Curriculum

The 2024-2025 sequence of courses follow:

This introductory course is part of the PIP certificate program but is open to anyone interested in psychotherapy integration. Covering psychotherapy integration from a relational psychodynamic perspective, we review relevant history, basic concepts, and diverse approaches like common factors and assimilative integration. Ideas are clarified in relation to therapeutic action--the ways people change in therapy--and helps students develop a coherent, disciplined integrative practice. Note that the course does not teach specific techniques, but clinical examples are included along with works by leading psychoanalytic integrationists such as Bresler, Frank, Gold, Safran, Stricker, and Wachtel.

This course focuses on incorporating the body into psychoanalytic work.  The course includes the theory and scientific underpinnings of somatic approaches but emphasizes the practical application of somatic modalities.  Students learn observational skills (i.e., what physical tendencies of the client to track), which physical tendencies to bring to the client’s attention and how to do so, and how to get psychological or emotional meaning from bodily sensations and physical tendencies.  The module also explores how mindfulness is used as an access route to the emotions, thoughts, images, and memories that are associated with the narrative, but usually outside the ambit of the client’s awareness (e.g., unconscious beliefs, motivations, expectations/assumptions, and relational patterns).  Finally, the course will address how to use somatic modalities to effectuate change.

  • Cognitive-behavior therapy for Analytic Therapists
    Instructor: Jill Bresler, PhD
    8 sessions: Jan. 27, Feb. 3, 10, 17, Mar. 3, 10, 17, 24 (Monday 1:00-2:50)

This course provides an understanding of the major CBT models and their relationship to psychoanalytic treatment, teaches specific CBT interventions, and prepares clinicians to use CBT techniques skillfully in psychodynamic work. We devote the majority of our time to learning how to employ commonly used cognitive and behavioral techniques. The course focuses on the treatment of anxiety phenomena, including generalized anxiety, phobias, panic disorder and obsessional thinking and obsessive rumination. Throughout, emphasis is on developing an ability to determine when and how CBT skills may be helpfully integrated into practice, and to evaluate the effects of these interventions. Readings will include work by J. Beck; Persons; Hayes, Strosahl and Wilson; Segal, Williams and Teasdale, and Wallin.

  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Analytic Therapists
    Instructor: Lisa Lyons, Ph.D.
    8 sessions: Apr. 7, 21, 28, May 5, 12, 19, Jun. 2, 9 (Monday 1:00-2:50)

This course will introduce students to theoretical and clinical elements of DBT. We will focus on learning to use DBT and on how to integrate it into psychodynamic and psychoanalytic treatment. We will also explore overlaps between DBT and Relational thinking as well as ways that these two quite different approaches to clinical work complement each other.

  • Spring: Theory and Practice of Relational Psychotherapy Integration II
    Instructor: Kenneth Frank, PhD
    3 sessions: June 16, 23, 30 (Monday, 1:00-2:50)

This course is offered to students who have studied two or more modalities. The course provides an opportunity to consider more advanced practical and theoretical considerations that arise from integrative practice.

Theory and Practice of Relational Psychotherapy Integration I and II are required courses in order to receive the PIP certificate.

  • Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS)
    Nancy Bravman, LCSW
    Not currently offered

This course will introduce Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), a model that offers psychoanalytically-oriented clinicians an unique perspective and set of interventions that can complement psychoanalytic work and expand our treatment options.

Like other modalities that work with self-states, ego-states and parts, IFS emphasizes the normal multiplicity of the mind. It facilitates a deepening connection between present-day difficulties and the historical injuries that prompt parts (self-states) to develop. IFS can be helpful for enhancing affect regulation, decreasing shame and healing attachment injuries.

  • Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy: Transformance in Action (AEDP)
    Instructor: Martina Verba, LCSW, DSW
    Not currently offered

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) is a therapeutic approach that works both to alleviate patient suffering, and to activate the processes of positive transformation and flourishing. The AEDP therapist invites the patient into experientially processing to completion previously warded-off affective experience This emotional processing is followed by rounds of reflection and integration of the experience of change. In the context of the relationship with an affirming and authentically engaged therapist, these iterations of processing and reflecting offer the patient a corrective emotional experience and serve to re-organize internalized working attachment models. In this 8-week course, we will explore AEDP’s principles, theory, and clinical interventions. The course will include readings, didactic material, discussion, experiential exercises, and extensive video presentations that illustrate the theory and practice of AEDP. Students will be encouraged to examine this approach in relation to psychoanalytic therapy.