Certificate in Psychoanalysis
The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis offers a course of study leading to certification in psychoanalysis. Requirements for certification include the completion of 30 theoretical seminars, 3 years of clinical case seminars, two or three supervised analyses, a personal analysis, and a final integrative graduation project. While similar to other analytic training programs in these requirements, ours is unique in two ways. First, we invite outstanding psychoanalysts from throughout the United States (and occasionally from abroad) to teach in their area of expertise. Second, our curriculum, while presenting a sound grounding in fundamentals, is designed each academic year to include both topical ideas and educators whose work is of interest to our current candidate group.
2011-2012
David George, PhD
On the Road: Latin American Road Movies and the Encounter with the Other
September 23, 2011
Fridays@CCP
The Marcia Adler Annual Memorial Lecture
Those who are unable to join us for the 5:30 Reception and Registration and the 6pm screening are welcome to watch the film on their own and join us for the discussion at 8pm.
5:30pm Reception and Registration
6-8pm Screening of film, “Motorcycle Diaries”
8-9:15pm Lecture and Discussion
The Chicago School, 325 N Wells, Chicago
David George, PhD, is a professor of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at Lake Forest College. He has also taught at the Chicago Newberry Library, Middlebury College, and the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil). He has published five books and dozens of articles on Latin American culture. His latest book, published in 2010, is titled “Nelson Rodrigues and the Invention of Brazilian Drama.” Dr. George has received awards from the National Endowment from the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Social Science Research Council, and Fulbright Commission. In 2010 he received the Lake Forest College Trustee Award for Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership.
“On the road: Latin American Road Movies and the Encounter with the Other”
Travel writing and road movies share the central theme of encounter with the other. These movies invite us to grapple with powerful questions. If the travel account articulates itself through certain familiar binaries -- familiar and exotic, barbarous and civilized, rustic and urban, conquering and conquered -- in what ways is a movie’s navigation of these binaries variously contingent on the traveler's gender, nationality, historic surround, and psychological states? Which ideologies permeate road movies, and how does ideology condition such "objective" matters as a traveler's itinerary or view of landscape? What factors differentiate fictional and non-fictional travel narratives? In this regard, road movies such as “Motorcycle Diaries” combine both fictional and non-fictional elements. How do road movies define nation? How do all these combined factors influence the traveler’s “gaze,” his or her view of the other’s cultural, social, political, racial, and psychological differences?
Throughout the year, on three Sundays, David George will lead a series of film workshops to address these questions. Following is a list of Latin American road movies that would serve well the purpose of this project:
“Central Station” (Brazil)
“Y Tu Mamà Tambièn” (Mexico)
“Intimate Stories” (Argentina)
Jacob (Cobi) Avshalom
Looking for a Personal Psychoanalytic Compass
October 14-16, 2011
Friday 7-9pm
Saturday 9am-1pm; 2:30-4:30pm
Sunday 9am-1pm
30 N Michigan Ave, Chicago
10th Floor Conference Room
Cobi Avshalom, a graduate of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is a training psychoanalyst and former president, founding member, teacher and supervisor of the Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (TAICP). In addition to his position at TAICP, he teaches and supervises in the Post-Graduate Programs for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv and The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is particularly interested in transference and countertransference issues. His focus for this class on the development of a personal psychoanalytic compass is one which he has addressed previously, both in earlier presentations and publications.
Seminar Description:
“Looking for a Personal Psychoanalytic Compass”
As analysts, we are all in the process of developing or looking for an inner structure, a personal psychoanalytic compass, which evolves and crystallizes throughout our professional lives. In this seminar, I hope to invite you to join me in looking at some of the more significant readings that have shaped my journey and that continue to accompany me in each analytic hour. I trust that this seminar will provide an opportunity for participants to think about and further identify the personal psychoanalytic compass they use in their own daily clinical encounters.
The reading list includes classic papers by Strachey, Ogden, Joseph, Symington, Bollas, Renik, Erhenberg and Davies. In addition to the assigned reading, we will look at clinical material, my own and yours. Please be ready to present fresh clinical vignettes provoked by your experience of the readings.
Francoise Meltzer, PhD
Psychoanalysis and Literature
November 11, 2011
Fridays@CCP
6:30pm: Registration and Reception
7-9pm: Lecture and discussion
The Chicago School, 325 N Wells, Chicago
Seminar continues for registered candidates, Saturdays: November 5, 12, 19, 2011 9am to 12:30pm, Location TBA
Francoise Meltzer, Ph.D., is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities and Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. She is also a professor in the Philosophy of Religions at the Divinity School. She has been a co-editor of the journal Critical Inquiry since 1982. Her most recent book is Seeing Double: Baudelaire’s Modernity (University of Chicago Press, Spring, 2011). She has co-edited a book on saints in the three monotheistic religions (University of Chicago Press, Fall, 2011) and has another forthcoming book on the essays of Jacques Derrida. She is presently working on a book about ruins in the Berlin of 1945.
Seminar Description:
“Psychoanalysis and Literature”
The purpose of the seminar is to consider how psychoanalysts, specifically Freud and Lacan, have used the literary text to show the structure of the unconscious. This approach helps to elucidate how literary text works in psychoanalytic theory and also enables us to clarify the assumptions about the unconscious made by both Freud and Lacan.
In order to consider the meaning of the literary text for Freud, particularly how he understands text as one manifestation of the unconscious, the class will read selections from Freud’s metapsychological papers as well as part of the The Interpretation of Dreams. We will also read two works by Lacan: The Mirror Stage will allow us to talk about his ‘three registers;’ The Seminar on the Purloined Letter engages a literary text as the unconscious made manifest.
Brian Koehler, PhD
The Neuroscience of Relational Trauma, Dissociation, Social Isolation and Loneliness: A Neuropsychoanalytic Model of Psychotic Disorders
Friday, January 27, 2012
Fridays@CCP
6:30pm: Registration and Reception
7-9pm: Lecture and discussion open to invited public
Location TBA
Seminar continues for registered candidates in January, final dates TBA
Saturday: 9am-1pm, 2:30-4:30pm
Sunday, January 29: 9am-1pm
Location: TBA
Brian Koehler, PhD is a psychologist-psychoanalyst and current president of the United States Chapter of the International Society for the Psychological treatments of the Schizophrenias and other psychoses (ISPS-US) as well as executive board member of ISPS and chair of the New York Branch of ISPS-US. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the School of Social Work at New York University, as well as in the Graduate Psychology Program at City University of New York. Dr Koehler is affiliated with several other New York psychoanalytic institutes, including the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center and the National Institute for the Psychotherapies. He is an Associate Editor for the journal Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches and has published many articles on neuroscience and psychosis psychotherapy. He has a private practice in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY and in Manhattan.
About the January 27th presentation:
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T.S. Eliot from The Rock
"What we teach today is part biology and part history...but we don’t always know where one ends and the other begins”
-JT Bonner
Eisenberg (2004) cautioned our field to steer between the brainless psychiatry of the past and the mindless psychiatry of the present. This paper will attempt to integrate the “science of the day,” i.e., neuroscience, with the “science of the night,” i.e., the thoroughly personal and subjective. Cichetti (2010), from a developmental psychopathology perspective, emphasized that the abnormalities in the broad domains of genetics, neurobiology, cognition, emotion and interpersonal relationships in severe mental disorders do not exist in isolation. He encouraged researchers to strive to comprehend the interrelationships between the biological, psychological and social in these disorders. This paper will attempt to integrate research and clinical findings across the complex domains of brain, mind/self and culture. Over the past decade, psychoanalysts have accelerated their attempts to relate the third-person findings of neurobiology and cognitive, affective, and social neuroscience with the second- and first-person observations within the psychoanalytic setting. The relatively new field of neuropsychoanalysis has inspired many in the field to articulate the relevance of neuroscience to the psychoanalyst. A neuropsychoanalytic model will be presented on the psychoses after a brief review of contemporary research in genetics, epigenetics, neurobiology, social neuroscience and epidemiology. A developmental traumatology review of the effects of relational-interpersonal traumas, e.g., neglect, unavailability, social defeat and social isolation, on the brain and person will be presented. A case will then be made for the central psychobiological threat of unrelatedness and profound loneliness in the expressions of the psychoses at all levels, especially the epigenetic, neurobiological, psychosocial and phenomenological. Relational psychosis psychotherapy will be introduced, along with its theoretical and clinical foundations, as a person-specific psychosocial therapy for the psychoses.
The seminar will go into more depth on the subjects touched on in the Friday evening colloquium. Contemporary neurogenetics, epigenetics, neurobiology, social neuroscience, epidemiology, and sociocultural research on the psychoses, especially the schizophrenias, will be reviewed, as well as current psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral (CBTp) models. Such important subjects as epigenetics and the transgenerational transmission of trauma, neuroplasticity, gene-environment interactions, developmental traumatology and psychobiology, and sociocultural research will be covered. The effects of relational traumas will be examined in depth at various levels of organization including the molecular, neurobiological and social-psychological. A neuropsychoanalytic model, centered on psychobiological attachment theory and relatedness, will be presented in which research findings across the complex domains of brain, mind/self and culture will be integrated with observations arising from long-term psychotherapeutic experience with persons diagnosed with severe mental disorders. Clinical material illustrating relational psychosis psychotherapy will be presented.
Ken Corbett, PhD
Psychoanalysis and Gender
March 9-11, 2012
March 9, 2012
Fridays@CCP
“Yes: The Constitutive Necessity of Perversion”
6:30: Registration and Reception
7-9pm: Lecture and discussion
The Chicago School, 325 N Wells, Chicago
Seminar continues for registered candidates
Saturday, March 10: 9am-1pm, 2:30-4:30pm
Sunday, March 11: 9am-1pm
30 N Michigan Avenue, Chicago, 10th Floor Conference Room
Seminar continues for registered candidates:
Saturday, March 10, 2012: 9-1, 2:30-4:30
Sunday, March 11, 2012: 9am-1pm
Ken Corbett, PhD, is Assistant Professor, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He is the author of Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities.
This course on gender and psychoanalysis is designed to track the development of psychoanalytic gender theory from Freud’s original drive model to second wave theory (the move from drive to attachment and inter-subjectivity) to modern reconsiderations that further follow on feminism and queer theory (the move from identification to complexity and the determining force of norms).
Our goal is to consider how gender is embodied and constituted via fantasy, organic excitability, desire, neuron, muscle, relationality, injury, and practice. We will seek to understand how the gendered body comes to matter in a complex socio-cultural field, open to multiple points of reference, normative expectation, and idiomatic relational meanings. Gender is that which is replicated via normative regulation. But it is also open to transformation, and made distinctive through the unique iteration of personhood and the unfolding malleability of social life.
Irwin Hoffman, PhD
Clinical, Epistemological, and Moral Dimensions of “Dialectical Constructivism"
April 27, 2012
Fridays@CCP
6:30pm Registration and Reception
7-9pm Lecture and discussion
The Chicago School, 325 N Wells, Chicago
Seminar continues for registered candidates
Mondays 7-9pm
April 30; May 16, 13, 20; June 4, 2012
Dr. Hoffman's office, 25 E Washington, Ste. 1203, Chicago
Irwin Z. Hoffman, PhD is faculty and supervising analyst at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and at the National Training Program for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, lecturer in Psychiatry at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, and Adjunct Clinical Professor at the New York University Post-Graduate Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, is a corresponding editor for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and has served on the board of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He is the author of a series of publications developing his "dialectical-constructivist" point of view, including his book, Ritual and Spontaneity in the Psychoanalytic Process: A Dialectical Constructivist View” (The Analytic Press, 1998). Since the book, Dr. Hoffman has published a series of essays that take this point of view to new frontiers. Dr. Hoffman is in private practice in Chicago.
We'll begin by conveying essential elements of a perspective on the psychoanalytic process that I’ve called “dialectical constructivism.” Among the features of this viewpoint to be highlighted will be its integration of existential and more traditional psychoanalytic ideas. Experience is ambiguous and therefore fertile ground for multiple plausible interpretations and wellspring for many kinds of action. As a function of the ritual asymmetry of the analytic situation combined with the patient’s transference disposition, the analytic therapist has special power to overcome the neurotogenic influences of early bad object ties, even as they are played out within the analytic relationship, and to affirm the patient as a creative agent in that very relationship and in the world. What I am reacting against when I underscore the responsible agency of the participants are very deeply entrenched concepts that reside at the core of the psychoanalytic tradition. In particular I am thinking of concepts such as psychic determinism, free association, and evenly hovering attention, all of which serve the pursuit of an illusory “objective” truth while radically limiting the responsibility of the participants for their value-laden choices. To underscore the participants’ agency is not to deny that they are acting in ways that are heavily influenced by their personal histories, by their intrapsychic dynamics, by the interplay of the transference and the countertransference, and by their embeddedness in a sociocultural surround that shapes every moment of their encounter. The latter is often ignored in conceptualizing the nature of analytic work. A constructivist perspective challenges therapists to think critically about the socio-political context and implications of the patient’s experience. It also encourages therapists’ critical reflection on the moral implications and potentials of their influence in the analytic process.
Seminar Objectives
1. Understand the basic principles of the perspective on the analytic process that I call "dialectical constructivism" and know the basics of the antithetical perspective, that of objectivism.
2. Understand the grounds for advancement of "knowledge" in our field, the place of systematic empirical research, the place of "nonlinear constructivist learning."
3. Understand the social-political-moral implications of dialectical constructivism in the context of clinical work
Jane Gallop, PhD
Feminist and Queer Psychoanalysis
Saturday April 28, 2012 in Chicago, 9am-4pm
30 N Michigan, Chicago, 10th Floor Conference Room
Saturday, May 12, 2012 in Milwaukee 9am-4pm
161 W Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Jane Gallop, PhD is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee. She has published a number of books at the intersection of poststructuralist feminist and psychoanalytic theory, including: The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis (1982), Reading Lacan (1985), Thinking Through the Body (1987), and Anecdotal Theory (2002). She has also published a pair of hybrid memoir/theory books reflecting on her work and home life: Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment (1997) and Living with his Camera (2003). Gallop is currently doing work in Queer Theory and has just completed a book on the queer temporality of writing, how the reader and the writer are haunted by the death of the author.
Although a continuation of Gallop’s 2012 seminar, this seminar is open to all. Participants will look in detail at the work of two majorauthors who use a combination of psychoanalytic theory and queer theory: Judith Butler and Leo Bersani.
We will read two books by each of these authors, and do both close textual analysis and clinical application:
Butler, one of the most important thinkers in the Humanities today, uses Freudian theory to rethink gender.
Bersani uses Freud to think the darker side of sexuality.
Clinical Case Conference 2011-12
Ongoing throughout the academic year, 27 total hours
Mondays: dates, times and location to be furthered determined by the group leader and the group.
Nancy Burke
Clinical Case Conference
Nancy Burke, PhD, is a graduate of CCP, board member, Faculty, and Director of the Two-Year Psychotherapy Program. She is an Assistant Clinical Professor, Northwestern University Medical School. Previously, she had been a Staff Psychologist and Director of Training at the Rehabilitation Program, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, a teaching clinic serving severely mentally ill outpatient adults. While at Rehab, she designed and secured funding to establish the Satellite Clinic of the Rehabilitation Program, which serves homeless mentally ill outpatients. She received her BA in Philosophy from Carleton College, and her MA and PhD in Human Development from the University of Chicago. She maintains a private practice in adult and adolescent psychotherapy in Evanston and Chicago.
Frank Summers
Clinical Case Conference
Ongoing throughout the academic year, 2011-12, 27 total hours
Frank Summers, PhD, is a faculty member, supervisor, and advisor to the Board of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. Dr. Summers is the author of three books, a best-selling textbook, Object Relations Theories and Psychopathology: A Comprehensive Text, and two clinical monographs explicating his theory of psychoanalytic therapy, Transcending The Self: An Object Relations Model of Psychoanalytic Therapy and Self Creation: Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Art of the Possible. In addition, he has published widely in psychoanalytic journals on these topics as well as the application of psychoanalytic therapy to character disorders. Dr. Summers is a Diplomat in Clinical Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology, a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, and holds faculty appointments at the Minnesota Institute of Psychoanalysis, the Wisconsin Institute for Psychoanalysis, and the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Institute, and the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, where he is also a training analyst. A member of the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Psychology, and an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Dr. Summers has won numerous teaching awards, including the Distinguished Educator Award of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Education and the Hans Strupp Award.
Dr. Summers maintains a private practice in Chicago Illinois. His practice consists of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy, consultation, supervision, and study groups. Areas of specialization include depression, anxiety, identity confusion, relationship difficulties, problems of unfulfilled potential, and the application of psychoanalytic therapy to severe emotional disturbance.
Previous Courses
Elements of the Training Program
Theoretical and Clinical Case Seminars
The CCP curriculum is designed to provide courses and seminars in a systematic manner for completion over a period of five or more years. Because contemporary psychoanalysis, irrespective of variations in its current practice, rests solidly upon the foundation of Freud's thought, candidates are expected to take a minimum of two courses focused on Freud's seminal writings. The teaching of contemporary approaches to psychoanalysis, such as object relations, self psychological, Kleinian, developmental and attachment theories, as well as intersubjective, relational and feminist approaches, builds upon this classical foundation.
Courses are usually presented in one of two twelve-hour formats: a weekly or biweekly two-hour meeting, generally in the evening, with local faculty; or an intensive three-day weekend seminar for which instructors especially qualified in their subject matter are invited to Chicago to teach. The weekend courses usually meet for two hours on a Friday evening (7-9pm), six hours on Saturday (9am-1pm, lunch from 1-2:30pm, class continuing 2:30-4:30pm) and four hours on Sunday morning (9am-1pm). In both formats, classes usually involve discussion of assigned readings and related clinical material.
The Certificate Program requires the completion of 30 seminars, including one seminar in each of the following topics: the Opening Phase of Analysis, the Middle and Termination Phases, Transference/counter-transference, Development, and Ethics. These courses will not be offered every year, and candidates should plan accordingly. Individual tutorials can be arranged when necessary.
In addition to the 30 seminars , candidates must complete three years of case conference seminars, two or three supervised analytic cases, a final graduation project, and a personal analysis.
Candidates may begin their coursework immediately upon acceptance into the program. They must enroll in a minimum of three courses per year. Given the quality of CCP candidates, performance is evaluated on the basis of attendance only; no grades are given. CCP course offerings are determined by the Curriculum Committee, which consists of graduates, candidates and CCP Board members.
Supervised Cases and Supervision
Candidates locate analytic cases through outside or CCP referral, or through the conversion of existing psychotherapy cases. Candidates must complete a total of 820 clinical hours and may choose to work with either two or three cases. If a candidate chooses to focus on two cases, a minimum of 410 hours is required per case. If a candidate chooses to focus on three cases, a minimum of 273 hours per case is required.
Candidates are required to complete a total of 180 supervisory hours. If the candidate chooses to focus on two cases, the minimum required number of hours for each is 90. If the candidate focuses on three cases, the minimum number of required supervisory hours for each of the first two cases is 70, with 40 hours required for the third case.
Supervisors, who must be certified analysts, are chosen by the candidate. While the first supervisory experience must be in person, candidates may opt for telephone or SKYPE communication with supervisors from all over the world. It is expected that candidates have supervision with two or three different psychoanalysts.
Before beginning a supervised case, candidates are required to take one seminar on the Opening Phase of Analysis and must have completed at least one year of a personal analysis and one year of didactic work.
Prior to beginning a supervised case, candidates are asked to meet with their Progression Advisors. It is the candidate's responsibility to contact the Progression Committee/Advisor to arrange for this discussion.
Once the required hours have been met, all candidates are required to consult monthly with a supervisor or analyst colleague of their choice regarding their ongoing clinical work with each training case, unless that case is attended to in formal supervision, even when the minimum requirements for patient contact and indivdidual supervision have been completed.
Personal Analysis
Each candidate is expected to have completed a minimum of two years of personal analysis or at least two years of psychoanalytic psychotherapy prior to admission to the program. Applicants accepted into the program without a completed or ongoing analysis must make a commitment to start personal psychoanalytic work during the first year of class work. It is assumed that candidates will use their personal analyses to inform their course work and clinical practice, and that they will continue their personal analyses as they see fit over the course of their training. Once candidates are accepted into the program, their personal analyses are considered strictly their private concerns. Inquiries on the part of CCP regarding the candidate's personal analysis are based only on the need to know that the candidate has begun the work and will take seriously this personal requirement.
The Evaluation of Progression
Progression, as a process, is developmental in nature, expectably revealing a widening understanding of psychoanalytic concepts and an increasing comfort and proficiency in technique. CCP takes seriously its responsibility to evaluate and monitor a candidate's process, relying primarily on three occasions: first, at the time of admissions, to evaluate an individual's potential for success in the training program; second, when a candidate begins a supervised analysis, to determine his or her readiness for a first or additional analytic responsibility; and third, when a candidate has met all the requirements for graduation, to assess his or her readiness for certification as a psychoanalyst under the auspices of CCP.
The criteria for evaluating CCP candidates arise directly from CCP's mission to educate and to facilitate each candidate's development by broadening his or her analytic sensitivities. The evaluation process is comprehensive and, at times, necessarily subjective, specific, and personal. A candidate's personal analysis, however, is not evaluated in any way, nor is the candidate's participation in coursework. Credit is granted on the basis of attendance during each 12-hour course. Under special circumstances, a minimum of 9 hours in attendance may be allowed for credit.
Each candidate's progression is documented through a series of reports, including case opening, closing, completion of clinical and supervisory hours, and an application for the final graduation project. In addition to these reports, which document the candidate's progression through the training program, there are two additional reports required for each active supervised case. First, each supervisor completes a simple annual report with comments on the candidate's progress. Second, following the completion of 100 clinical hours and, again after 200 hours, the candidate writes a clinical report, descriptive and narrative in format. This procedure is required for each of the three supervisory cases.
It is the hope of the Progression Committee that the writing of these reports and the subsequent discussion between candidate and supervisor will further the candidate's personal and professional growth. This annual requirement reflects CCP's belief in its responsibility to participate in the educational process of every candidate, just as it wishes to provide a serious curriculum of study.
All forms and guidelines for the annual reports are available for download and printing through the Members Area of the CCP website. Directions for submission of the reports are also included.
The Integrative Graduation Project
This concluding project, generally undertaken following the completion of the other requirements, represents the integrative culmination of the candidate's training. Because it is intended to offer the candidate the opportunity to create an optimal educational experience, there is considerable flexibility as to its format. Thus, the final project may take the more traditional form of a case presentation, an article, essay, or research study; or it may be created in an alternative format. This project serves as an indication of the candidate's ability to contribute to the professional world. The final proposal and project must be reviewed by a committee of three psychoanalysts chosen by the candidate from among current and past board members, supervisors, faculty, and graduates of CCP. Upon completion and approval by the committee, candidates are invited to present their projects to the CCP Community.
Requirements for Graduation
Candidates must meet the following requirements for graduation:
- Accumulation of 36 credit hours.
- Analyses of three patients, with each analysis lasting at least 280 consecutive hours, meeting at least three times per week.
- Completion of at least 70 hours of supervision for each of the three cases.
- Completion of an integrative graduation project and its review by a three-member committee of psychoanalysts chosen by the candidate from among current or past board members, graduates, and supervisors.
Requirements for Admission to the Training Program
The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis attempts to offer psychoanalytic training to the greatest number and variety of qualified applicants. Thus, its admissions requirements are deliberately both flexible as to prior organizational recognition and experience as well as stringent in regard to clinical competence. Requirements include:
- State licensure in a mental health field, e.g., PhD, PsyD, MD, LCSW, LCPC.
- Coverage by valid and current malpractice insurance.
- Clinical experience beyond licensure in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
- Two years of personal psychoanalytic psychotherapy or one year of a personal psychoanalysis.
Once accepted, candidates who have not begun a personal analysis must do so before the beginning of their first CCP class. We encourage interested applicants who do not fully meet all of these requirements to consult with us about future participation in CCP.
Application Procedure
In addition to meeting the eligibility requirements set forth above, each applicant for admission must complete an application for admission, which you may download, print, and mail to:
- Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis
- PO Box 268017
- Chicago, IL 60626
Please include the following with your application:
- A biographical statement, including a personal history and a statement of your motivations for deciding to become a psychoanalyst.
- Your Curriculum Vitae.
- A copy of your state license.
- A copy of the cover page of your malpractice insurance and, if relevant, a detailed statement of claims made.
- A non-refundable fee of $100. After your application has been received and reviewed, you will be contacted in order to arrange personal interviews with at least three members of the CCP Admissions Committee or Board of Directors.
Admissions decisions are made by the full Board of Directors or its Executive Committee, based on recommendations by the Admissions Committee. Applicants to CCP will be contacted via mail by the Director of Administration. After acceptance, candidates should enroll for courses for the current year and submit payment prior to the start of their first course.
Applicants with previous training in psychoanalysis
Applicants with previous psychoanalytic training from other psychoanalytic institutes should follow the admissions requirements and procedures as stated above, but include, if relevant, the following:
- A request to waive specific requirements for training, with a description of the experience to be credited.
- Documentation of previous supervised cases.
- A transcript for previously completed psychoanalytic course work. This transcript must be prepared by the institution where the training was obtained, signed by the authorized personnel, and stamped with the seal of the school or notarized. Two of the applicant's three reference letters should address the applicant's previous academic and clinical work.
Part-time Enrollment
CCP prefers that candidates enroll for courses on a full-time (7 courses per year) basis, in order to provide the greatest continuity and immersion in the program. However, because some candidates are limited as to time and money, candidates may enroll part-time as needed. Part-time candidates must enroll for a minimum of three courses per year.
Tuition and Registration Fees
The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis is a nonprofit corporation organized and operated exclusively for educational and scientific purposes. Tuition for each year is determined by the projected yearly expenses for instructors, administrative services, and curriculum material divided by the number of students in attendance that year; thus, annual tuition may vary from year to year. Tuition for each course is typically between $800 and $900. In addition to tuition, each candidate is expected to pay an annual registration fee of $100. Book, journal, and materials fees are not included in tuition, although photocopied reading material may be provided to candidates enrolled in some courses.
Tuition must be paid in full before classes begin each quarter. The annual registration fee is due at the time of registration, on July 15th of each year, prior to the beginning of the first academic quarter. Failure to remit payment may result in the loss of course credit and place candidacy in jeopardy.
On rare occasions when an outstanding teacher may become unexpectedly available, previously unscheduled seminars may be added to the curriculum.
Tuition is not refundable. If a student is dropped for cause by the CCP Board, tuition for courses paid for but not yet taken may be refunded at the discretion of the Board. Courses may be added beyond the July 15th registration deadline as space permits, with payment due upon registration.
All applicants &mdash full time, part time, and applicants with previous training &mdash must complete the application form.