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

Instructor:  Peter Reiner, PhD, LMFT

Meeting dates (2020): 

Nov. 2, Nov. 9, Nov. 16, Nov. 30, Dec. 7, Dec, 14 

Meeting time: Mondays, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Location:  Virtual (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 and a Board Member of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) and Faculty at The Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.  He is a psychoanalyst with separate licenses 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.