The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) is pleased to announce a new series of opportunities for growth and learning in the 2022 – 2023 Psychoanalytic Explorations program.

Each of the Psychoanalytic Explorations courses is open to all and allows participants to learn from seasoned psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically-oriented practitioners who have selected topics based on their particular interests and expertise.

Five different 12-hour courses will be offered in the upcoming academic year.  Each will meet virtually, via Zoom, weekly for two hours on six dates.  Class size is highly limited in order to facilitate each individual’s learning and participation.  There is a separate registration process for each class; you may register for one or more classes, depending on your own interests and needs.

Twelve (12) CE credits are available for each course. All CCP programs and course offerings qualify for (Illinois) Continuing Education (CE) credits for LCSW, LCPC, PhD, PsyD, and LMFT licensed clinicians.  The cost of each course is $500.00.

If you would like more information, please contact Dr. Peter Reiner, Chair of the Psychoanalytic Explorations program, at 312.822.7277 or preiner@ccpsa.org.

To register for one or more courses, please use the form at this link: 

Psychoanalytic Explorations Program Registration

These are the five topics:

• Child Psychotherapy:  A Relational and Developmental Perspective 
• Narcissistic Phenomena in Clinical Practice
• Trauma, Shame and Mourning
• Enhanced Couple Therapy:  Integrating the Psychodynamic
• Our Therapeutic Frames:  Reconsidering What’s Elemental
  
  

Here are the details:

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Course Title:  Child Psychotherapy:  A Relational and Developmental Perspective (12 CE credits,IL)

Instructor:  Diane Selinger, PhD
Meeting dates (2022):  November 5, 12, 19; December 3, 10, 17

Meeting time:  Saturdays, 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. (CST), via Zoom 

Course Description:

This clinically-based course will provide an integrative approach to psychoanalytically-informed child therapy. Participants will explore the key processes of affect regulation and sensory integration, as well as the foundational aspects of language development. These topics will be integrated with discussions of the therapist’s internal experience and the meanings of the child’s play.

This course will help participants work clinically with multiple foci:  regulation, engagement, reciprocal interaction, as well as conceptualizing and facilitating representational and symbolic play.  Two key issues will be discussed throughout the course, namely 1) How play facilitates communication and growth; and 2) How to form relationships with parents and include them in treatment.

Many clinical examples will be provided for participants’ consideration; class members are welcome to share their own clinical material as well.  Selected relevant readings will also be considered.

Biographical Information:

Diane Selinger, PhD is Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP).  She is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice who works with children, adolescents, and adults. She completed her psychoanalytic training at the National Training Program of the National Institute of the Psychotherapies.

Dr. Selinger is a mental health consultant at Beth Osten and Associates, a multidisciplinary pediatric clinic, and at Soaring Eagle Academy, a DIR® (Developmental, Individual-differences, Relationship-based) school for children with neurodevelopment disorders, and was instrumental in integrating a mental health component into both. She is faculty at Profectum Academy and was faculty at its DIR Institute predecessor. Diane’s teaching, presentations, webcasts, and publications have centered on therapy with children and their parents.  They have spanned diverse topics, including autism and gender.

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Course Title:  Narcissistic Phenomena in Clinical Practice (12 CE Credits, IL)

Instructor:  Natalia Yangarber, PhD 

Meeting dates (2023):  January 22, 29; February 5, 12, 19, 26

Meeting time:  Sundays, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. (CST), via Zoom

Course Description:

This course will examine different theoretical perspectives on both the etiology and the treatment of narcissism.  We will explore developmental themes that are common in the experiences of individuals suffering from narcissistic disturbances.  Consideration will be given to the impact of various key factors, including intergenerational transmission of trauma and culturally-based expectations, on the phenomena of narcissism.

Clinical examples, including those offered by course participants, will be used frequently to illustrate and to address typical clinical issues in work with patients who fit this description as well as with patients struggling to disentangle themselves from toxic narcissistic dynamics.

Biographical Information:

Natalia Yangarber, PhD is Faculty and a Board Member at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP).  She is a clinical psychologist who completed psychoanalytic training at CCP.   Natalia was Associate Professor of Psychology at Wheaton College for 16 years, Adjunct Professor at Adler University, and Staff Psychologist at Yellowbrick, a comprehensive psychiatric treatment center in Evanston, Illinois.

Dr. Yangarber’s theoretical and clinical interests include narcissism, culture, immigration, spirituality, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma.  Natalia maintains a private practice of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and supervision in Evanston, Illinois, and speaks English and Russian..

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Course Title:   Trauma, Shame and Mourning (12 CE credits)

Instructor:  Peter Shabad, PhD

Meeting dates (2023):  February 21, 28; March 7, 14, 21, 28                        

Meeting time: Tuesdays, 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. (CST), via Zoom

Course Description:

In this course we will explore how traumatic and chronically disillusioning experiences have profoundly inhibiting effects on the passion necessary to grow and change throughout life.  We will devote special attention to how human beings transform their traumatic experiences outside of their control into shameful failures, in which they “blame the victim” in themselves for being a victim.  After describing how the “intimate creation” of one’s unique constellation of symptoms is a means of both communicating and memorializing such traumatic experiences, we will examine how shame leads to character passivity and interrelated dynamics such as self-pity, resentment, entitlement, envy, perverse spite, and regret. 

In the clinical section of this course, we will explore how the patient’s passivity and ambivalence towards therapeutic change is closely intertwined with his/her chronic struggle between the freedom to desire and obeying a tyranny of shoulds.  In this regard, we will also highlight important clinical tensions between developmental determinism and freedom of will, and corresponding countertransference tensions of love versus respect in the analyst’s attitude toward the patient. 

Finally, we will discuss how the mourning process of accepting and reintegrating one’s shamed desires paradoxically facilitates the generosity of relinquishing the necessity that those desires be fulfilled. In addition to analytic readings, we will also read Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych.

Biographical Information:

Peter Shabad, PhD is Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Feinberg School of Medicine -- Northwestern University.  He is also Faculty of the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago.

Dr. Shabad is co-editor of The Problem of Loss and Mourning: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (IUP,1989) and is the author of Despair and the Return of Hope:  Echoes of Mourning in Psychotherapy (Aronson, 2001). He is working on a new book entitled Seizing the Vital Moment: Passion, Shame, and Self-Realization to be published by Routledge.  He is the author of numerous papers and book chapters in psychoanalysis on diverse topics such as loss and mourning, shame, resentment, and regret.  Dr. Shabad maintains a private practice in Chicago of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy.

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Course Title:  Enhanced Couple Therapy:  Integrating the Psychodynamic (12 CE credits, IL)

Instructor:  Peter Reiner, PhD, LMFT

Meeting dates (2023):  March 1, 8, 15, 29; April 5, 12 

Meeting time: Wednesdays, 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m., via Zoom

Course Description:

This clinically-based course will provide a review of key concepts and techniques of couple therapy, and will enhance participants’ theoretical and clinical skills through the introduction and application of key psychoanalytic contributions.  Drawn from the classical, object relations, and self-psychology models among others, these psychoanalytic understandings will be used to inform a broad array of clinical work with couples, ranging from short-term, present-oriented approaches to long-term, in-depth, historically-oriented couple therapy.   

Videotapes of consultation interviews will be used extensively to illustrate important clinical moments, interventional choice points, and a range of associated treatment techniques.  This clinical material will also be viewed through the lenses provided by selected classic psychodynamic papers and book chapters, which will facilitate the integration of systemic and psychodynamic theories, clinical formulation, and therapeutic technique.

Biographical Information:

Peter Reiner, PhD, LMFT is Faculty, a Board Member, and was Vice President of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP); and Faculty at The Feinberg School of Medicine -- Northwestern University.  He is a psychoanalyst who is licensed as a clinical psychologist and a marriage and family therapist. 

Peter was Coordinator of Clinical Training at the Family Institute of Chicago and Secretary of the Chicago Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology.  He is an award-winning teacher who has led more than 50 graduate and post-graduate classes or seminars in systemically-oriented couple and family psychotherapy and psychodynamically-oriented psychotherapy.  Dr. Reiner has written at length about the training and supervision of psychodynamically-oriented couple and family therapists, including “Training psychodynamic family therapists,” (in Lebow, Chambers, & Breunlin [Eds.] Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy, 2017) and “Systemic psychodynamic supervision,” (in Todd & Storm [Eds.], The Complete Systemic Supervisor:  Context, Philosophy, and Pragmatics [2nd ed.], 2014). 

Peter provides consultation to other mental health professionals and maintains a private practice in Chicago of psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy with individuals, couples, and families.

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Course Title:  Our Therapeutic Frames:  Reconsidering What’s Elemental (12 CE Credits, IL)

Instructor:  Edurne Chopeitia MA, LPC

Meeting dates (2023):  April 1, 8, 15, 22, 29; May 6

Meeting time:  Saturdays, 8:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. (CST), via Zoom

Course Description:

This interactive course will focus on the theories and clinical applications of the frame—including both internal and external aspects--that strongly influence our psychotherapeutic work.  These aspects will be considered through the lenses provided by Jose Bleger, an Argentinian psychoanalyst, who wrote extensively about their importance in shaping psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Until recently, physical realities and elements--such as bodies, offices, and furniture--have been foundational in the conceptualization of the psychoanalytic situation.  The shift to teletherapies, however, has introduced virtual elements and has prompted an examination of basic assumptions about what is, indeed, foundational.  Clinical vignettes—including those offered by course participants--will be used throughout to illuminate the unconscious assumptions and maps of meaning that impact therapist-client dyads, and to illustrate what may occur when these become, or are made, explicit.

Biographical Information:

Edurne Chopeitia, MA, LPC is Visiting Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP).  Edurne is a clinical psychologist from Uruguay who has been living in the United States for 25 years and is licensed as clinical mental health counselor.  She is an advanced candidate in the Adult Psychoanalytic Program at the Emory University Psychoanalytic Institute.

Edurne was Adjunct Faculty at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay (UCUDAL) where she taught Psychodynamic Assessment and Psychodiagnosis, Psychodynamic Organizational Psychology, and Psychoanalytic Psychopathology.  She maintains a private practice in Georgia with adults and couples, providing brief and long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy, and sex therapy, in English and Spanish.