Psychoanalytic Explorations Program
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 2021 – 2022 year. Each will meet weekly for two hours on six dates. Meetings will be held virtually, by Zoom except at noted. 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 Continuing Education (CE) credits for LCSW, LCPC, PhD, PsyD, and LMFT clinicians. The cost of each course is $500.00. If you would like more information, please contact the Chair of the Psychoanalytic Explorations program, Dr. Peter Reiner at 312.822.7277 or preiner@ccpsa.org. To register for the courses below, please complete the form and pay online here: Psychoanalytic Explorations Program Registration There are 5 topics:
Here are the details: Course Title: Psychoanalytic Engagement in the Context of Race, Ethnicity, and Social Class (12 CE credits) Instructor: Susan Rios, M.S., LCSW Complete Evaluation & Get CE Certificate Course Description: From an interpersonal psychoanalytic perspective, this course will consider the patient within the context of the larger socio-political world. We will examine attitudes, values, and prejudices we all bring into the intersubjective space of therapy, while encouraging an understanding of our patients through their social locations of class, race, and ethnicity. By accepting our unwitting participation in societal and clinical processes, as psychoanalytic clinicians we can develop a deeper awareness of our own socio-cultural identities, and a better understanding of our unconscious complicity in the “othering” that oftentimes occurs within our own treatments. We will review psychoanalytic writings and other published work on race and ethnicity. Racialized dynamics such as cultural/ethnic transference and countertransference, disavowed or dissociated racial/ethnic self-states, and the collusion or accommodating of internalized oppressive identifications will be considered in our work within cross culture/color, and within white, dyads. The mixed-race person who may have conflicting constructions of self will also be addressed. We will explore racialized enactments and enactments of elitism, by using the psychoanalytic perspective that working with a problem requires one to work from within the problem. We will address identification with the oppressor and the attendant guilt that can often foreclose further analytic exploration, as well as how guilt avoidance may hamper our inquiry and curiosity at the cost of true affective engagement. Those choosing to take this course should come with a desire to use a cultural lens as a means of better understanding what we co-create with our patients as intersubjective beings engaged in the process of effecting change. In doing so, participating clinicians can also contribute to the process of deconstructing oppressive systems within the treatment relationship and beyond. Biographical Information: Susan Rios, M.S., LCSW is Visiting Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CPP) and a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She received her M.S. from Columbia University, and her post-graduate training at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis (MIP). She is a training and supervising analyst, and the candidate group-process facilitator at MIP’s One Year Program: Psychoanalysis and the Sociopolitical World. She is past consultant to the MIP Committee on Race and Ethnicity (CORE), and periodic co-leader and active member-participant in CORE’s biweekly Dialogues meetings since its inception in June 2020. Dialogues, a unique ongoing and open process group, was designed by CORE to provide member psychoanalysts the opportunity and experience of having difficult cross-race conversations on individual and systemic racism in an effort to facilitate institutional change. In her practice, Susan provides individual, couples, and group psychotherapy/psychoanalysis, clinical supervision and organizational consultation. Additionally, she offers individual and group psychotherapy and supervision with a specific focus on biracial/mixed-race dynamics. ________________________________________ Course Title: Child Psychotherapy: A Relational and Developmental Perspective (12 CE credits) 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 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. ________________________________________ Course Title: Uncoupling: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Working with Divorcing Individuals (12 CE Credits) 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, PhD 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. ________________________________________ Course Title: Attachment Theory Applied: Working with the Enacted in Psychotherapy (12 CE credits) 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. These patterns derive, to a large degree, from the person's significant attachment experiences and resulting attachment styles. Enactments occur at the crossroads between the patient’s and the therapist’s unconscious minds, 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 service of the treatment, they can become crucial fulcrums of change. This seminar will focus on helping participants to recognize enactments as they occur, to understand their meanings, and to learn how to address them in treatment. Particular attention will be given to the therapist’s own role in the enactment and how to use judicious self-disclosure to address and thus to begin to change these patterns. The class will read and discuss articles by Bowlby Jacobs, Black, Chused, Bromberg, and Pagano, among others. The instructor will share case material, and participants will also have opportunities to discuss their own relevant clinical work. Biographical Information: David Daskovsky, PhD is Visiting Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and Assistant Professor in the Division of Psychology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. He earned his PhD in clinical psychology from Northwestern University's School of Medicine in 1988. From 1989 to 1998, he was staff psychologist at NMH’s Extended Partial Hospitalization Program, which offered intensive, long term treatment for adults with severe mental illnesses. In 1998, Dr. Daskovsky become Director of Psycho-Social Rehabilitation at Trilogy, Inc., and from 2003 to 2009 he served as that agency’s Clinical Director. While at Trilogy, he 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 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. ________________________________________ Course Title: Arranging the Field for Playing and Dreaming (12 CE credits) Course Description: Freud’s characterization of dreams as the “royal road to the unconscious” and Winnicott’s dictum “the analyst’s first task is to help the patient to be able to play” -- Why have these held up so robustly over time? Despite many subsequent variations, these foundational concepts have remained at the forefront of therapeutic work with the unconscious because they bear such important, unique fruits. This clinically-based seminar will explore various theories of play and of dreaming as well as clinical tactics to prepare the psychoanalytic field for the work of play or play of work. These theories and tactics inform and enhance psychotherapeutic work associated with myriad theoretical orientations, including existential, psychodynamic, and psychoanalytic. We will begin by discussing elements of the frame and their function, with an added focus on the method of free association and the preparation of the patient for therapeutic work. Next, we’ll consider a selection of classic readings (e.g., Freud, Winnicott) and more contemporary readings (e.g., Parsons) that address the purpose and function of play in psychotherapy. We’ll also explore readings about working with dreams (e.g., Freud, Ogden). Participants will have opportunities to share their own experiences of working with patients’ dreams and of encountering obstacles to doing so. Together, we’ll collaboratively explore our patients’ dreams or dream fragments, as well. Biographical Information: Jeremy Bloomfield, PsyD is Visiting Faculty at The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. Dr. Bloomfield has served as training director at Trilogy, Inc. and as a supervisor in Northwestern University’s psychoanalytically oriented counseling program. Dr. Bloomfield spent the early part of his career at Northwestern University as a pre-doctoral fellow, researching psychotherapy: its efficacy, effectiveness, and efficiency. He presented his research internationally at the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR). This experience enhanced his appreciation of the gap between research and practice and was one of the sparks that led to his study of psychoanalysis. He was an invited discussant for a live demonstration of clinical supervision at a recent APA Division 39 conference. Dr. Bloomfield is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Evanston, Illinois who treats adults individually, leads consultation groups, and provides individual consultation | To Register:Please register using the form below: 
Payment:If space is still available, you can register and pay online easily (link above). |