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Psychoanalytic Explorations Program Courses

    • 21 Feb 2023
    • (CST)
    • 28 Mar 2023
    • (CDT)
    • 6 sessions
    • Zoom
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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.


    • 1 Mar 2023
    • (CST)
    • 12 Apr 2023
    • (CDT)
    • 6 sessions
    • Zoom
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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.

    • 1 Apr 2023
    • (CDT)
    • 6 May 2023
    • (CDT)
    • 6 sessions
    • Zoom
    • 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.


Past events

22 Jan 2023 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Narcissistic Phenomena in Clinical Practice (12 CE Credits, IL)
5 Jan 2023 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Psychoanalytic Engagement in the Context of Race, Ethnicity, and Social Class (12 CE credits, IL)
5 Nov 2022 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Child Psychotherapy: A Relational and Developmental Perspective (12 CE credits,IL)
23 Mar 2022 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Arranging the Field for Playing and Dreaming (12 CE credits)
8 Mar 2022 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Attachment Theory Applied: Working with the Enacted in Psychotherapy (12 CE credits)
31 Jan 2022 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Uncoupling:  Psychoanalytic Approaches to Working with Divorcing Individuals (12 CE Credits)
30 Oct 2021 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Child Psychotherapy:  A Relational and Developmental Perspective (12 CE credits)
18 Oct 2021 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Psychoanalytic Engagement in the Context of Race, Ethnicity, and Social Class (12 CE credits)
10 Apr 2021 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Applied Relational Theory: Key Tenets and Misunderstandings (12 CE credits)
1 Feb 2021 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Uncoupling: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Working with Divorcing Individuals (12 CE Credits)
19 Jan 2021 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Attachment Theory Applied: Working with the Evoked and the Enacted (12 CE credits)
7 Nov 2020 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Child Psychotherapy: A Relational and Developmental Perspective (12 CE credits)
2 Nov 2020 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Enhanced Couple Therapy: Integrating the Psychodynamic (12 CE credits)
15 Apr 2020 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Relational Theory: Clinical Implications and Misunderstandings (12 CE credits)
24 Feb 2020 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: To Live before Dying: The Values of Psychoanalysis (12 CE credits)
18 Jan 2020 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Child Psychotherapy: A Relational and Developmental Perspective (12 CE credits)
16 Jan 2020 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Empathic Attunement and Empathic Ruptures in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Self Psychology Perspective (12 CE credits)
29 Oct 2019 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Attachment and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (12 CE credits)
19 Oct 2019 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Dialectical Constructivism: A Perspective on the Psychoanalytic Process (12 CE credits)
9 Sep 2019 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Uncoupling: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Working with Divorcing Individuals (12 CE Credits)
9 Apr 2019 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Enhancing Couple Therapy By Incorporating The Psychodynamic (12 CE credits) Meeting dates (2019): April 9, April 16, April 30, May 7, May 14, May 21
4 Mar 2019 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: The Clinical Lacan (12 CE credits) Meeting dates (2019): March 4, March 11, March 18, March 25, April 1, April 8
19 Jan 2019 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Speaking Desire: An Introduction to the Concepts and Language of Jacques Lacan (12 CE credits) Meeting dates (2019): Jan. 19, Jan. 26, Feb. 2, Feb. 16, Feb. 23, March 2
6 Nov 2018 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: Attachment and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (12 CE credits) Meeting dates (2018): Nov. 6, Nov. 13, Nov. 20, Nov. 27, Dec. 4, Dec. 11
17 Sep 2018 Psychoanalytic Explorations Program: Course Title: To Live Before Dying: The Values of Psychoanalysis (12 CE credits) Meeting dates (2018): Sept. 17, Sept. 24, Oct. 1, Oct. 8, Oct. 15, Oct. 22

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