Gudrun Opitz, PhD

Historical Roots and Group Exploration of the Royal Unknown: Working with Dreams in Psychoanalysis

   September 20-21, 2025

Kinzie Hotel

20 West Kinzie Street, Chicago 

& ZOOM

Dr. Gudrun Opitz is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in New York City. She provides individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy and runs Dream Groups for clinicians and non-clinicians. She is on the Faculty and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute. Her teaching, presenting, and groups currently focus on dreamwork

Seminar Title: Historical Roots and Group Exploration of the Royal Unknown: Working with Dreams in Psychoanalysis

Seminar Description: This class will increase candidates’ appreciation of dreams by: 

1. Learning about inventions and artistic creations that originated from dreams, 
2. Learning about theoretical or clinical contributions in psychoanalysis, starting with Freud and going to contemporary methods, and 
3. Participating in a dream group with their peers. A few candidates will volunteer to present their own dream or the dreams of a patient, hear the group members' reactions to the manifest content, and see how this material relates to the treatment of the dreamer's life history. This group interaction will demonstrate how to create an atmosphere of safety and discovery when working with dreams.

Readings:

Freud, S. (1900). Chapter 2, The Method of Interpreting Dreams: An Analysis of a Specimen Dream. In: The Interpretation of Dreams. Standard Edition 4, 121-145.

Jung, C. G. (1969). On the Psychology of the Unconscious. (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al.

(Eds.), The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 7 pt. 1 The Synthetic or Constructive Method. & The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. (2nd ed., pp. 80–113). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1943).

Fromm, E. (1951). Chapters 1 and 2. In: The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths. (Pages 3-23)

Tauber, E. & Green, M. (1959). Chapters 11 & 12: Some Observations on Dreams and Dream Analysis.

The Dream as A Message. In: Prelogical Experience. New York: Basic Books. (Pages 149-186).

Bonime, W. (1962). Introduction: A Dynamic Concept of the Dream in the Therapeutic Situation. In: The Clinical Use of Dreams. New York: Basic Books. (pages 1-29).

Greenson, R. (1970). The Exceptional Position of the Dream in Psychoanalytic Practice. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 39: 519-549.

Levenson, E. A. (1981). Facts or Fantasies: On the Nature of Psychoanalytic Data. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 17(4), 486–500.

Blechner, M.J. (1995). The Patient's Dreams and the Countertransference. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 5:1-25.

Blechner, M. (2001). Chapter 5, We Never Lie in Our Dreams & Chapter 6, Condensation and Interobjects. In: The Dream Frontier. New York: Routledge, p. 49-73.

Blechner, M. J. (2018). Psychological Defenses and Dreams. In: The Mindbrain and Dreams. New York: Routledge, p. 146-181.

Lippmann, P. (2000). Chapter 8, When the Analyst’s Neurotic Style Meets the Dream. In: Nocturnes: On Listening to Dreams, p. 99-115.

Marilyn Charles, PhD

Zoom

   September 28, October 12, and December 7, 2025
January 25, February 22, March 22, and May 17, 2026

Suzanne Rosenfeld, MD

In-Person Only

   October 5 & November 16, 2025
January 18, February 15, March 15, April 26, and May 17, 2026

Margaret Nickels, PhD

Infant Development Through the Lens of Seeing, Experiencing, and Reflecting

   Section I: October 15,22,29 & November 5,12,19, 2025

ZOOM

Margret Nickels is a PhD licensed psychologist and Faculty of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. For many years she was Graduate Faculty at The Erikson Institute in Chicago, where she taught foundational classes in Infant Mental Health as well as Human Development from birth through adulthood. Dr. Nickels was the clinical director of the Erikson Institute Fussy Baby Network, a home visiting program for parents with infants and newborns. Dr. Nickels also founded and led the Erikson Institute Center for Children and Families, which provided assessment and parent-child psychotherapy to families with children between birth and 8 years. Under her leadership, supervision, and training, the Center developed services integrating knowledge from infant mental health, child trauma treatment, child social-emotional and physical development, and psychoanalytic theory and practice. Dr. Nickels also provided child development and child trauma education and training to the Protective Division of the Chicago Juvenile Court, hospital pediatric departments, the Illinois Department of Child and Family services, private and public schools, and parent forums. She developed two national training units for the American Osteopathic Associations on child social-emotional development. Dr. Nickels is in private practice in Chicago providing parent-child, individual and couples therapy.

Title: Infant Development Through the Lens of Seeing, Experiencing, and Reflecting.

Seminar Description: This two-section seminar will allow candidates to vividly conceive the earliest experiences of our human coming into being. Throughout the seminar, we will watch and analyze a set of online documentary videos of three different families and their infants during their infants’ first year of life. The families are from South Africa and have different racial and socio-economic backgrounds. Videos were filmed once a week for 52 weeks. The clips show the infants in their typical interactions with their parents, but also with their siblings, other family members, and other caregivers. This broader domestic setting will allow the participants a more comprehensive look into the complex relational, cultural, and social networks of our earliest environment. 

Participants will view video clips before class and take detailed observational notes on the infants’ interactions with environment. In class the clips will be reviewed and discussed among the group. Shared observations and discussions are complemented by select readings on basic concepts of psychoanalytic infant development. Readings will serve to critically evaluate and further integrate the observations and reflections.

The goal of the seminar is to facilitate participants’ psychoanalytic understanding and development primarily on an experiential level. The class will focus on linking objective micro level observations of infants’ behavior and responses from their environment with reflections on each class participant’s subjective, experiential processes.

Jan Abram, PhD

The surviving Object

   October 18-19, 2025

ZOOM

Jan Abram is a training and supervising analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society in private practice London. She is visiting professor at the University College London and President of the European Psychoanalytical Federation. She has published many books notably: The Language of Winni cott (1996 1st edition; 2007 2nd edition), judged Outstanding Academic Book of the Year (1997); Donald Winnicott Today (2013); The Clinical Paradigms of Melanie Klein and Don al d Winnicott (2018) and The Clinical Paradigms of Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion (2023) (with co-author R.D.Hinshelwood).

Seminar Title: The surviving Object

Seminar Description: The work of Donald Winnicott (1896 – 1971) will be the foundational psychoanalytic clinical paradigm. Since publishing The Language of Winnicott: a dictionary of Winnicott’s use of words in 1996, Jan Abram has advanced many of his concepts in her subsequent publications with clinical illustrations notably in her book The Surviving Object. Following the Friday evening lecture, the seminars will explore some key advances related to Abram’s central proposal of the dual concept of a surviving and non surviving object (Abram 2022)

Readings 

Abram, J. (1996; 2007 2nd edition) The Language of Winnicott: a dictionary of Winnicott’s use of words (Classic Books PEP)

Abram, J. (2013) Donald Winnicott Today New Library of Psychoanalysis Routledge Abram, J. (2022) The Surviving Object: psychoanalytic clinical essays on psychic survival -of -the-object New Library of Psychoanalysis, Routledge

Saturday 18th October 2025 – All readings are chapters in The Surviving Object Seminar 1
9 am – 10.45am
Why Winnicott? – Reading: Chapters 1 & 2

The main aim of this seminar is to reflect on the key concepts ‘violation of the self’ as seen in Chapter 1 through the analyst’s countertransference. With reference to the case of Jill, we will also reflect on Abram’s advance of the intrapsychic subjective surviving object.

Seminar 2

11.15 am – 1pm

The non surviving object – Reading: Chapter 3

The main aim of this seminar is to discuss the notion of non survival of the object and how this is manifested in the consulting room. By examining the case study of K. we will explore the meaning of acting out and working through in the transference-countertransference matrix of the analysing situation.

Seminar 3

2.30pm – 4.30pm

The fear of WOMAN – Reading: Chapter 4

Dependency is a fact of human development. The denial of this fact leads to the fear of WOMAN. This fear is at the root of misogyny in every human being. Its power will be contingent on early psychic development.

Sunday 19th October 2025
Seminar 4
9am – 10.45 am
Does Winnicott’s work include Freudian infantile sexuality? – Chapter 4

While Winnicott evolved advances from the classical Freudian theory did he negate some of the fundamental concepts such as infantile sexuality? In this seminar we will examine how the Oedipal dimension manifests in the consulting room in the case of Lisa.

Seminar 5

11.15 am – 1pm

Fear of Breakdown – Chapter 8

In Winnicott’s late work the psychology of madness and the fear of breakdown were connected. We will examine the clinical work in Chapter 8 to reflect on the meaning of madness in the countertransference. For the final half an hour we will spend some time going over the 10 learning objectives of the 5 seminars.

Ann D'Ercole, PhD, ABPP

Clara M. Thompson: The shaping of American Psychoanalysis, the person, theory, practice and legacy

   November 8-9, 2025

Kinzie Hotel

20 West Kinzie Street, Chicago 

& ZOOM

Ann D'Ercole, PhD, ABPP, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Distinguished Visiting Faculty at the William Alanson White Institute. Author of Clara M. Thompson’s Early Years and Professional Awakening: An American Psychoanalyst (1893-1933) and Clara M. Thompson’s Professional Evolution and Legacy: An American Psychoanalyst (1933-1958), Routledge, 2023. Co-Editor of Uncoupling Convention: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Same-Sex Couples and Families (2004) and other essays. 

Recipient of the APA, Div.39, SGI Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of Sexualities and Gender Identities in Psychoanalysis and the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Psychology (ABAPPP) book award for her contribution to Frie, R. & Sauvayre, P. (eds). Culture, Politics, and Interpersonal Psychoanalysis: Breaking Boundaries, Routledge, 2022 for, Considering the Radical Contributions of Clara Mabel Thompson. She is in private practice in New York City.

Seminar Title: Clara M. Thompson: The shaping of American Psychoanalysis, the person, theory, practice and legacy

Seminar Description: American psychoanalysis was shaped by the work of the pioneering psychoanalyst, Clara Thompson one of the founders of the William Alanson White Institute in NYC. She has been a hidden figure in our field along with her prescient contributions to contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. This seminar will take a deep look into the life of Clara Thompson and her then radical positions on culture, the mutually influencing two-person dyad, and feminism. She is a critical link in the relational/social turn in the field, and in studies in gender and sexualities.

Readings:

D’Ercole, A. (2025) Love, “The Kiss” and Repair: Clara Thompson’s contributions to relational theory (in press Contemporary Psychoanalysis)

D’Ercole, A. (2023) Clara M. Thompson’s Early Years and Professional Development: An American psychoanalyst (1893-1933).  Routledge Press. 

D’Ercole, A. (2023) Clara M. Thompson’s Professional Evolution and Legacy: An American psychoanalyst (1933-1958). Routledge Press. 

D’Ercole, A. (2022) Considering the radical contributions of Clara M. Thompson. in Frie, R. & Sauvayre, P. (eds.) (2022). Culture, politics, and race in the making of interpersonal psychoanalysis: Breaking boundaries. Routledge Press.

D’Ercole, A. (2017). On finding Clara Thompson. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 2017, Vol. 53, No. 1: 63–68.

Thompson , C. (1930)  Analytic Observations During the Course of a Manic-Depressive Psychosis. Psychoanalytic Review. XVII, 426-434. 

Thompson , C. (1930) 'The Therapeutic Technique of Sándor Ferenczi': A Comment. Psychoanalytic Review, 17(2):240-252

Thompson , C. (1931)  “Dutiful Child” Resistance*Psychoanalytic Review, 18:426-433

Thompson , C. (1934) Sandor Ferenczi, 1873-1933. Young Israel, xxvii, 3-4.(1988) Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 24, 182-195.

Thompson , C.(1938)  Development of Awareness of Transference in a Markedly Detached Personality. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 19:299-309.

Thompson, C. (1938) Notes on the psychoanalytic significance of choice of analyst. Psychiatry.

Thompson , C. (1940)  Identification with the Enemy and Loss of the Sense of Self Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 9:37-50

Thompson , C. (1941) The role of women in this culture. Psychiatry, V, 331-339. Feb 1, 1941; 4, 1; ProQuest pg. 1 

Thompson , C. (1942) Culture pressures in the psychology of women. Psychiatry; Aug 1; 5, 3; ProQuest pg. 331 

Thompson , C. (1943) “Penis Envy” in women, Psychiatry, 6:2 123-125.

Thompson , C. (1947) Changing Concepts of Homosexuality in Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry, Interpersonal and Biological Processes.10:2, 183-189. DOI: 10.1080/00332747.1947.11022636.

Thompson , C. (1943) The therapeutic technique of Sandor Ferenczi: A comment. International journal of psychoanalysis. xcxiv, 64-66.

Thompson , C. (1944) Ferenczi’s contribution to psychoanalysis. Psychiatry VII, 245-252.

Thompson , C. (1945) Transference as a therapeutic instrument. Psychiatry, VIII, 273-278.

Thompson , C (1949) Cultural conflicts of women in our society. Samiksa, III, 125-134..

Thompson , C. (1950) Psychoanalysis: Evolution and development. 

Thompson , C (1950) Some effects of the derogatory attitude toward female sexuality Psychiatry, xiii, 349-354.

Thompson , C. (1952) Countertransference. Samiksa, VI, 205-211. 

Thompson , C. (1953) Transference and character analysis. Samiksa, vii, 260-270.

Thompson , C.(1953:1978) Sullivan and Psychoanalysis, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 14:488-501

Thompson, C. (1954) Introduction to Transference by Benjamin Wolstein, New York: Grune and Stratton. 

(1955) Introduction to Final Contributions to the Problems and Methods of Psychoanalysis, Selected Papers of Sandor Ferenczi, Vol. III New York Basic Books, Inc. 

Thompson, C. (1956) Sullivan and Fromm, Progress in psychotherapy; (1978). Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 15:195-200. 

Thompson, C. (1958) Concepts of the self in interpersonal theory. American journal of psychotherapy, XII, 5-17.

Thompson, C. (1958) A study of the emotional climate of psychoanalytic institutes, Psychiatry, XXI, 45-51.

Thompson, C. (1958) Various methods of psychotherapy and their functions, American Journal of Psychotherapy, XII, 660-670.

Thompson , C. (1959) Dynamics of hostility. American journal of psychoanalysis, XIX, 10-13.

Thompson, C. (1959) An Intro to Minor Maladjustments. American Handbook of Psychiatry. 

Thompson, C. (1959) The interpersonal approach to the Clinical Problems of Masochism, in Jules H. Masserman, (ed) Individual and Familial
Dynamics. New York: Grune and Stratton, p. 31-37. 

Thompson, C. (1959) A Critical incident in psychotherapy. In Stanley W. Standal and Raymond J. Corsini, (eds) Critical Incidents in Psychotherapy (New York Printice-Hall, pp. 98-99.

Thompson, C. (1956; 1979) Sullivan and Fromm. Contemporary Psychoanalysis 15: 195-200.

Thompson, C. (1956) The role of the analyst’s personality in therapy American journal of psychotherapy, X, 347-359. (1964) Interpersonal Psychoanalysis: Selected Papers of Clara M. Thompson, Green, M. Editor.

Thompson, C. (1959) The unmarried woman. Pastoral psychology, X, 44-45.

Thompson, C. (1961) Femininity. In Albert Ellis and Albert Abarbanel, eds, The encyclopedia of sexual behavior (New York); Hawthorne books.

Thompson, C. (2017) The history of the William Alanson White Institute.  Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 53 (1): 7-28.

Thompson, C. (1960 The theoretical framework of the William Alanson White Institute. In Current approaches to psychoanalysis. New York: Grune and Stratton, pp. 13-21.)

Derek Hook, PhD

Lacanian diagnostic structures in relation to clinical techniques

   December 13-14, 2025

Kinzie Hotel

20 West Kinzie Street, Chicago 

& ZOOM

Derek Hook is a Professor in Psychology and a clinical supervisor at Duquesne University. A scholar and practitioner of psychoanalysis, he is one of the editors (along with Calum Neill) of the Palgrave Lacan Series and of the four-volume Reading Lacan's Ecrits (with Calum Neill and Stijn Vanheule). He began his analytical training in London, at the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research. He is the author of Six Moments in Lacan and the co-editor of Lacan on Depression and Melancholia, in addition to papers on various facets of the clinical and cultural dimensions of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. He maintains a YouTube channel with many lectures on Lacanian Psychoanalysis.

Seminar Title: Lacanian diagnostic structures in relation to clinical techniques

Seminar Description: The Lacanian clinical domain is well known for its three basic diagnostic structures (neurosis, psychosis, perversion). For many psychoanalytic practitioners, this is a very minimal diagnostic system, especially given its apparent exclusion of factors such as narcissism, depression, and borderline, etc. as key diagnostic indicators. This seminar aims to explore each of these diagnostic structures, viewing them less as categorical designations than as subjective structures, each of which relies upon a distinct mode of defense (repression, foreclosure, disavowal) which will, of course, necessarily characterizes the transference relationship. A key qualification here concerns the structural nature of such diagnostic designations (neurosis, psychosis, perversion), which means that symptoms alone are not enough to make a diagnosis. A structural approach seeks to locate patients in respect of the experience subjective/social meaning (typically as linked to questions of desire), the localization of jouissance (libidinal intensity), and the relation to the (symbolic) Other.

Lacanian diagnostic structures are a crucial means of specifying and directing a treatment (as opposed to objectifying/categorizing patients), a fact which helps explain why Lacanian treatment approaches to neurosis and psychosis are so different. What then are the Lacanian clinical techniques that pertain to neurosis (i.e. to obsessional neurosis, hysteria), psychosis (paranoia, schizophrenia, melancholia, and ‘ordinary psychosis’, etc.), and perversion? This seminar will introduce and develop a series of key Lacanian/Freudian concepts – desire, the Name-of-the-Father, the three registers (Imaginary/Symbolic/Real ), jouissance, phallus, etc. – as a way both of differentiating the above subjective structures and highlighting which Lacanian techniques and interventions (punctuation, scansion, ‘hystericization’, oracular and ‘non-meaningful’ interpretation, ‘secretarial work’, etc.) are, accordingly, most relevant.

Readings: 

Fink, B. (1999). A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fink, B. (2007). Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners. Norton.

Hook, D. (2016). Six Moments in Lacan. Routledge.

Hook, D. (2023). On the role of speech in psychoanalysis. Journal of the American Psychoanalytical Association. 71(5), 855-881.

Lacan, J. (2006). Écrits (Translated by B. Fink). Norton. (selected papers to be read in conjunction with the Reading Lacan’s Écrits series, edited by Hook, Neill and Vanheule (Routledge)).

Leader, D. (2011). What is Madness? Penguin.

Nobus. D. (2000). Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of Psychoanalysis. Routledge.

Nobus, D. (2018). The logical time of diagnosis: terms and conditions of the symptom in the Lacanian tradition. In L. Bailly, D. Lichtenstein and S. Bailly (Eds.) The Lacan Tradition. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 137-154.

Vanheue, S. (2024).  Why Psychosis is not so Crazy. Penguin.

Verhaeghe, P. (2020). Being Normal and Other Disorders. Other Press

Jan Abram, PhD

Giving Voice to Your View: Writing at the Intersection of Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society

   January through June, 2026
(the class will meet for eight 1.5 hour sessions between January and June, 2026.  The instructor and participants will determine together the evening dates and times.)

ZOOM

Billie Pivnick, PhD is a psychoanalytic psychologist in private practice in NYC specializing in treating adoptees and their families, victims of trauma, and people in the arts. She is faculty/supervisor in the William Alanson White Institute Child/Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program, faculty in the WAWI Psychoanalytic Certificate program, Director of WAWI’s Center for Public Mental Health (CPMH), and founder of the CPMH “Schools as Refuge Project” (SARP). Winner of the 2024 Leadership Award of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (SPPP), she is also co-founder and co-host of the 2024 Gradiva Award-winning Couched podcast, which features conversations between analysts and influential cultural figures.  Author of over thirty professional articles, she won SPPP’s 2015 Schillinger Memorial Essay Award for her essay, “Spaces to Stand In: Applying Clinical Psychoanalysis to the Relational Design of the National September 11 Memorial Museum,” and the IPTAR’s 1992 Stanley Berger Award for the contribution of her study, Symbolization and its Discontents: The Impact of Threatened Object Loss on the Discourse and Symptomatology of Hospitalized Psychotic Patients to the field of psychoanalysis.

She is faculty for the New Directions Psychoanalytic Writing Program at the Washington-Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis, the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, and the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. She also serves as an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies and Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and onthe Board of Directors of the Association for Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (APCS). As Consulting Psychologist to Thinc Design partnered with the National September 11 Memorial Museum, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, Orlando’s One Pulse Foundation, the Las Vegas Forever One Memorial, and the Brooklyn Borough Jail Design Project, she helped the designers and their partners mitigate the traumatic impact of exhibits.  She also engaged with group processes that typically impede projects that touch on traumatic histories of the participants to minimize their impact.  Formerly, she was co-founder and co-leader of the Psychoanalytic Community Collaboratory, a web-based seminar and project incubator for psychoanalytically informed projects focused on innovative interdisciplinary responses to significant community problems and was Director of the Graduate Dance Therapy Program at Pratt Institute.

Seminar Title: Giving Voice to Your View: Writing at the Intersection of Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society

Seminar Description: Writing for clinical presentation or publication can be a daunting prospect as professional writing means working at the intersection of the scholarly and the creative. During training, we learn a set of theories and develop a vocabulary that increases our competence with a body of knowledge and identifies us as part of a guild. Yet less attention is paid to helping new professionals develop their ideas more authentically in and through writing. 

The instructor envisions the class as a workshop that provides both an in-class writing experience and writing that takes place outside the classroom. In this workshop, participants will come with the germ of an idea they have been imagining in presented or published form. The idea may be a case study or a reflection on your experience as a clinician. The emphasis will be on writing to discover one's unique perspective on a particular issue or problem within the field. The instructor will provide a structure for beginning to realize this idea in writing or suggestions on ways to enhance already well-conceived ideas. Fellow participants likewise contribute ideas and expertise throughout this process.

Nancy Burke, PhD, ABPP
Zak Mucha, LCSW

Introduction to Community Psychoanalysis I

   Date/Time/Location TBD

Nancy Burke, PhD, ABPP, is a board member, core faculty member and past-president of CCP.  She is the co-chair of Expanded Mental Health Services of Chicago, NFP, Vice-President of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis-US, a co-convener of the 606 Project, on the board of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology and Associate Clinical Professor, Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University.

Zak Mucha, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst in private practice and an executive board member at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. He spent seven years working as the supervisor of an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) program, providing 24/7 services to persons suffering from severe psychosis, substance abuse issues, and homelessness. Mucha has also worked as a counselor and consultant for U.S. combat veterans undergoing training for digital forensic investigations in child pornography. Before going into the clinical field, he worked as a freelance journalist, truck driver, furniture mover, construction worker, union organizer, staff member at a juvenile DCFS locked unit, and taught briefly at a women’s prison. He is the author of Emotional Abuse: A Manual for Self-Defense and Swimming to the Horizon: Crack, Psychosis, and Street-Corner Social Work.

Title: Introduction to Community Psychoanalysis I and II

Seminar Description:This introductory two-part course, which is required for participants in the CCP/CPT, addresses the history of community psychoanalysis and explores general questions regarding its status and foundations:  Is a community psychoanalysis possible, or is ‘community psychoanalysis’ an oxymoron?  Is all psychoanalysis ultimately community psychoanalysis?  How does an agency’s embeddedness in a specific community allow for insights that can offer input regarding and transformation of core psychoanalytic concepts?  How does one assess the potential for “psychoanalytic” work with someone who faces multiple material structural challenges, and what modifications of technique are called for?   How can psychoanalysis illuminate experiences of immigration, forced migration and dislocation?  How can psychoanalysis best be used to understand and hold the group dynamics of the clinic itself, and to foster opportunities for communal growth?  To what extent are our aspirations for healing constrained by the systems in which we are embedded?  What is a culturally responsive psychoanalysis?  What is the extent of the isomorphism between family, individual and group dynamics and are these resonances uniquely relevant in treatments that take place in clinic spaces?  

These questions will be addressed in case-presentation format, in which the nested “cases” to be considered will be the individual (to be emphasized in the first course), the family, the clinic, the community and the social/economic/political/cultural surround.  

Each of these two introductory classes, one offered during the fall term and one to be offered in the winter, will consist of six in-person 2-hour meetings at a time to be arranged by the CPT participants.  A third component of the CPT introductory series will take place in the winter of 2027.

Nancy Burke, PhD, ABPP
Zak Mucha, LCSW

Introduction to Community Psychoanalysis II

   Date/Time/Location TBD

Nancy Burke, PhD, ABPP, is a board member, core faculty member and past-president of CCP.  She is the co-chair of Expanded Mental Health Services of Chicago, NFP, Vice-President of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis-US, a co-convener of the 606 Project, on the board of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology and Associate Clinical Professor, Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University.

Zak Mucha, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst in private practice and an executive board member at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. He spent seven years working as the supervisor of an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) program, providing 24/7 services to persons suffering from severe psychosis, substance abuse issues, and homelessness. Mucha has also worked as a counselor and consultant for U.S. combat veterans undergoing training for digital forensic investigations in child pornography. Before going into the clinical field, he worked as a freelance journalist, truck driver, furniture mover, construction worker, union organizer, staff member at a juvenile DCFS locked unit, and taught briefly at a women’s prison. He is the author of Emotional Abuse: A Manual for Self-Defense and Swimming to the Horizon: Crack, Psychosis, and Street-Corner Social Work.

Title: Introduction to Community Psychoanalysis I and II

Seminar Description:This introductory two-part course, which is required for participants in the CCP/CPT, addresses the history of community psychoanalysis and explores general questions regarding its status and foundations:  Is a community psychoanalysis possible, or is ‘community psychoanalysis’ an oxymoron?  Is all psychoanalysis ultimately community psychoanalysis?  How does an agency’s embeddedness in a specific community allow for insights that can offer input regarding and transformation of core psychoanalytic concepts?  How does one assess the potential for “psychoanalytic” work with someone who faces multiple material structural challenges, and what modifications of technique are called for?   How can psychoanalysis illuminate experiences of immigration, forced migration and dislocation?  How can psychoanalysis best be used to understand and hold the group dynamics of the clinic itself, and to foster opportunities for communal growth?  To what extent are our aspirations for healing constrained by the systems in which we are embedded?  What is a culturally responsive psychoanalysis?  What is the extent of the isomorphism between family, individual and group dynamics and are these resonances uniquely relevant in treatments that take place in clinic spaces?  

These questions will be addressed in case-presentation format, in which the nested “cases” to be considered will be the individual (to be emphasized in the first course), the family, the clinic, the community and the social/economic/political/cultural surround.  

Each of these two introductory classes, one offered during the fall term and one to be offered in the winter, will consist of six in-person 2-hour meetings at a time to be arranged by the CPT participants.  A third component of the CPT introductory series will take place in the winter of 2027.

Margaret Nickels, PhD

Infant Development Through the Lens of Seeing, Experiencing, and Reflecting

   Section II: January 14, 21, 28 & February 4, 11, 18, 2026

ZOOM

Margret Nickels is a PhD licensed psychologist and Faculty of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. For many years she was Graduate Faculty at The Erikson Institute in Chicago, where she taught foundational classes in Infant Mental Health as well as Human Development from birth through adulthood. Dr. Nickels was the clinical director of the Erikson Institute Fussy Baby Network, a home visiting program for parents with infants and newborns. Dr. Nickels also founded and led the Erikson Institute Center for Children and Families, which provided assessment and parent-child psychotherapy to families with children between birth and 8 years. Under her leadership, supervision, and training, the Center developed services integrating knowledge from infant mental health, child trauma treatment, child social-emotional and physical development, and psychoanalytic theory and practice. Dr. Nickels also provided child development and child trauma education and training to the Protective Division of the Chicago Juvenile Court, hospital pediatric departments, the Illinois Department of Child and Family services, private and public schools, and parent forums. She developed two national training units for the American Osteopathic Associations on child social-emotional development. Dr. Nickels is in private practice in Chicago providing parent-child, individual and couples therapy.

Title: Infant Development Through the Lens of Seeing, Experiencing, and Reflecting.

Seminar Description: This two-section seminar will allow candidates to vividly conceive the earliest experiences of our human coming into being. Throughout the seminar, we will watch and analyze a set of online documentary videos of three different families and their infants during their infants’ first year of life. The families are from South Africa and have different racial and socio-economic backgrounds. Videos were filmed once a week for 52 weeks. The clips show the infants in their typical interactions with their parents, but also with their siblings, other family members, and other caregivers. This broader domestic setting will allow the participants a more comprehensive look into the complex relational, cultural, and social networks of our earliest environment. 

Participants will view video clips before class and take detailed observational notes on the infants’ interactions with environment. In class the clips will be reviewed and discussed among the group. Shared observations and discussions are complemented by select readings on basic concepts of psychoanalytic infant development. Readings will serve to critically evaluate and further integrate the observations and reflections.

The goal of the seminar is to facilitate participants’ psychoanalytic understanding and development primarily on an experiential level. The class will focus on linking objective micro level observations of infants’ behavior and responses from their environment with reflections on each class participant’s subjective, experiential processes.

Nancy Burke, PhD

The Opening Phase of Psychoanalysis

   February 27-March 1, 2025

ZOOM

Nancy Burke, PhD, ABPP, is a board member, core faculty member and past-president of CCP.  She is the co-chair of Expanded Mental Health Services of Chicago, NFP, Vice-President of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis-US, a co-convener of the 606 Project, on the board of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology and Associate Clinical Professor, Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University.

Seminar Title: The Opening Phase of Psychoanalysis

Seminar Description:This case-based seminar will honor the tensions that it poses in its very being:  Definitions of psychoanalysis tend to be vague and unsatisfying, the debates about how to distinguish psychoanalysis from psychoanalytic psychotherapy are often tedious, and in fact, there are as many ways to engage in the practice of psychoanalysis as there are psychoanalysts.  Yet we mean something by the word “psychoanalysis” even if, in discussing it, we find ourselves circumscribing an emptiness capable of holding multitudes.  Ditto for “opening;” it’s striking that this course has traditionally, at CCP at least, not been called “The Beginning Phase,” but rather refers to a phase of “opening.”  What we mean by that word, “opening,” will likewise be considered as it applies to both the course participants and their patients.  Most of all, we will aim to support both analyst and analysand in their efforts to start out on the not-wrong foot, will think together about how best to encourage the development of an “analytic attitude” in both parties, will attend to fears and concerns that could arise in the process of opening an analysis, and will address some of the seemingly concrete issues around the practice of intensive psychoanalytic treatment. 

Readings:

Bassen, C. (1989)  Transference-countertransference enactment in the recommendation to convert psychotherapy to psychoanalysis.  International Review of Psychoanalysis, 16: 79—92.

Bollas, C. (2013).  Catch Them Before They Fall:  The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown.  NY: Routledge.

Cauwe, J. & Vanheule, S. (2018).  On beginning the treatment:  Lacanian perspectives.  Psychoanalytic Quarterly 87:695-727.

Ehrich, L. T (2013).  Analysis begins in the analyst’s mind:  Conceptual and technical considerations on recommending analysis.  JAPA, 61(6): 1077-1107.

Elkins, J. (2024) On “beginning” in analysis.  The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 93:567-591.

Freud, S. (1913).  On beginning the treatment. 12: 121-144.

Glover, W. C. (2000).  Where do analysands come from?  A candidate’s experience in recommending analysis.  Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis, 9:21—37

Ogden, T. H. (1992).  Comments on transference and counter-transference in the initial analytic meeting.  Psychoanalytic Inquiry 12:225-247

Stern, D. (2024) Beginning the treatment on a personal note:  Creating emotional connection.  The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 93:647-674.

Wigoder, Meir. (2009)  “In the Beginning is My End:” The initial analytic meeting from the patient’s perspective.  Psychoanalytic Review 96:145-172.

Chanda Griffin, LCSW

Anti-blackness and Psychoanalytic Praxis

   April 18-19, 2026

Kinzie Hotel

20 West Kinzie Street, Chicago 

& ZOOM

Chanda D. Griffin, LCSW, is a teaching, training, and supervising analyst at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis (MIP), Clinical co- Director of MIP and MIP- One Year Program: Psychoanalysis and the Socio-Political World. Additionally, she is a faculty member of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies. (NIP),The Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) and an Adjunct Professor at the Silberman Graduate School of Social Work at Hunter College. 

Chanda is the co-author of The Secret Society: Perspectives from a Multiracial Cohort with Rossanna Eceygoyén and Julie Hyman and author of  the psychoanalytic Dialogues’ “snapshots”,"Who’s on my couch: BIPOC subjectivity and the climate crisis”, “Grief and Loss, Hopes and Desires,” the MIP blog essay: "Red Pill Psychoanalysis and the Matrix of Racial Roles,"  and the  Psychoanalytic Activist: "Centered." Chanda is a member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak and is in private practice in New York City.

Seminar Title: Anti-blackness and Psychoanalytic Praxis

Seminar Description: This seminar will cover the pervasive impact of anti-black logics and ideology on the socio-psyche of all identities mainstream and marginal, the environment, and beliefs systems. The discourse will include examples of its impact on patient and analyst in the consulting room and clinical skills to address racialized transference and countertransference from an Interpersonal/R

Readings: 

“The White Supremacist Within, Intergenerational Trauma and Dissociation, and Who’s on My Couch , Black subjectivity and the “natural “environment. (MUST BE REVISED)

Griffin, C.D.(2025) ( in press) The White Supremacist Within: Racial Dissociation and Multiplicity.

Griffin, C.D. (2022) "Who’s on My Couch? Considering BIPOC Subjectivity and the Climate Crisis," Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 32:4, 340-341, DOI: 10.1080/10481885.2022.2090807

Suchet, M. (2004). A relational encounter with race. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 14(4), 423–438. https://doi.org/10.1080/10481881409348796

Jackson, Z.I.(2020) Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World. 

Vaughans, K. (2014). To unchain haunting blood memories: Intergenerational trauma among African Americans.. In M. O’ Loughlin (Ed.) Fragments of Trauma and the Social Production of Suffering (277-290), Roman & Littlefield.

White, K. P. (2002). Surviving hating and being hated: Some personal thoughts about racism from a psychoanalytic perspective. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 38(3), 401–422. https://doi.org/10.1080/00107530.2002.10747173

Yi, K. (2014). Toward formulation of ethnic identity beyond the binary of White oppressor and racial other. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 31(3), 426–434. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036649

Patricia Gherovici, PhD

Psychoanalysis and Subjectivities in Transit

   May 9-10, 2026

Kinzie Hotel

20 West Kinzie Street, Chicago 

& ZOOM

Patricia Gherovici, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, analytic supervisor, and Sigourney Award recipient. Single-authored books include The Puerto Rican Syndrome (Gradiva Award and Boyer Prize),  Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism and Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference . With Chris Christian: Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious  (Gradiva Award and American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize); with Manya Steinkoler: Lacan On Madness: Madness Yes You Can't  ;  Lacan, Psychoanalysis and Comedy, and Psychoanalysis, Gender and Sexualities: From Feminism to Trans* (Gradiva Award). 

Seminar Title: Psychoanalysis and Subjectivities in Transit

Seminar Description: It is from a psychoanalytic perspective that this seminar will explore the logic of identification common in the United States—a country defined by social pressure to declare one’s identity. We can begin by assuming that nobody fully knows who one is. Claims of identity, which often collide with subjective experience, must be examined critically. If identity offers meaning and a sense of self, it can also diminish one’s singularity, which generates a struggle for those whose gender expressions like clothes, body language, speech patterns, social interactions, etc., do not align with social expectations traditionally associated with the sex they were assigned at birth or for those whose bodies are racialized. 

This seminar is based on the critique of psychoanalysis and sexual difference that the instructor developed through their psychoanalytic practice in Philadelphia’s barrio where they encountered populations marginalized by race.

Recommended Readings

Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (Chapter VII)

Lacan, “The Mirror Stage” https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Lacan Mirror Stage.pdf

Jack Halberstam, Trans: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability  (a selection) (electronic version available)

Janet Mock, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, and So Much More (New York: Atria Books, 2014) (A selection; electronic version available)

Gherovici & Manya Steinkoler,  Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Sexualities: From Feminism to Trans*,  Routledge, 2023. (electronic version available)

Andrea Long Chu,  “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy, and It Shouldn’t Have To.” 

The New York Times, 24 November 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/opinion/sunday/vaginoplasty-transgender-medicine.html

Sinan Richards, “A lesson for the world: Solange Faladé’s anti-colonialmultiracialism”

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09639489.2023.2264217

Paul B. Preciado, Can the monster speak? : A report to an academy of psychoanalysts (A selection; electronic version available)

Gherovici, “The monsters within and the monsters without: Gender dissidents and the future of psychoanalysis” Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Vol. 20, Issue, 1, 2023, 65-8 (pdf available)

Anton Hart, PhD, FABP, FIPA

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Diversity: Turning Toward the Other, Opening Oneself

   June 13-14, 2026

Kinzie Hotel

20 West Kinzie Street, Chicago 

& ZOOM

Dr. Hart is Training and Supervising Analyst and Faculty of the William Alanson White Institute. He lectures and consults nationally and internationally. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Psychoanalytic Psychology and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He has published articles and book chapters on a variety of subjects including psychoanalytic safety and mutuality, issues of racial, sexual and other diversities, and psychoanalytic pedagogy.  He is a member of the group, Black Psychoanalysts Speak, and, also, Co-produced and was featured in the documentary film of the same name. He teaches at  Mt. Sinai Hospital, the National Institute for the Psychotherapies National Training Program, the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia, and the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis. He serves as Co-Chair of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality. He is in the process of completing a book for Routledge entitled, Beyond Oaths or Codes: Toward a Relational Psychoanalytic Ethics. He is in full-time private practice of psychoanalysis, individual and couple psychotherapy, psychotherapy supervision and consultation, and organizational consultation, in New York.

Seminar title: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Diversity: Turning Toward the Other, Opening Oneself

Seminar description: This course aims to address issues of racial, ethnic and other diversities in the psychoanalytic situation, approaching them from a perspective that stands in contrast to current, popular approaches emphasizing the acquisition of “multicultural competence.” The course will examine the central roles of curiosity and openness, and also their obstacles, in considering how difference between self and other in the treatment process may be engaged and transcended. 

Preliminary reading List:

1. Course Introduction: Our Collective Ambivalence About Diversity Issues
2. Recommended reading: 

Hart, A. H. (2020). Principles for teaching diversity and otherness from a psychoanalytic perspective. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 56(2-3), 404-417.

B. Approaching Issues of Race

Reading: 

Stoute, B. J. & Slevin, M. (2017). Conversations on psychoanalysis and race: Part III Introduction. The American Psychoanalyst, 51(1), 8.

Holmes, D. (2017). The fierce urgency of now: An appeal to organized psychoanalysis to take a strong stand on race. The American Psychoanalyst, 51(1), 1-9.

Stoute, B. J. (2017). Race and racism in psychoanalytic thought: Ghosts in our nursery. The American Psychoanalyst, 51(1), 10-29.

Hart, A. (2017). From multicultural competence to radical openness: A psychoanalytic engagement of otherness. The American Psychoanalyst, 51(1), 12-27.

A. Thinking, Linking and Formulating

Reading:

Bion, W. R. (1959). (1959). Attacks on linking. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 40, 308-315

Recommended:

Stern, D. B. (2013). Relational freedom and therapeutic action. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 61, 227-255. 

B. Curiosity, Inquiry, Hermeneutics

Reading:

Davison, A. (2015). Hermeneutics and the question of transparency. Qualitative and Multi-Method Research: Newsletter of the American Political Science Association's QMMR Section, 13(1), 43-47.

Levenson, E. A. (1988). The pursuit of the particular: On the psychoanalytic inquiry. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 24, 1-16

C. Racism’s Impact

Reading:

Baldwin, J. (1962). Notes from a region in my mind. The New Yorker, November.

Recommended:

Gump, J. (2011). Reality matters: The shadow of trauma on African-American subjectivity. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 27 (1), 42-54.

Hart, A. H. (2019). The discriminatory gesture: A psychoanalytic consideration of posttraumatic reactions to incidents of racial discrimination, Psychoanalytic Social Work, 24 April, 2-20.

D. Psychoanalytic Inquiry into Racism in Shades of Black and White

Reading: 

White, K. P. (2002). Surviving hating and being hated: Some personal thoughts about racism from a psychoanalytic perspective. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 38, 401-422.

Recommended:

Holmes, D. E. (2019). Our country ‘tis of we and them: Psychoanalytic perspectives on our fractured American identity. American Imago, Volume 76, Number 3, (Fall) 359-379.

Suchet, M. (2007). Unraveling Whiteness. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 17:867-886.

A. Turning Toward the Other

Reading:

Matheny, B., Teng, B., & Hart, A. (2021). Radical Openness: An interview with Anton Hart (Part I). Room, 2:21, 14-17.

Recommended: 

Matheny, B., Hart, A., & Teng, B. (2021). Radical Openness: An interview with Anton Hart (Part II). Room, 6:21, 38-43.

B. Other Forms of Otherness Such as Sexual

Reading:

Easton, D. & Hardy, J. W. (2009). The ethical slut: A practical guide to polyamory, open relationships & other adventures. Berkeley: Celestial Arts. (Chapters 2-3)

Recommended:

Bersani, L. & Phillips, A. (2008). Intimacies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [selections]

C. A “Subversive” Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Perspectives

Reading:

Moss, D. (2021). On having whiteness. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic  Association, 69(2), 355-371.

Recommended:

Hymer, S. (2005). Subversive redemption in psychoanalysis. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 65:207-217.