Course Title: Object Relations Theories (12 CE Credits, IL)
Instructor: Frank Summers Ph.D., ABPP
Meeting Dates (2025): 9/8, 9/15, 9/22, 9/29, 10/6, 10/13
Meeting Time: Mondays; 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM CST
Location: Via Zoom
This course is designed as a 12-hour introduction to the nature of object relations theories. Each class will focus on a different theorist or perspective. Fairbairn, the Kleinian School, Kernberg, Winnicott, self psychology, and the relational perspective will all be covered. The purpose is to familiarize the student with the most important concepts of each theory and the clinical implications that may be derived from them. The emphasis will be on the unique contribution of each theory and its technical approach. It is expected that the students will gain an appreciation for the unique contribution of each theory and, most importantly, the clinical strategy that follows from each way of thinking about clinical material and the therapeutic process. A focus will be on comparing the theories and the variety of clinical strategies that issue from each. Nonetheless, the last class will be devoted to a way of integrating the theories to form an object relations paradigm. In this way, it is hoped that the students will gain an understanding of how object relations theories are different and still share a commonality.
Biographical Information:
Dr. Frank Summers is Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, a Diplomat in Clinical Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology, Fellow of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association, and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. Dr. Summers is the author of four books, including The Psychoanalytic Vision: The Experiencing Subject, Transcendence, and the Therapeutic Process, winner of the Gradiva Award for the best psychoanalytic book of 2013. His other three books include 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.