ann D’Ercole, Ph.D.

120: Beginning with Clara M. Thompson: The context, the person, her theories, and relevance

5 Sessions

This course examines the work of Clara M. Thompson, the pioneering 20th century psychoanalyst, a founder and Director of the WAWI. Drawing from her biography (D’Ercole, 2023), we follow her development including her transformative therapeutic experience as an analysand of Sandor Ferenczi as she becomes an outspoken advocate of a new psychoanalysis. Together with her colleagues—Harry Stack Sullivan, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and Erich Fromm, she established the Interpersonal Psychoanalytic Tradition that is foundational to Relational Psychoanalysis.

Josh Yoselovsky, LCSW

111: History of Early/Middle Interpersonalism

10 Sessions

The object of this course is to provide candidates exposure to theoretical and clinical works of early and middle Interpersonal Psychoanalysts. We will review some of the critical works of Sandor Ferenczi, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Alberta Szalita & Harold Searles. This course will introduce some of these lesser known, yet important contributors, to the class. We will seek to understand how the social, cultural, and political environment, in conjunction with each theorist’s unique life history, influenced his/her theoretical and clinical approach. Finally, we will consider each theorist’s impact and relevance to candidates current and theoretical approach with patients.

Irwin Hirsch, Ph.D.

116: Clinical Case Seminar

5 Sessions

This five-week clinical seminar is devoted to a focus on examining the interaction between patient and analyst. Equal attention is paid to transference and countertransference (the transference-countertransference matrix), highlighting the degree to which this emphasis reflects the heart of therapeutic action. Clinical illustration will liberally accompany presentation and discussion of theoretical concepts.

David Rappaport, Ph.D.

117: Freud III

10 Sessions

This course will focus on development of meta psychology, the postulate of the death instinct, and the elaboration of object relations that Freud articulated in the later phase of his career. We will also discuss some of the important cultural issues he addressed during this period and the implications for clinical practice that are not explicitly stated yet run through these writings. As we consider Freud’s work, we will also examine how subsequent theorists and clinicians have elaborated on the ideas that were germinated during this fertile period of Freud’s writing.

David Appelbaum, Psy.D.

118: Analytic Listening and Intervention

5 Sessions

This five sessions course focuses on analytic listening, guided by idea that a core feature of the psychoanalytic approach entails working closely with the patient’s own process. During our meetings we will study the concept of analytic listening from different historical and theoretical vantage points including: the therapeutic impact of listening, listening with the third ear, neutrality, empathic immersion, meditative techniques, inquiry and barriers to listening. Clinical material will be shared by candidates to to examine how we listen to our patients.

TBD

115: Inquiry and Free Association

5 Sessions

Miri Abramis, Ph.D.

113: Pragmatics and Poetry: The Clinical Work of Edgar Levenson

10 Sessions

Edgar Levenson’s work represents the most significant advance in interpersonal psychoanalysis since Sullivan, from participant observation to theorizing the analyst’s subjectivity as central in analytic change. As Don Stern has written, he is “more responsible than any other single writer for the current emphasis in North American psychoanalysis on the inevitable, unconscious, personal participation of the analyst on the therapeutic relationship.” Having said this, Levenson, now in his 90’s, is also one of the least well-known major psychoanalytic thinkers in the contemporary psychoanalytic world, despite his prominence in the late 70’s and 80’s, when debates between the two-person interpersonal perspective and one-person classical Freudian model were central, and the idea that we “cannot not interact” was radical. In the next ten weeks we will take a deep dive into Levenson’s work, beginning by placing his work in the development of interpersonal thought, especially Sullivan. We will read a selection of papers from his early work and end with Levenson’s (2019) last paper, Quo Vadis presented at WAWI’s 75 th Anniversary Conference.

Year 2


Elizabeth Krimendahl, Psy.D.

232: Stephen Mitchell: Catalyst

10 Sessions

Mitchell is considered the originator of relational psychoanalysis; he blended interpersonal theory and technique with object relations and self-psychological concepts. This course surveys the development of Mitchell’s thought on interpersonal-relational analysis, focusing on topics such as
narcissism, therapeutic action, the analytic relationship, love and guilt.

Robert B. Shapiro, Ph.D.

210: Evolution of the Person in Childhood and Adolescence – Clinical Theories – Their Sources and Context

10 sessions

A study of personality development from the points of view of intra- and interpersonal factors in the individual, the family, the society and the culture. This course will highlight the clinical implications of early life experiences.

TBD and Melanie Israelovitch, M.D.

215: Character and Psychopathology

10 Sessions

In this course we will examine the complexity of character and the ways that characterological styles help to foster and impede the ability of our patients to live their lives in the face of struggles, big and small, through daily living and during major life events. We will consider how we, as interpersonal analysts living within our own characterological styles, use ourselves and the intense reactions that may arise, as we confront the challenge of helping our patients live more fully within their character and in their world. We will also consider the interplay of psychopharmacology with character style and treatment.

Toni Andrews, Ph.D.

234: Theories of Child Development and Adult Psychotherapy: How the Past Lives in the Present

10 Sessions

All psychoanalytic theories postulate that past experiences affect the present functioning of our patients. In this course, we will consider contemporary child development theories from an Interpersonal perspective with an eye toward enhancing our clinical understanding of adult patients. We will survey the literature on early infant studies, the development of emotional regulation and mental inaction, attachment theory, latency, adolescence and identity development. Our focus will include connecting developmental theory to adult functioning and psychopathology. Class time will be divided between lecture and discussion of assigned readings and clinical case material.

Judd Bortner, Ph.D.

216: Standing in the Spaces with Philip Bromberg

10 Sessions

This course, both theoretical and clinical in content, shall explore the work of Philip M. Bromberg, who transformed the Detailed Inquiry, and all of Interpersonal Psychoanalytic theory and praxis from a positivist search for Truth/Reality (aka an Interpersonal Ego Psychology) to a shared therapeutic process, during which multiple, discontinuous self states emerge, or are dissociated in response to the ever changing relatedness in the consulting room. Such shifts, as Bromberg refers to this action, emerge from the threat of traumatic repetition, and cripple possibilities for intimacy. Using both his scholarly writings, his clinical vignettes, and student representations of process, candidates shall develop greater attunement to such self-other schemata, enactments of, and explore ways of working through such repetitions.

Jenny Kaufmann, Ph.D.

214: The Interactive Matrix

10 Sessions

In this course we will consider the crucial concepts of transference and countertransference. We will look at how the concept has evolved from Freud into the present, and consider how the concept has changed from the patient/analyst displacing their respective issues onto the current relationship to looking at the total relationship involving old and new co-created object relationships. We will look at how Freud, Klein and neo-Kleinian thinkers (Racker) contributed to this evolution, and how more contemporary writers (Mitchell, Greenberg, Bach, Kohut & Winnicott) have complexified how we look at the transference-countertransference matrix. In doing so we will emphasize the contributions of interpersonal writers (Levenson and Ehrenberg), who have stressed the importance of the real relationship and the here-and-now interaction, bringing alive the patient’s issues (what’s “going on around here”).

Donnel Stern, Ph.D.

212: Emergent Properties of the Interpersonal Field

10 Sessions

All clinical events are emergent and involve both patient and analyst. The unpredictable and changing nature of the interpersonal field, especially its unconsciously mediated aspects, determines the experience that patient and analyst can have in one another’s presence; but we can just as well say
that patient and analyst, simply by doing their work together, ceaseless configure and reconfigure the field. These principles will be studied in clinical material supplied by seminar members, each of whom will have an opportunity to present their work.

Michelle Stephens, Ph.D., & Cleonie White, Ph.D.

220: How Psychoanalysts Gaze: Race, Ethnicity, Culture, and “Hot” Moments of Clinical Encounter

10 Sessions

This course addresses various ways in which issues of race, ethnicity, and cultural difference influence the clinical encounter and the treatment process. Is race a scientific reality or a social/political construct? To whom does race belong? Is race, and the Racialized Othering observed in the culture at large, present in the seemingly more contained field represented in the analytic room? How does its presence in the psychoanalytic relationship exert influence?

Claire Basescu, Ph.D.

221: Credo: My Psychoanalysis

10 Sessions

This class invites students to articulate their own developing views of therapy and therapeutic action. It is a writing class, focused on short, informal pieces of writing. Students will be asked to identify quotations from their readings or clinical anecdotes from their practices and to write about them. The
goal is to encourage exploration, self-awareness and self-definition. The class atmosphere will be one of creativity and playfulness. Each participant (including the instructor) will contribute about a page a week to the rotating class discussion. There may be some writing prompts or small assignments from the instructor. (For a longer course description, you may contact: clairebasescu@gmail.com.)

Year 3


Karen Marisak, Ph.D.

301: Ethics and Professional Boundaries in Psychoanalytic Practice

5 Sessions

This course is intended to provide candidates with a forum for the consideration of ethical issues in psychoanalytic practice. We will review selected ethical principles and discuss their application across a broad range of topics. Emphasis will be on both cultivating alertness to ethical matters and on the unique capacity of the psychoanalyst to consider and illuminate ethical ambiguities and dilemmas. It is hoped that candidates will have an opportunity to explore ethical matters openly with each other and with the instructor. Participants are encouraged to bring up ethical issues encountered in their own work for the purpose of group consultation in the context of the class.

Seth Aronson, Psy.D. & Deborah Fraser, Ph.D.

310: Object Relations Theory

15 Sessions

This course provides an overview of object relations theory through a consecutive focus on three major contributors: Klein, The British Middle School and Fairbairn.

Peter Kaufmann, Ph.D.

313: Overview of Self Psychology: It’s Emphases and Evolution

10 Sessions

In this overview course about Self Psychology, we will review its particular emphases in terms of understanding patients and clinical practice and how it has evolved. We will begin by considering the contributions of Heinz Kohut, the founder of Self Psychology and highlight his ideas about empathy, self-object relatedness and the self-object transferences. ”the leading edge” and “the trailing edge”. Then we will study how subsequent Self Psychologists- Dick Geist, Marian Tolpin, Robert Stolorow, Frank Lachmann, Jim Fosshage and Steven Stern have elaborated upon these ideas by considering how the repetitive dimension of experience is represented, how much development and treatment are two-person processes and the significance of the parent’s and analyst’s role as a separate subject. We also will compare these writers with contributors from the Interpersonal tradition so that the candidates can better appreciate the similarities and differences between practitioners in these two traditions.

Christopher Bonovitz, Psy.D.

331: Comparative Theories of Therapeutic Action: The Goals of Psychoanalysis and How We Arrive There

10 Sessions

The purpose of this course is to compare and contrast different theoretical perspectives on therapeutic action. The notion of therapeutic goals vs. psychoanalytic goals will be explored with an eye towards how each theory conceptualizes what is mutation as well as their respective mechanisms of change. Aspects of therapeutic action that will be considered include enactment, role of countertransference, here-and-now vs reconstructing the past, hate and love in the analytic relationship, and the role of interpretive action and insight as compared to experiential moments of meeting, as well as how the patient’s envy of the analyst may contribute to negative therapeutic reaction.

Gudrun Opitz, Ph.D.

332: Dreams in Psychoanalysis

10 Sessions

This course addresses theoretical aspects of unconscious processes and their communication as seen in dreams. The focus will be, first, on understanding the structure of dreams and the psychology of the dream process, and second, on the clinical use of dreams in all phases of unconscious processes and their communication as seen in dreams.

Alice Sohn, Ph.D.

312: Working Psychoanalytically

10 Sessions

The purpose of this course is to examine and consolidate psychoanalytic thinking in its application both to short- and long-term clinical work, and in particular to work with “difficult” patients posing difficult treatment predicaments. Working psychoanalytically entails an awareness of transference, insight and working through, as well as an interpersonal engagement with patients in whatever ways they choose to present themselves. This way of working effectively integrates psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in a common interpersonal approach. Readings will frame problematic situations for class discussion; presentations of clinical examples by instructors and candidates will provide in vivo application.

Pascal Sauvayre, Ph.D. and Orsi Hunyady, Ph.D.

335: Psychoanalysis in Context: A History of Ideas

10 sessions

This course studies foundational psychoanalytic concepts by exploring their origins in intellectual history. The different, and often opposed, psychoanalytic theories of mind are linked back to their philosophical roots. This is also the story of the emergence of the ‘subject’ walking in lock step with its de-centering through various forms of laterite, from the intersubjective to alienation. The aim is to contextualize key psychoanalytic ideas and to anchor their relevance in clinical experience. Since the class emphasizes reflection and close reading, required readings will be kept to a strict minimum (often limited to excerpts of a few paragraphs or pages), but the students are invited to peruse the full readings, and to suggest passages, or other readings, they find of particular interest.

Year 4


Josh Bazell, M.D. & Andrew Gerber, M.D., Ph.D.

411: Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis

10 Sessions

Neuroscience and psychoanalysis in theory and practice. What scientific evidence exists to support the techniques and assumptions of psychoanalysis? How has psychoanalysis affected neuroscience? How does the brain host the mind? This course will ask these and other questions through a study of both classic and contemporary research.

Bevin Campbell, Psy.D. & Gal Katz, Ph.D.

416: Sexuality & Gender

10 sessions

Proceeding from some of Freud’s (and other classical writers’) foundational work on sexuality and gender, this class will frame this topic as relevant to all things psychoanalytic (and indeed human) while engaging with recent critique from feminist, queer, and/or interpersonal perspectives, and with the effects of cultural and technological transformation on sexuality. Many of the class meetings revolve around clinically focused readings be it the challenge of working across gender differences, sex and relationships, or erotic transference and countertransference. While we provide a strong foundation in models of gender and sexual development, we hope to also prepare students to work with a range of clinical issues related to gender identity and sexuality.

David Banthin, Ph.D.

413: Trauma and Dissociation

10 Sessions

The class provides candidates the opportunity to explore, discuss and deepen their understanding of the nature of trauma, its sequelae and treatment from different theoretical and clinical perspectives. Key themes candidates will explore throughout the course include the ongoing tensions and paradoxes inherent in the (so-called) “rejection of the seduction hypothesis”, the non-linear impact of trauma and the role of resilience, the complex relationship between trauma, personality, dissociation and culture, the private and public dimensions of trauma. Dr. Banthin will draw on his treatment and research experience in helping patients with military trauma, sexual trauma, childhood trauma and dissociative disorders during his time at the Bronx VA Medical Center and Mt. Sinai Medical School.

Jay Greenberg, Ph.D.

412a: Introduction to non-Anglophone Psychoanalysis

This course offers a brief introduction to the thinking of some analysts working in non-Anglophone communities. We read seminal papers by authors from Latin America, Italy, and France, with the aim of facilitating students’ awareness of ways of thinking very different from those that are most familiar in North America.

Seth Aronson, Ph.D.

412: Contemporary Kleinian Viewpoints

5 Sessions

This course covers the major contributions of important neo-Kleinians such as Wilfred Bion, Hanna Segal, Betty Joseph, Ronald Britton and John Steiner, and explores post-Kleinian developments and issues such as contemporary understandings of the Paranoid-Schizoid, Depressive and Oedipal positions, therapeutic action and interaction, and the clinical use of projective identification. These contemporary Kleinian views will be compared and contrasted with interpersonal perspectives.

Jennifer Stevens, Ph.D.

415: Difficult Patients/Difficult Dyads

5 sessions of 2.5 hours – This course is taught on weekends, at a time and dates determined by the instructor in collaboration with the candidates.


This condensed course will address the challenges that work with patients recognized as “difficult” pose for therapists. Course material will address not only patient pathology, but also the ways in which patient and therapist can become entangled in unproductive forms of engagement together. A review of the dynamics and phenomenology of narcissistic character structure, borderline organization, and forms of developmental deficit or obstruction will both frame and be woven through the various topics covered in the seminar, as they seem necessary to any discussion of difficult treatment situations.

Sarah Stemp, Ph.D.

417: Aspects of Termination

10 Sessions

This course will focus upon the co-construction and experience of the termination phase of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. We will consider issues involved in other kinds of endings as well, such as terminations due to a variety of external factors, or prolonged impasse. The
course will address assessment of readiness (timing), characteristic issues which typically emerge for patient and analyst during the termination phase (e.g., mourning, regression, pride in and envy of growth and achievement, acceptance of limitation and imperfection, etc.), and questions around post- termination contact. Throughout, using clinical material, particular attention will be given to transference-countertransference dimensions of the termination process.

500 Level Courses: Electives

No CE/CME credits available for electives


Ira Moses, Ph.D.

510: Forbidden Discourse

5 Sessions

As increasingly reductionistic and, at times, inflammatory rhetoric is being embraced in some analytic forums, our clinical inquiry has become constricted out of a concern of retaliation. This clinical seminar will demand a spirit of challenging one’s ideology and a priori assumptions about the most sensitive subjects including gender, race, and culture in the service of open exploration. Participants will present clinical vignettes for discussion with supplemental articles. Respectful disagreement will be encouraged.


This seminar is open to all members of the Institute and Society by permission of the instructor. For further information contact Ira Moses, Ph.D. directly at iramoses@gmail.com.

Ira Moses, Ph.D.

511: Words Matter: Analysis of How we Communicate with our Patients

10 Sessions (September 11–November 13, 2024)

How we share our observations and apply Inquiry as an alternative to Interpretation will be central to the seminar. By focusing on the specific words in the patient’s speech we will look for words the analyst may use to facilitate the patient’s articulation of experiences that were repressed or dissociated. Often misunderstood, Inquiry will be viewed from multiple perspectives as we review the use of saturated and unsaturated questions, parapraxis, libidinal charged words, yes/no questions, negative questions, etc. to enhance the patient’s ability, to use Antonovsky’s concept, of “thinking inward”. Participants will provide verbatim transcripts or audiotapes for the seminar.

Rick Loewus, Ph.D.

512: The Problem of Technique

10 Sessions

Psychoanalytic technique has fallen on hard times. It is generally accepted that there is no received technique, no one right way to handle any given clinical interaction. At the same time candidates come to training to learn general principles, perhaps even specific skills, necessary to conduct a successful analytic treatment. We will explore this tension through readings drawn from conflicting visions of analytic technique – received, improvised, spontaneous. The readings raise questions regarding the definition of fundamental tenets of clinical theory, the technical hypotheses they generate, and the problems they raise. During classes we will analyze transcripts of clinical process in order to explore the controversies raised by each week’s readings and to gain our own perspective into the fundamental problem of learning to conduct a psychoanalytic treatment.

Billie Pivnick, Ph.D. & Jane Hassinger, DCSW

514: Group and Community in Contemporary Psychoanalysis

8 Sessions

In this seminar, we will explore the history of psychoanalytic approaches to working in group and community settings as well as contemporary clinical approaches to individual psychotherapy that emphasize how the inner world is enacted socially and the exterior group is taken into interior life as ‘groups-in-the-mind.” Through both readings and experiential learning in the class, we will consider the inextricable intertwining of self as an individual and as a group member. We will explore our new concept—‘relational citizenship’—the intersubjective experience of oneself as a generative citizen among citizens. Relational citizenship is an intersubjective self-state in which the individual and the sociopolitical are psychically linked, and through which the challenges of identifying with and belonging to one or more collectives are recognized. and negotiated. The following question will guide our explorations: How can psychoanalysts simultaneously be consultants, citizens, and collaborators. In addition to classic readings about group dynamics (Bion, Menzies-Lyth, Hayden & Molenkamp, Hopper, Fanon, Dalal, Tubert-Oklander, Shapiro & Carr, Glassman), we will include optional contemporary works by Altman, Twemlow, Parens, Bragin, Rudden, Sauvayre & Frie, and explore clinical vignettes from our own publications. We hope to gather as a group of at least four people so we can also examine our functioning as a group.

Victoria C. Demos, Ph.D.

516: The Works of Jessica Benjamin: An Overview

8 Sessions

Jessica Benjamin is one of the first psychoanalysts to introduce feminism and gender studies into psychoanalytic thought. In her first book, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination, (1988), she introduces this relationship between gender and psychoanalysis, critiques the Oedipal phase and outlines her thoughts on recognition. In Like Subjects, Love Objects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference (1995), she presents her own developmental theory of intersubjectivity theory. In her 1998, Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis, she continues her social critique by exploring ideas of gender, and authority both in development and in the analytic situation. In her most recent, Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third (2018), discusses her ideas of the many forms of Thirdness, witnessing and failed witnessing, play and the lawful world. This elective proposes to give an overview of Benjamin’s major ideas and themes from each of these periods of her work.

Eyal Rozmarin, Ph.D.

518: Love and power, subjectivity and the collective, introducing social theory into psychoanalysis

10 Sessions

This course offers a preliminary exploration of the social-collective aspects of subjective life and experience. We will read and think together about the many ways in which subjectivity is structured and regulated by socio-political and historical forces, forces that operate on the level of the collective but impact each of us directly and intimately. Often through the mediation of the nuclear family. We will consider how this always changing reality animates our lives and our experience, and how, therefore, it requires that we keep adjusting our psychoanalytic lenses, both in theory and in our clinical practice.
Our emphasis will be on reading primary sources in social theory,and looking at how they might be engaged by the capacities and needs of psychoanalysis. We will venture into 2nd wave feminist critique (Firestone, Wittig), insurgent psychiatry (Laing, Fanon), French post-structural thinking (Foucault, Deleuze & Guattari, Althusser) and the Frankfurt School (Fromm, Adorno, Horkheimer). We will consider some contemporary exploration of subjectivity (Butler, Bauman, Clough, Preciado). We might also read psychoanalysts who have already engaged social theory in their writing. All as time permits, with the understanding that the subject-matter and literature are demanding. (Most of the reading therefore suggested, not required.) We will explore social theory, but try to always remain close to the questions that concern us as clinicians. And so please expect to bring your/our clinical work into the room.

Eric Singer, Ph.D.

520: Clinical Case Seminar

10 Sessions

The focal point of this seminar will be the role of the analyst’s personality as it affects the course of the analysis. Candidates will present vignettes from their work for discussion

Ruth H. Livingston, Ph.D. & Janet Tintner, Psy.D.

530: Talking Taboo, Writing Taboo: Opening up feelings – Inviting discussion of the Analyst’s Physical Self

10 Sessions

This clinical seminar will identify and invite articulation of complex, “taboo” feelings about the analyst’s physical self – including visible and invisible physical factors — that patient may resist, dissociate, or deny. It is hoped that expressing such feelings in the context of the analytic relationship will galvanize unspoken and forbidden aspects of the negative transference/countertransference, and thus enliven and enrich the treatment. Technical problems will be addressed, and clinical discussion will pinpoint facets of individual analysts’ physicality that may be difficult to hear and discuss. Both instructors will use their ongoing written work in this arena, and candidates will also use clinical discussions to develop a written project of some sort, i.e., a blog, a paper, or an oral presentation.

Richard Gartner, Ph.D.

532: Advanced Clinical Seminar in Working with Sexually Abused and/or Dissociated Patients

10 Sessions

This seminar includes intensive ongoing discussion of students cases that have issues involving sexual abuse and/or dissociation due to trauma. Students should have some familiarity with the work of Bromberg, Davies and Frawley, and Gartner, or expect to read from their work during the course.

600 Level Courses: Electives


Robert Langan, Ph.D.

602: Reading as Stance

10 Sessions

This seminar proposes collaboratively to construct a notion of psychological stance as a kind of reading, an active and automatic construction of experience into self-in-the-world. Commonalities in the reading of literature, self, and another person will be considered. Literary readings might include
Nabokov, Bakhtin, Bromberg, and Winnicott, depending on the interests of the class.

Evelyn Hartman, Ph.D.

603: Psychodynamics of Love

10 Sessions

This course will examine the psychoanalytic literature on the dynamics of romantic love. We will consider definitions of and developmental precursors to romantic love as well as developmental trajectories that lead to difficulties in love relationships. We will examine the development of sexuality and attachment and its relationship to the development of a romantic object. Subjective dimensions of romantic love such as passion, desire and erotic experience as well as the role of fantasy within these will be examined. Finally, changes over time in long lasting love relationships will be addressed. Clinical examples will be presented.

Shelly Goldklank, Ph.D.

604: Integrating Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and Couples Therapy

TBD: if this course will be offered in 2024-25

Joseph Schachter, M.D., Ph.D.

605: Clinical/Analytic Research Course for Candidates and Faculty

10 Sessions

The purpose of this course is to assess whether developing a research orientation towards clinical material will increase the range and scope of psychodynamic hypotheses about that material. The development of a research orientation involves enhancing awareness of the limitation of our knowledge and understanding of these clinical materials. Emphasis will be placed upon the tentativeness with which interventions should be made and the capacity to develop tolerance for uncertainty. Sessions for each patient discussed will be presented seriatim for four weeks each.

Robert Gaines, Ph.D.

606: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Supervision

10 Sessions

This course will be aimed at students who have had no formal training in supervision or have begun doing some supervision. While there is no cohesive model of the supervisory process, it has been more thoroughly studied and conceptualized then many clinicians realize. This course will attempt to acquaint students with that work. This course will attempt to articulate an interpersonal/relational point of view. The main features of that point of view are an emphasis on the supervisory relationship as a collaborative endeavor, and an alertness to the ongoing experiences of both participants in the relationship and the way those experiences can facilitate or hinder learning.  This course will aim to acquaint students with the basic tools of the supervisor and to give them some experiential exposure to their own personally based biases, blind spots, strengths, and weaknesses as supervisors.

Mark Goldenthal, Ph.D.

607: Current Research in Complex Psychopathology

10 Sessions

When failure in the facilitating environment seems an inadequate explanation for the complexity and severity of a person’s psychopathology, having access to research may enhance the quest for meaning and understanding. This course will review current research about psychopathology including depressive disorders, bipolar disorders, and various combinations of affective disorders with anxiety, attention deficits, and personality disorders. Studies in biological psychiatry, clinical and neuropsychology research will be discussed. The focus will be on the reciprocal interaction of biological and psychological processes especially as it impacts psychoanalytic work (e.g. affect regulation, primitive defenses, object representations, counter-transference, etc.) with people who have severe and complex psychopathology.

Evelyn Hartman, Ph.D.

610: Dream Group

10 Sessions

As we listen to our patients’ dreams, we will consider their associations and our associations, with an ear to group process, as we understand the unique contribution offered by a dream along the royal road of analytic work.

Ronald N. Puddu, LCSW

611: The Relationality of Harold Searles

10 Sessions

Familiarity with Harold Searles’ therapeutic sensibility has the effect of enhancing one’s ability to use subjective affective experience in understanding treatment difficulties. This may, in turn, engender a growing feeling of confident functioning so important to the process of consolidating a therapeutic identity and personal therapeutic style. We will be exposed to Searles’ creative mind where developmental thinking is closely tied to clinical understandings and interventions that are unique in the analytic literature. Anticipating multiple self-state theory is Searles’ interest in bi-lateral dissociative experience and the inevitable enactments that lead to their explication. He contends that patient’s impressions of the analyst are rooted in some dissociated “not me” reality concerning the analyst’s personality or self-state and that waking the analyst from this dissociated slumber is prerequisite to growth on the part of both participants. Within his non-dogmatic integration of internal object-relations theory with inter-personal theory as but two sides of one coin, familiarity with his work contributes to candidate’s self-consolidating access to inner process in the face of the inevitable vicissitudes of the treatment situation.

Melissa Ritter, Ph.D.

612: Erotic Transference/Countertransference

10 Sessions

The exploration of “the erotic,” an aspect of clinical work that is particularly challenging, often tangled, sometimes aversive, occasionally enthralling, and almost always destabilizing is centered in this small group (maximum 5 candidates) seminar that includes weekly readings, as well as clinical discussion. Participants are encouraged to share questions concerns, confusions, theories, and the random certainty. We focus on the clinical work of both candidates and instructor.

Jenny Kaufmann, Ph.D.

613: Comparative Conceptualizations and Treatment Approaches to the Grandiose Patient

10 sessions

How do you understand and work with patients who present with what different clinician writers have conceptualized as defensive grandiosity, defensive omnipotence, false self disorders, manic defenses, and the grandiose pathological self? These patients can present as overtly arrogant, entitled and in control or on top of everything or they can be deflated, and self deprecating while maintaining secret fantasies of perfectionistic grandeur. We will consider and compare Kohut, Stolorow, Winnicott, Bach, Bromberg, Fiscalini, Mitchell, Klein and Kernberg’s perspective about such patients. In the process we will not only think about how these writers conceptualize such patients but also consider how they vary in terms of how to approach these patients clinically. Candidates will be encouraged to evolve their own more integrated and inclusive approach and apply their cases to clinical cases throughout.

Orshi Hunyady, Ph.D.

614: Immigration

10 Sessions

Immigration is a life-altering experience for the individual undergoing it, one that often borders on the traumatic and is quite frequently minimized or ignored during treatment. The intent of this elective is to bring attention to the nature and significance that immigration plays in patients’ difficulties. We will have readings and discussion on topics, such as the inevitable losses and potential gains associated with immigration; the pressures, functions, and ultimate impossibility of assimilation; the challenges that immigration presents in terms of continuity and change in the self.

Designed as a supervision group, the elective will focus on clinical work and use the clinician’s counter-transference to reveal and understand immigration-related dynamics as these emerge for patient and therapist alike. Over the course of the trimester, each participant will be asked to present at least one treatment in which relevant issues either openly surfaced, were avoided, or were discussed but curtailed. We will talk not only about the issues and dynamics themselves but also the anxiety that typically surrounds their exploration.

Robert Langan, Ph.D.

615: Attending Within: Strategies of Buddhism and Psychoanalysis

10 Sessions

How do you decide, when sitting with a patient, or for that matter, when sitting with yourself, what to pay attention to? A foundational assumption of psychoanalysis is that one has more leeway in choosing than at first it appears, and that by choosing differently comes the possibility of living differently. One can alter the nature of self experience. Similarly, a foundational assumption of Buddhism is that the givens of reality are in a profound way illusory, and that realization of how this is so leads to a profound alteration in the nature of self experience. The strategies of Buddhism and psychoanalysis that lead toward such alteration bear comparison. The goal of the course is to highlight attention to attention as an introspective wild card in personality change. Its relevance is both clinical and personal.

Sharon Kofman, Ph.D.

616: Historical Trauma: Embeddedness in Generations

10 Sessions

The intersubjective turn in psychoanalysis has heightened interest in the intergenerational transmission of trauma and its haunting consequences. With a focus on early relational trauma and historical trauma, we will explore how trauma is transferred and complexly manifested in subsequent generations. We will trace the variety of ways the concept of intergenerational transmission is conceptualized and considered within contemporary psychoanalytic adult and parent-infant treatment. We will also explore the relevance of these processes for clinical listening and the patient-analyst interaction. Materials for the course will include case studies and treatment literature, memoirs, and film excerpts.

Pascal Sauvayre, Ph.D.

618: Lacanversation

10 sessions

The goal of this course is to establish a rudimentary knowledge of Lacan’s theory and clinical approach (Lacanian 101) to provide a point of difference (for us) from which to view Freud and psychoanalysis in America, and thereby to bring into focus assumptions that would otherwise remain unquestioned (at least in these unique ways). Some of Lacan’s seminal texts from Ecrits and The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis are studied in detail, with the help of accompanying explanations and commentaries by Fink, Zizek, and Winnicott. The expectation is to familiarize ourselves with the language and way of thinking, enough to seem conversant only for the uninitiated, but acknowledging that we could converse haltingly in broken Lacanian to those educated in this mindset. It is hoped that this Lacanian primer will help us expand our psychoanalytic horizons, not just as American psychoanalysts, but also as Interpersonalists.

Dodi Goldman, Ph.D.

619: Winnicott’s Search for Himself as Clinician

4 Sessions

Psychoanalytic ideas flourish in a variety of ways: through careful attention to accumulated clinical data over time, observations of child development, open discourse with extra analytic disciplines, accommodation to shifting cultural trends. But innovative theories also form externalized symbolic structures reflecting the theorist’s own self. They can be efforts at self cure. Using Winnicott as illustration, the elective explores how Winnicott’s theory mirrors his own subjectivity. Participants will read together passages from Winnicott’s private correspondences, autobiographical notebook, and public talks to consider the link between his life and theory.

Deborah Glazer, Ph.D. & Frank Marrocco, Ph.D.

620: Psychotherapy with LGBTQ People

10 Sessions

This course is designed to enhance participants’ knowledge of the range of issues commonly faced by LGBTQ people throughout the lifespan. The course integrates a developmental/theoretical perspective with an in-depth clinical exploration of the treatment issues specific to LGBTQ individuals. Students will develop an understanding of the intrapsychic and interpersonal issues that arise when working with patients with non-normative gender identification and sexuality. Special topics include: exploration of alternative developmental theories for LGBTQ individuals; understanding the relationship (or lack thereof) between gender experience and sexual desire; transphenomena; the effects of the closet; regulatory anxiety; special topics in transference/countertransference; therapists’ self-disclosure; etc.

Pascal Sauvayre, Ph.D., & Katharina Rothe, Ph.D.

622: Laplanche: The Challenge of Translation

10 Sessions

The concept of translation is foundational to Laplanche’s thought, for both his metapsychology and his clinical theory. We will follow how his careful reading and translation of Freud (he oversaw the translation of his complete works into French) is used as the springboard for the development of his thought. By ‘putting Freud to work’, as he says, he develops the ‘generalized theory of seduction’ from which emerges the core ‘drive to translate the implanted enigmatic message’. Related metapsychological concepts then include the fundamental anthropological situation, sexuality, the unconscious, and the original wound as the opening to the other. In the second section of the course, we will explore how these metapsychological concepts are then translated into clinical theory with such notions as the hollowed out transference, the translation of the analyst’s enigma, and treatment as a dialectic of psychoanalysis (as an anti-hermeneutic) and psychotherapy (as a hermeneutic).

Pascal Sauvayre, Ph.D.

624: A Cruise to the Beyond

10 sessions

Go on a comparative psychoanalysis cruise to the Beyond with stopovers in Freud, Lacan, Sullivan, and Laplanche; with generous portions of unconscious wishes, of the real, of desire, of jouissance, of anxiety, of tension, of the sexual, and of the enigmatic message. While the servings are all-you-can-eat, digestion and metabolization are not guaranteed, not even for the cruise director.

Robert Langan, Ph.D.

631: Clinical Listening: Holding onto Letting Go

10 Sessions

When sitting with a patient (or when sitting with yourself) how is it your attention tightly focuses, or loosely wanders away? This course explores this question both theoretically and experientially. Readings will draw on Freud, Farber, Ghent, Stern et al., as well as Buddhist writers. Class exercises will tap clinical process, dreams, meditation, visualization, association, and thought/feeling linkages. The goal of the course is to posit attention to attention as an introspective wild card fostering personality change. 

Jeffrey Sacks, D.O.

641: After the intersubjectivists: Paul Ricoeur’s Therapeutic Mutual Recognition

10 sessions

Paul Ricoeur, a philosophical anthropologist, formulated and utilized an interdisciplinary language to understand and examine the clinical psychoanalytic process. In this course we will examine his ideas to explore how creativity affects therapeutic action from interpretation to mutual recognition. Vulnerability and gratitude are among the many complex human experiences we will examine within Psychoanalytic work.

Jeffrey Sacks, D.O.

641: After the intersubjectivists: Paul Ricoeur's Therapeutic Mutual Recognition

10 Sessions

Paul Ricoeur, a philosophical anthropologist, formulated and utilized an interdisciplinary language to understand and examine the clinical psychoanalytic process. In this course we will examine his ideas to explore how creativity affects therapeutic action from interpretation to mutual recognition. Vulnerability and gratitude are among the many complex human experiences we will examine within Psychoanalytic work.

Rande Brown, LCSW

643: Death for Clinicians: How to Treat a Patient who is Dying

10 sessions

This course will examine the psychoanalytic challenges of treating a patient who is dying. Death is not a comfortable topic for most people to discuss and, in contemporary society, the process of dying has been sanitized to the point of dissociation. This course is intended to make the clinician more competent in dealing with the subject of death by explicitly and openly examining issues that may arise in the clinical encounter with a dying patient, including how to talk about death, how to practice active listening, and how to deal with issues that arise around acceptance, transference and countertransference, anticipatory mourning, the notion of spirituality, and opportunities for growth and transformation at the end of life. Participants will be encouraged to present clinical material throughout the course and will be asked to write a brief journal entry each week to reflect on the
experience of reading that week’s papers.

Ruth Livingston, Ph.D.

645: The Writing Psychoanalyst

10 Sessions

Kathy White, Ph.D.

646: Race in the Clinical Space

8 sessions

This Seminar raises awareness of unconscious states of mind around race, using a variation of the Balint method. The focus is on collective deep listening to cases where there are significant racial, ethnic, and/or cultural differences between therapist and patient (as is often the case). The instructor’s hope is that folks learn and fall in love with the idiosyncrasies of their countertransference leanings. Acceptance and love help us use our internal experience more readily and gracefully. The extended class time (an hour and a half) allows for an in-depth exploration into this material.

Deborah Sherman, LCSW

648: WR Bion—on “Caesura:

10 Sessions

In what way is “being born” an arrival, a new beginning, a point of origin? And how does “being born” precipitate an ending, a loss, a catastrophe, even? What do we go “through” in order to get born, again and again? In this seminar, we will look at WR Bion’s paper, “Caesura” (1977). In this paper, Bion explores the ways in which, despite multiple gaps, breaks, disasters, and disjunction in our minds/beings, there is yet a continuity between intra-uterine life and all that comes after. We will look, in particular, at Bion’s suggestions in this paper for practicing Psychoanalysis. Because Bion wrote extensively about the effects of catastrophic loss and change on our minds/beings, after “Caesura,” we may include in this study several of his other writings, such as, “A Theory of Thinking” (1962), “Attacks on Linking” (1959) and parts of “Attention and Interpretation” (1970).

700 Level:
Required Courses for License-Qualifying Program


Mark Goldenthal, Ph.D.

710: Psychopathology for Psychoanalysts (LQP)

10 Sessions

Thursdays, 3:00 – 4:00 PM

This introductory course in psychopathology and differential diagnosis (requiring multiple brief class presentations and write- ups) addresses the use of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (“DSM”). Guided by DSM, schizophrenia and bipolar disorders are diagnosed with regard to symptom profiles and course of illness. The complexity of affective spectrum disorders (including bipolar II, bipolar depression, and mixed states) is approached from several orientations: biological psychiatry, epidemiology, and early psychoanalytic models. Various models of affective spectrum disorder in the psychoanalytic literature are discussed in understanding unipolar depression. Anxiety Disorders (including Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) illustrate psychoanalytic theories of anxiety. The complex domain of Personality Disorders is approached from a descriptive and psychoanalytic perspective. The diagnosis and treatment of patients who are actively suicidal, self-mutilating or in other ways actively self-destructive is also addressed.

Ines McMillan, L.P.

711: Initial Consultation: Intake and Assessment Practicum (LQP)

12 sessions
Tuesdays, 11:40 AM – 12:40 PM

This half-year practicum will involve each candidate doing a minimum of 3 two-session intake interviews in the Institute’s Clinical Services, with a supervisor present during these interviews, primarily as an observer. The candidate will write a report on each case and will also participate in a weekly group supervision. The supervisory group will meet weekly for the first trimester and second trimester until the holiday break in December. Candidates will also be assigned individual supervisors.

Deborah Fraser, Ph.D.

721: The Role of Developmental History in Interpersonal Psychoanalysis (LQP)

5 Sessions
Thursdays, 3:00 – 4:00 PM

Introduces the nature and use of historical data in the interpersonal psychoanalytic approach. A review of basic developmental concepts will support candidates’ understanding of how to take a developmental history with adult patients in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

David Applebaum, Psy.D.

722: Introduction to Psychoanalytic Clinical Process (LQP)

5 Sessions
Thursdays, 3:00 – 4:00 PM

Introductory overview of the psychoanalytic process, with an emphasis on interpersonal concepts. Candidates will be introduced to key psychoanalytic concepts including: the role of the unconscious, transference, countertransference and the nature of therapeutic action. The emphasis will be on understanding these concepts from a clinical perspective. Additionally, candidates will be introduced to the use of specific interpersonal treatment strategies including participant observation and the detailed inquiry.

Stefan R. Zicht, Psy.D.

731: Practical Aspects and Frame Issues in Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (LQP)

5 Sessions

This course will address some of the key aspects of the psychoanalytic frame including confidentiality and privacy, fees and the meaning of money, crises and emergencies, establishing a working relationship, scheduling, breaks in the frame, the analyst’s ethical stance, and boundaries and boundary violations. The Institute offers an LQP Case Narrative Exam Preparation Course to be taken in the year before graduation or after the completion of all Division I requirements.

William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology 20 West 74th Street, New York, NY 10023 | (212) 873-0725