Most courses will be eight weeks long.
The First Hour
Students present the opening hour of a consultation,
and the group considers how to best facilitate the client’s unfolding of
the reasons for seeking help, with an eye to developing a process that
will engage the client for ongoing therapy.
Role, Task and Boundary
Using case material and readings, we
consider boundaries, ethics, the nature of the treatment contract, the
therapeutic frame, and the meanings and dimensions of the roles of
therapist and patient.
Close Process
Using the “In Treatment” HBO television series, we follow one course of treatment, a single session each class, paying attention to the patient’s thoughts and feelings, the therapist’s responses, tracking the process between them, and considering options for intervention.
Nonverbal Communication in the Clinical Hour
No Each student, in turn,
will bring in a detailed account of just the nonverbal process during a
clinical session, and the group will work to develop an understanding of
the client and the impact of the therapeutic experience based only on
tracking the nonverbal events.
Clinical Theory Underlying Technique
Using both readings and
clinical presentations, this course will study the craft of treatment:
curiosity, identification and empathy, safety, kindness, ways of
understanding, ways of intervening, deepening the conversation,
speaking and silence, resistance, transference and countertransference,
enactment, and disclosure.
Faculty Case Presentation
A faculty member will present sessions
from ongoing work which will be used to examine the ways in which a
therapy develops over time. Since the group will, in effect, be consulting
to the therapist, it will also pay attention to the interaction between the
seminar and the treatment.
Telling Therapy Stories
Each week of the seminar the students will
complete a brief writing assignment: tell the story of your office; tell the
story of why a patient sought treatment; tell the story of the first five
minutes of a session; tell the story of the last five minutes of a session;
tell the story of a time you were caught by surprise; tell the story of a
missed chance; tell the story of a good moment. We will focus on both
the content and the writing.
Dreams and Dreaming
Using readings and student presentations
of sessions containing dreams, this course will demonstrate ways of
working with dreaming – how to elicit the client’s associations to a
dream, how to use the dream to link the patient’s present concerns with
past situations and conflicts, how to integrate dream work into ongoing
treatment.
The Clinical Hour
An entire class session will focus on a single clinical
hour from a student’s ongoing treatment. We will try to understand the
client’s psychic (subjective) reality as it becomes manifest in the hour,
and we will explore the ways in which the therapist’s responses facilitate
that unfolding.
Countertransference
Students will take turns presenting clinical
material in which they had a strong personal reaction during a session.
We will try to understand what the student’s response reveals about the
client’s mind and about the treatment. We will look for evidence within
the process to see if we can find support for our inferences.
Assessment and Formulation
This class focuses on making
a systematic account of a client’s difficulties. We will present a
methodology for assessment and students will prepare a written
presentation of a client’s psychology that will be used as a basis for
class discussion. The group will then use this material to construct a
formulation of the client’s difficulties.
Infant-Mother Observation Seminar
During the student’s first year in the program, the student will observe a
mother and her infant in their home for an hour each week. These visits
will be discussed in an ongoing group, led by an experienced mother infant
observation supervisor. This group will meet each week prior to
the regular classes throughout the year.
Observing babies and their mothers/family members over a long period
of time means that we have an opportunity to perceive patterns in the
making.
Observers come to appreciate how relationships are developed and how
we become part of each other’s world, and to recognize the persistence
of infantile patterns of behavior in later life.
But beyond this, and perhaps most important from the point of view
of the program, infant-mother observation affords a situation in which
the student can learn to pay close attention to the subtle nuances of
nonverbal interaction, the ways in which people impact each other.
The truth is always in the details. And the student also learns to
attend to her/his own emotional responses and thoughts as clues to
understanding the situation she/he is observing.
Faculty: Dr. Nydia Lisman-Pieczanski and Ms. Sharon Alperovitz
Work Discussion Seminar
In their second year, students bring detailed notes of their work with
a client to a seminar conducted along the lines of the Infant-Mother
Observation. The aim of the seminar is to sharpen perceptions of verbal
and non-verbal communications and to closely study the moment-tomoment
interactions between patient and therapist. This group will
meet each week prior to the regular classes throughout the year.
Faculty: Ms. Sharon Alperovitz and Dr. Nydia Lisman-Pieczanski