Preliminary Year
In addition to a year-long Case Seminar on Clinical Practice, which meets on Tuesdays from 7:00pm to 9:00pm, Preliminary Year candidates attend 2 intensive seminars: Psychopathology 1 & 2 (two weekends) and Psychodiagnosis 1 & 2 (two weekends).
Weekly Case Seminar
Case Seminar on Clinical Practice I
This introductory clinical case seminar helps prepare candidates to begin work as a psychoanalytically informed psychotherapist. Participants will be introduced to a range of clinical issues and common themes in initial sessions, focusing on learning how to think, act, and process material psychoanalytically. Case material from instructor and the students will be discussed. We will utilize the group process to attentively listen to initial experiences with patients, exploring issues of identity and difference, and the multi-layered factors essential to establishing and working within an analytic relationship.
Case Seminar on Clinical Practice II
The second trimester will continue to facilitate your early transformation into a psychoanalyst. Through readings, case presentations and group participation, we will internalize that how we are as ever-growing individuals and professionals deeply informs our work as psychoanalysts. Each analyst’s use of self, in coparticipation with the patient, is the ultimate variable. We will explore and hold in consideration transference and countertransference, and how exposure to trauma complexly affects ways of being in the world. We will consider that who you are, how you understand, how you tolerate not knowing, and what you experience unconsciously all determines the work with your patients. Topically, we will consider preconceptions regarding substance abuse, sexuality and gender orientation, ethnicity and culture; along with other factors.
Case Seminar on Clinical Practice II
The third trimester will explore how and when we decide to remain silent, interpret or self disclose and why. Through readings, group discussions, case examples and a CD of a senior analyst’s session, we will examine different conceptions of therapeutic action, or what is thought to cause growth and change in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. As we study how other analysts answer these questions, you will become more comfortable considering, identifying and incorporating the types of therapeutic actions that you may want to utilize in your work. As always, how your peers think about and work with their patients will affect your own development, so class participation is encouraged.
Weekend Seminars
Psychoanalytic Diagnosis I & II
Psychoanalytic Diagnosis I will introduce students to the basics of the DSM V diagnostic codes as well as conducting thorough mental status and biopsychosocial examinations for use in clinical work. Psychoanalytic Diagnosis II will provide an overview of the psychoanalytic understanding of personality structure, including an introduction to psychic defenses. Both courses are designed to help students cultivate the ability to think critically and creatively about diagnosis. The goal is to develop the capacity to work from a diagnostic standpoint that is human, flexible, empathic, relational and non-judgmental. The emphasis is on the “real” person that one meets in the consulting room in all of their complexity.
Psychopathology I & II
This course encourages critical thinking about the historical and current literature regarding major issues in psychopathology, including what constitutes it, the advantages and disadvantages of different classification systems, the strengths and weaknesses of particular theoretical orientations, and the role of culture, ethnicity,
gender, sexual orientation and social class in the ways we interpret behavior as psychopathological. Case studies and videos will be used to give students a “feel” for the ways disorders present in the consulting room.
Other Requirements:
Child Abuse Detection & Reporting
This course is on the identification and reporting of suspected child abuse and maltreatment. Most candidates will opt to take this class online.
Please note: Students must have completed the Child Abuse Detection & Reporting course prior to seeing patients in the NIP Treatment Center.
Curriculum Requirements Following the Preliminary Year
Toward the end of the preliminary year, candidates who wish to do so may apply for acceptance and integration into NIP's 4 year Adult Training Program in Psychoanalysis & Comprehensive Psychotherapy. Acceptance into this program is not guaranteed. LQP candidates who have been admitted into the Adult Program are expected to fulfill the same academic and clinical requirements as all other Adult Program candidates. In addition, they must also attend two weekend-long seminars and adhere to slightly different supervisory requirements due to differences in New York state's licensing requirements for psychoanalysis. The seminars may be taken during any year of training:
Psychoanalytic Ethics
Psychoanalytic Research
Ethics
The purpose of this course is to provide candidates with a forum for the consideration of ethical issues in psychoanalytic practice. Emphasis will dually be on cultivating alertness to ethical matters and on the unique capacity of the psychoanalyst to consider and illuminate ethical ambiguities and dilemmas. It is hoped that candidates will have an opportunity to explore ethical matters openly with each other and with the instructor. Participants are encouraged to bring up ethical issues encountered in their own work for the purpose of group consultation in the context of the class.
Research
This course will place psychoanalysis within a research context. The course will introduce candidates to research studies that investigate the effectiveness and efficacy of psychoanalytic treatments. The course will address ethical issues that affect research with clients who are involved in psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy. It will investigate outcome studies that look at the naturalistic settings within which dynamic psychotherapy has been investigated as well as the use of randomized controlled clinical trials of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Attention will be paid to process investigations that address central constructs in psychotherapy including transference, borderline personality disorder and developmental research research between mother and infant. Specific attention will be paid to single subject design as well as quantitative methodologies.