The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) is pleased to announce a new series of opportunities for growth, learning, and connection in the 2025 – 2026 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.

Six different 12-hour courses will be offered in the upcoming academic year. All will meet virtually, for two hours on six weekly 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) Illinois 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 Derrick Hassert, PhD, Chair of the Psychoanalytic Explorations Program at: DerrickHassertPhD@outlook.com.

(Please note:  Refunds for registrations cancelled at least 3 weeks before a course begins are issued as credit for CCP memberships, courses, and programs.  There are no refunds for registrations cancelled within 3 weeks of a course’s start date.)

 

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.

Course Title: Our Therapeutic Frames and Settings: From concept to clinical application (12 CE Credits, IL)

Instructor: Edurne Chopeitia, MA, LPC

Meeting dates (2025): 9/14, 9/21, 9/28; 10/5, 10/19, 10/26.

Meeting time: Sundays; 8:30 AM – 10:30 AM CST

Location: 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. Edurne is a clinical psychologist from Uruguay who has been living in the United States for 27 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 and offers therapy and consultation in-person and by telehealth with adults and couples, providing brief and long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy, and sex therapy, in English and Spanish.

 

Course Title: Forgiveness In Intimate Relationships and The Clinical Encounter (12 CE credits, IL)

Instructor : Michele Gaspar, MA, LCPC

Meeting Dates (2025): 10/2, 10/9, 10/16, 10/23, 10/30 and 11/6.

Meeting Time: Thursdays; 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM CST  

Location: Online via doxy.me

Course Description

The ability to forgive is considered foundational to mental health and is pertinent to psychoanalytically informed therapeutic practice. Clinicians not infrequently encounter patients who enter therapy with fractured relationships and resentments, some of which are decades old. In some cases, the inability to forgive can lead to revenge, with significant harm to both parties. Then, too, we can encounter patients who wish to be forgiven, but have been rebuffed by those they have injured. Therapeutic ruptures also require a degree of forgiveness from both participants and failure to do so can negatively impact the alliance, the treatment and serve as fodder for enactments. Forgiveness is often confused with forgetting and blanket acceptance, when neither of these address the core principles of forgiveness. Lack of forgiveness leads to guilt and isolation and can worsen mental health.

In this six-session course, we will consider the following questions: What constitutes forgiveness and are there instances when forgiveness is inappropriate? What is the connection between trauma and mourning and our inability to forgive? What happens when the desire to forgive is rebuffed? How does the modeling of forgiveness in our therapeutic work enable patients to be able to incorporate forgiveness appropriately in their own lives? What is the relationship between forgiveness and revenge? We will pursue these questions considering an object relations approach and consider the work of Shahrzad Siassi, who has written about forgiveness as a psychoanalyst. Participants will be encouraged to submit clinical material for case discussion.

Biographical Information:

Michele Gaspar is an advanced candidate at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Chicago. Michele received an MA in pastoral counseling from Loyola University/Chicago and worked in a variety of mental health settings, including community and group practices, before establishing her own private practice in 2016. She completed several units of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at two Level One Trauma hospitals in Chicago is interested in issues that broadly include spirituality and meaning making. At CCP, Michele facilitates consultation groups for participants in the Fellowship Program.

 

Course Title: Thinking for Clinicians: How Reading Philosophy Can Deepen Your Understanding of Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice (12 CE Credits, IL)

Instructor: Philip Bestrom, MA, LCSW

Meeting Dates: (2026): 1/6, 1/13, 1/20, 1/27; 2/3 & 2/10.

Meeting Time: Tuesdays; 6:00 PM –8:00 PM CST

Location: via Zoom

Description: Many contemporary psychoanalytic theoreticians have been influenced by philosophical works. Often when reading psychoanalytic articles, we come across names we recognize but have never read directly. These original philosophical works can often be unfamiliar to many clinicians who have had limited exposure to reading philosophy. In this seminar, inspired by the book of the same name by Donna Orange, I will introduce you to some of these philosophical works. In the first half of each meeting, we will focus on a specific philosopher and read passages from their work. I will also provide some overview and background of these philosophers. For this seminar we will mostly focus on existential philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Camus to name a few. Then in the second half of each meeting we will turn to the work of a psychoanalyst who has been influenced by that philosopher. This will include Peter Shabad, Robert Stolorow, and Frank Summers among others. By reading the philosopher’s original work I hope you may be inspired and gain the confidence to continue exploring their work and its connection with contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. I will also suggest secondary resources that provide more accessibility. Additionally, reading philosophy also helps us understand our own personal ideals, clinical values, and organizing principles which will be explored in this seminar.

Biographical information:

Philip Bestrom is a licensed clinical social worker and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He is an advanced candidate at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. He worked for ten years as a community psychiatric social worker and is now in private practice. He is licensed in Illinois and Michigan.

 

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

Instructor: Peter Shabad, Ph.D

Meeting dates (2026): 2/24/26; 3/3/26; 3/10/26; 3/17/26; 3/24/26; 3/31/26

Meeting Time: Tuesdays; 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM CST

Location: via Zoom

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 the 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 is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at Northwestern University Medical School. He is also on the Faculty of the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago and the Teaching and Supervisory Faculty of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. He is a also a Training Analyst at the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. He is an Associate Editor for Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 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). Dr. Shabad new book entitled “Passion, Shame, and The Freedom To Become was published by Routledge (2024). He is also the author of numerous papers and book chapters in psychoanalysis on diverse topics such as loss and mourning, shame, resentment, and regret. Dr. Shabad has a private practice in Chicago in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy.

 

Course Title: The Emotional Brain: Neuropsychoanalysis and Clinical Practice (12 CE credits, IL)

Instructor: Derrick Hassert, PhD

Meeting dates (2026): Wednesdays 3/4, 3/11, 3/18, 3/25, 4/1, 4/8

Meeting time: 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM CST

Location: via Zoom

Course Description:

This course will discuss the essential theoretical contributions that have emerged from the incorporation of neuroscientific findings into psychoanalytic thought and clinical work. After reviewing the basics of brain functioning and Freud’s early work in neurology and neuroscience, participants will discuss key concepts derived from the work of Mark Solms, Jaak Panksepp, Allan Schore, and Jeremy Holmes. We’ll also appraise Otto Kernberg’s recent reflections about the implications of these findings for certain theoretical and clinical concepts, notably those regarding the centrality of emotion in clinical work and in the formation of the concept of the self in early life.  Finally, participants will consider how debates in psychoanalysis have influenced research in the affective and cognitive neurosciences.            

Biographical Information:

Derrick Hassert, PhD is Visiting Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, Faculty at the Institute for Advanced Psychotherapy at Loyola University Chicago, and Professor of Psychology at Trinity College in Palos Heights, Illinois. Derrick received his psychoanalytic training through the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and is a Clinical Fellow of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society. Derrick received previous training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy through the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology and the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He maintains a private practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy in Matteson, Illinois and by telehealth.

 

 

 

 

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