The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) is pleased to announce a new series of opportunities for growth and learning in the 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 2020 – 2021 year.  Each will meet for two hours on six dates.  Meetings will be held virtually, by Zoom, unless public health conditions improve significantly.  Class size is highly limited in order to facilitate each individual’s learning and participation and to allow instructors to best respond to participants’ needs and interests.  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 Continuing Education (CE) credits for LCSW, LCPC, Clinical Psychologist (PhD, PsyD), and LMFT licenses. The cost of each 12-hour course is $500.00.

To register for the courses below, please complete the form and pay online here:

Psychoanalytic Explorations Program Registration

These are the five topics:

• Enhanced Couple Therapy:  Integrating the Psychodynamic
• Child Psychotherapy:  A Relational and Developmental Perspective 
• Attachment Theory Applied:  Working with the Evoked and the Enacted
• Uncoupling:  Psychoanalytic Approaches to Working with Divorcing Individuals
• Applied Relational Theory:  Key Tenets and Misunderstandings

Here are the details:

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

Instructor:  Peter Reiner, PhD, LMFT

Meeting dates (2020):  Nov. 2, Nov. 9, Nov. 16, Nov. 30, Dec. 7, Dec, 14.

Meeting time: Mondays, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Location:  Virtual (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 Vice-President of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) and Faculty at The Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.  He is a psychoanalyst with separate licenses 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:  Child Psychotherapy:  A Relational and Developmental Perspective (12 CE credits)

Instructor:  Diane Selinger, PhD

Meeting dates (2020):  Nov. 7, Nov. 14, Nov. 21, Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Dec. 19.

Meeting time:  Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Location:  Virtual (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; and 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 Visiting 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 programs. She is faculty at Profectum Academy and was faculty at its DIR Institute predecessor. Diane’s teaching, presentations, webcasts, and publications have related to therapy with children and their parents.  They have spanned diverse topics, including autism and gender.

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Course Title:  Attachment Theory Applied:  Working with the Evoked and the Enacted (12 CE credits).  

Instructor:  David Daskovsky, PhD

Meeting dates (2021):  Jan. 19, Jan. 26, Feb. 2, Feb. 9, Feb. 16, Feb. 23

Meeting time: Tuesdays, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Location:  Virtually (Zoom); or 1560 Sherman Avenue, Evanston (if conditions permit)

Course Description:

Enactments, from an interpersonal psychoanalytic perspective, are verbal or behavioral scenarios that repeat central, often problematic, patterns in the patient’s relational world. Enactments occur at the crossroads between the patient’s and the therapist’s unconscious’ and so are, inevitably, co-creations of the two parties. When enactments are unrecognized and unaddressed, they can doom the treatment relationship to repeating the very dilemmas that the patient has come to treatment to remedy. On the other hand, when the therapist learns to recognize enactments as they develop and knows how to utilize these in the service of the treatment, they can become crucial fulcrums of change.

This course will focus on helping participants recognize enactments as they occur, to understand their meanings, and to learn how to address them clinically. Special focus will be on the therapist’s own role in enactments and how to use judicious self-disclosure to address and to begin to change these patterns.  Readings by Mitchell, Aron, Wallin, and Ginot, among others, will be used as a basis for discussion.  Dr. Daskovsky will share case material; and participants will be encouraged to bring their own clinical examples, as well.  

Biographical Information:

David Daskovsky, PhD is Visiting Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) and Assistant Professor in the Division of Psychology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.  He earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Northwestern University’s School of Medicine in 1988. From 1989 to 1998, he was a staff psychologist at NMH’s Extended Partial Hospitalization Program, which offered intensive, long term treatment for adults with severe mental illnesses.

In 1998, he became Director of Psycho-Social Rehabilitation at Trilogy, Inc., and from 2003 to 2009 he served as that agency’s Clinical Director. While at Trilogy, Dr. Daskovsky was instrumental in the development of a highly respected practicum training program and has long been committed to teaching and training mental health professionals about the treatment of mental illness in community settings. 

From 2009 until 2019, he was on staff at Yellowbrick, where he served as Senior Psychologist and Director of Training. Dr. Daskovsky has taught and presented widely on issues related to the treatment of serious mental illness, attachment and psychotherapy, and therapist transparency in psychodynamic treatment.

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Course Title:  Uncoupling:  Psychoanalytic Approaches to Working with Divorcing Individuals (12 CE Credits)

Instructor:  Ronald Rosenthal, PhD

 Meeting dates (2021):  Feb. 1, Feb. 8, Feb. 15, Feb. 22, March 1, March 8

Meeting time:  Mondays:  5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. 

Location:  Virtually (Zoom); or 405 N. Wabash Ave., Chicago (if conditions permit)

Course Description:

As psychotherapists we frequently encounter individuals struggling with questions of whether to divorce, when to divorce, and how to survive divorce. While helping them cope with the grief and mourning that often accompany the death of a marriage, the therapist is often tasked with providing practical guidance as well.

Divorce represents a distinct loss, the death of “We,” the entity called marriage. Approaching divorce as a problem of mourning provides a framework to help individuals to separate from their spouses and define new senses of self. Absent internal psychological work, people may find themselves harboring feelings of abandonment, resentment, hatred, and despair. They may experience a degree of disillusionment that can impede the formation of new relationships.

In this course, we will discuss some factors that lead to the disruption of the marriage. These may include:  failures of idealizations formed early in the relationship, attachment to disappointments and traumas, progressive disillusionment, and other complex interpersonal issues. The dynamics behind these problems usually are tied to interlocking transferences from previous relationships, especially from families of origin. Enactments of dysfunctional family dynamics often grow in intensity as the marital bond disintegrates; these may occur before, during, or after the divorce itself. Awareness of these dynamics can help the therapist support the patient’s movement through the phases of mourning while simultaneously dealing with legal, financial and logistical issues.

Divorcing can be a tremendous strain on emotional as well as financial resources. Families with children have the additional burden of managing the feelings of their kids while trying to make practical plans for dividing up parenting responsibilities. This course will also address how to help children, as well as parents, with the loss of an intact family and with the psychological hazards that often ensue.

Biographical Information:

Ronald Rosenthal, Ph.D. is Visiting Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) and a clinical psychologist in private practice in Chicago and in Vernon Hills. He earned his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University and came to Chicago to complete a NIMH postdoctoral fellowship with the University of Chicago, Michael Reese Hospital, and the Illinois State Psychiatric Hospital.  He was the Director of Adolescent Research at the Illinois State Psychiatric Hospital from 1980 - 1992 where he co-led an ongoing seminar in diagnostic assessment of adolescents. He has taught at Roosevelt University, the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and the University of Tennessee, Nashville. His research publications have addressed attention deficit disorders, adolescent delinquency, and psychiatric hospital treatment.  He is past Treasurer of the Chicago Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology. Dr. Rosenthal has presented at APA Division 39, as well as at meetings of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry.  He currently mentors in CCP’s Psychoanalytic Fellowship Program.

In addition to his clinical practice, Dr. Rosenthal participates as a Divorce Coach and a Child Specialist in the practice of Collaborative Divorce, as well as assisting in Mediation processes. He was Vice-President for Mental Health of the Collaborative Law Institute of Illinois. He has presented frequently to that organization and has also participated as Faculty in Mediation Training courses run by the American Academy of Matrimonial Law.

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Course Title:  Applied Relational Theory:  Key Tenets and Misunderstandings (12 CE credits).

  Instructor:  Steven Vogelstein, M.A., LCSW

Meeting dates (2021):  April 10, April 17, April 24, May 1, May 8, May 15

Meeting time: Saturdays, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon

Location:  Virtually (Zoom); or 540 Frontage Road, Northfield (if conditions permit)

Course Description:

This clinically-based course will begin with an exploration of the evolution of Relational Theory within psychoanalysis.  Particular emphasis will be given to the influence of the infant research of the 1970’s and 80’s, the emergence of a new “psychoanalytic baby,” and post-modernism.

In this course, we will elucidate the clinical implications of Relational Theory and explore our clinical assumptions.  We will consider fundamental theoretical and clinical issues and questions, including the following:

- Reconceptualizing transference and counter-transference
- Where is the “therapeutic action”?
- What about technique(s) and therapeutic stances?
- Developmental Theory and the Developmental “Tilt”
- Dissociation, Multiplicity, and Trauma
- Culture, Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the “Normative Unconscious” (Layton)

Attention will also be devoted to other applications of Relational Theory that are of particular interest to course participants.  A list of (optional) related readings will be provided.

Biographical Information:

Steven Vogelstein M.A., LCSW is Visiting Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP), where he is an advanced candidate, has taught in the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy program, and was Chair of the Progression Committee.  Steven is faculty at the Institute for Clinical Social Work where he teaches in the doctoral program.  In addition, he has been Lecturer at the Loyola University School of Social Work.