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.