Psychoanalytic Explorations Program Courses

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• Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Trauma, Shame and Mourning (12 CE credits)

  • Start
    21 Feb 2023
  •  
    (CST)
  • End
    28 Mar 2023
  •  
    (CDT)
  • Schedule
    6 sessions
  • Location
    Zoom
  • Spaces left
    0

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  Course Title:   Trauma, Shame and Mourning (12 CE credits)

  Instructor:  Peter Shabad, PhD

  Meeting dates (2023):  February 21, 28; March 7, 14, 21, 28                        

  Meeting time: Tuesdays, 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. (CST), via Zoom
  
  

  Course Description:

  In this course we will explore how traumatic and chronically disillusioning experiences have profoundly inhibiting effects on the passion necessary to grow and change throughout life.  We will devote special attention to how human beings transform their traumatic experiences outside of their control into shameful failures, in which they “blame the victim” in themselves for being a victim.  After describing how the “intimate creation” of one’s unique constellation of symptoms is a means of both communicating and memorializing such traumatic experiences, we will examine how shame leads to character passivity and interrelated dynamics such as self-pity, resentment, entitlement, envy, perverse spite, and regret. 

  In the clinical section of this course, we will explore how the patient’s passivity and ambivalence towards therapeutic change is closely intertwined with his/her chronic struggle between the freedom to desire and obeying a tyranny of shoulds.  In this regard, we will also highlight important clinical tensions between developmental determinism and freedom of will, and corresponding countertransference tensions of love versus respect in the analyst’s attitude toward the patient. 

  Finally, we will discuss how the mourning process of accepting and reintegrating one’s shamed desires paradoxically facilitates the generosity of relinquishing the necessity that those desires be fulfilled. In addition to analytic readings, we will also read Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych.

  Biographical Information:

  Peter Shabad, PhD is Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Feinberg School of Medicine -- Northwestern University.  He is also Faculty of the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago.

  Dr. Shabad is co-editor of The Problem of Loss and Mourning: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (IUP,1989) and is the author of Despair and the Return of Hope:  Echoes of Mourning in Psychotherapy (Aronson, 2001). He is working on a new book entitled Seizing the Vital Moment: Passion, Shame, and Self-Realization to be published by Routledge.  He is the author of numerous papers and book chapters in psychoanalysis on diverse topics such as loss and mourning, shame, resentment, and regret.  Dr. Shabad maintains a private practice in Chicago of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy.

  
  

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• Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Enhanced Couple Therapy: Integrating the Psychodynamic (12 CE credits, IL)

  • Start
    1 Mar 2023
  •  
    (CST)
  • End
    12 Apr 2023
  •  
    (CDT)
  • Schedule
    6 sessions
  • Location
    Zoom
  • Spaces left
    0

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  Course Title:  Enhanced Couple Therapy:  Integrating the Psychodynamic (12 CE credits, IL)

  Instructor:  Peter Reiner, PhD, LMFT
  
  Meeting dates (2023):  March 1, 8, 15, 29; April 5, 12 

  Meeting time: Wednesdays, 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m., via Zoom
  
  

  Course Description:

  This clinically-based course will provide a review of key concepts and techniques of couple therapy, and will enhance participants’ theoretical and clinical skills through the introduction and application of key psychoanalytic contributions.  Drawn from the classical, object relations, and self-psychology models among others, these psychoanalytic understandings will be used to inform a broad array of clinical work with couples, ranging from short-term, present-oriented approaches to long-term, in-depth, historically-oriented couple therapy.   

  Videotapes of consultation interviews will be used extensively to illustrate important clinical moments, interventional choice points, and a range of associated treatment techniques.  This clinical material will also be viewed through the lenses provided by selected classic psychodynamic papers and book chapters, which will facilitate the integration of systemic and psychodynamic theories, clinical formulation, and therapeutic technique.

  Biographical Information:

  Peter Reiner, PhD, LMFT is Faculty, a Board Member, and was Vice President of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP); and Faculty at The Feinberg School of Medicine -- Northwestern University.  He is a psychoanalyst who is licensed as a clinical psychologist and a marriage and family therapist. 

  Peter was Coordinator of Clinical Training at the Family Institute of Chicago and Secretary of the Chicago Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology.  He is an award-winning teacher who has led more than 50 graduate and post-graduate classes or seminars in systemically-oriented couple and family psychotherapy and psychodynamically-oriented psychotherapy.  Dr. Reiner has written at length about the training and supervision of psychodynamically-oriented couple and family therapists, including “Training psychodynamic family therapists,” (in Lebow, Chambers, & Breunlin [Eds.] Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy, 2017) and “Systemic psychodynamic supervision,” (in Todd & Storm [Eds.], The Complete Systemic Supervisor:  Context, Philosophy, and Pragmatics [2nd ed.], 2014). 

  Peter provides consultation to other mental health professionals and maintains a private practice in Chicago of psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy with individuals, couples, and families.

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• Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Our Therapeutic Frames: Reconsidering What’s Elemental (12 CE Credits, IL)

  • Start
    1 Apr 2023
  •  
    (CDT)
  • End
    6 May 2023
  •  
    (CDT)
  • Schedule
    6 sessions
  • Location
    Zoom
  • Spaces left
    1

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  Course Title:  Our Therapeutic Frames:  Reconsidering What’s Elemental (12 CE Credits, IL)

  Instructor:  Edurne Chopeitia MA, LPC

  Meeting dates (2023):  April 1, 8, 15, 22, 29; May 6

  Meeting time:  Saturdays, 8:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. (CST), via Zoom

  Course Description:

  This interactive course will focus on the theories and clinical applications of the frame—including both internal and external aspects--that strongly influence our psychotherapeutic work.  These aspects will be considered through the lenses provided by Jose Bleger, an Argentinian psychoanalyst, who wrote extensively about their importance in shaping psychodynamic psychotherapy.

  Until recently, physical realities and elements--such as bodies, offices, and furniture--have been foundational in the conceptualization of the psychoanalytic situation.  The shift to teletherapies, however, has introduced virtual elements and has prompted an examination of basic assumptions about what is, indeed, foundational.  Clinical vignettes—including those offered by course participants--will be used throughout to illuminate the unconscious assumptions and maps of meaning that impact therapist-client dyads, and to illustrate what may occur when these become, or are made, explicit.

  Biographical Information:

  Edurne Chopeitia, MA, LPC is Visiting Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP).  Edurne is a clinical psychologist from Uruguay who has been living in the United States for 25 years and is licensed as clinical mental health counselor.  She is an advanced candidate in the Adult Psychoanalytic Program at the Emory University Psychoanalytic Institute.

  Edurne was Adjunct Faculty at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay (UCUDAL) where she taught Psychodynamic Assessment and Psychodiagnosis, Psychodynamic Organizational Psychology, and Psychoanalytic Psychopathology.  She maintains a private practice in Georgia with adults and couples, providing brief and long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy, and sex therapy, in English and Spanish.

  
  

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