Advanced Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Practicum

Catalog description

Fourth year students in the Psychodynamic Track are placed in the Advanced Psychodynamic Lab. The prerequisites for this lab are that the student must have taken Psychoanalytic Theory and either Interpersonal Therapy, Self Psychology, or Object Relations, and taken the Individual Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Lab in the third year. Students in the Advanced Lab meet as a group of five or six once weekly for one hour and fifty minutes on site, as well as going to supervision with a clinical adjunct supervisor for an hour, usually off site in that supervisor's private practice office. The Advanced Psychodynamic Lab offers the students an experience of deepening what they have gained in the third year about their abilities to trust their instincts for their use of transference/countertransference; exploring anger, fear, love and other strong emotions that arise as a function of the relationship with the patient. Students expand on the ability to know what questions to ask by investigating their implicit negative or positive expectations of the answers. The cohesiveness that grows over the course of the year in these labs support great emotional and intellectual growth for all, particularly as the members go through application to internships, mock internship case presentations, and finally termination issues with their patients as the students prepare to leave the academic portion of their degree requirements. A particularly distinctive feature of the Advanced Lab is the unique opportunity to attend small group discussions with contemporary leaders in the field in their off site offices. Some of our recent discussants have included Mark Blechner, Ph.D., author of Sex Changes: Transformations in Society and Psychoanalysis, Edgar Levenson, M.D. author of The Purloined Self, and Darlene Ehrenberg, Ph. D, author of The Intimate Edge. Prerequisite(s): PSC 8492 . Previously…