The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) is pleased to announce a new series of opportunities for growth, learning, and connection in the 2024 – 2025 Psychoanalytic Explorations program.

Each of the Psychoanalytic Explorations courses is open to all and allows participants to learn from seasoned psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically-oriented practitioners who have selected topics based on their particular interests and expertise.

Six different 12-hour courses will be offered in the upcoming academic year.  All will meet virtually, via Zoom, weekly for two hours on six dates.  Class size is highly limited in order to facilitate each individual’s learning and participation.  There is a separate registration process for each class; you may register for one or more classes, depending on your own interests and needs.

Twelve (12) Illinois CE credits are available for each course. All CCP programs and course offerings qualify for (Illinois) Continuing Education (CE) credits for LCSW, LCPC, PhD, PsyD, and LMFT licensed clinicians.  The cost of each course is $500.00.  If you would like more information, please contact Derrick Hassert, PhD, Chair of the Psychoanalytic Explorations Program at :  DerrickHassertPhD@outlook.com.

To register for one or more courses, please use the form at this link: 

Psychoanalytic Explorations Program Registration

(Please note:  Refunds for registrations cancelled at least 3 weeks before a course begins are issued as credit for CCP memberships, courses, and programs.  There are no refunds for registrations cancelled within 3 weeks of a course’s start date.)

These are the six topics:

Here are the details:

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Course Title: Object Relations Theories (12 CE credits, IL)

Instructor: Frank Summers Ph.D., ABPP

Meeting Dates (2024): Mondays; Sept 9, 16, 23, 30, October 6, 13.

Meeting Time: 10 AM-12 PM (CT)

Location: via Zoom

Course Description:

This course is designed as a 12-hour introduction to the nature of object relations theories. Each class will focus on a different object relations theory. Fairbairn, the Kleinian School, Winnicott, self-psychology, and the relational perspective will all be covered. The purpose is to familiarize the student with the most important concepts of each theory and the clinical implications that may be derived from them. The emphasis will be on the unique contribution of each theory and its technical approach. It is expected that the students will gain an appreciation for the unique contribution of each theory and, most importantly, the clinical strategy that follows from each way of thinking about clinical material. The emphasis will be on the variety of clinical strategies that issue from the various object relations theories. Nonetheless, the last class will be devoted to a way of integrating the theories to form an object relation paradigm. In this way, it is hoped the students will gain an understanding of how object relations theories are different and still share a commonality.

Biographical Information:

Dr. Frank Summers is Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, a Diplomat in Clinical Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology, Fellow of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association, and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. Dr. Summers is the author of four books, including The Psychoanalytic Vision: The Experiencing Subject, Transcendence, and the Therapeutic Process, winner of the Gradiva Award for the best psychoanalytic book of 2013. His other three books include a best-selling textbook, Object Relations Theories and Psychopathology: A Comprehensive Text, and two clinical monographs explicating his theory of psychoanalytic therapy, Transcending The Self: An Object Relations Model of Psychoanalytic Therapy and Self Creation: Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Art of the Possible. In addition, he has published widely in psychoanalytic journals on these topics as well as the application of psychoanalytic therapy to character disorders.

Course Title: Our Therapeutic Frames and Settings: From concept to clinical application (12 CE Credits, IL)

Instructor: Edurne Chopeitia, MA, LPC

Meeting dates (2024): Saturdays; September 14, 21, 28; October 5, 19, 26.

Meeting time: 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. (CT)

Location: 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. Edurne is a clinical psychologist from Uruguay who has been living in the United States for 27 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 and offers therapy and consultation in-person and by telehealth with adults and couples, providing brief and long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy, and sex therapy, in English and Spanish.

Course Title: The Use of Balint Groups as a Tool for Psychoanalytic Thinking (12 CE credits, IL)

Instructor:  José R. Niño, MA, LCPC

Meeting dates (2024): September 28, October 5, 19, 26 and November 2, 9

Meetings time: Saturdays 11am to 1pm (CST)

Location: via Zoom

 

Course Description:

Balint groups were developed by Michael and Enid Balint at the Tavistock Clinic in London during the 1950s, where they began putting together groups to help physicians develop a deeper understanding of the emotional experiences of their patients and how physicians were responding to them via transference and countertransference. Balint groups have often been referred to as the most practical way of helping clinicians immerse themselves in psychoanalytic thinking.

While presenting the history and theory of Balint Groups, this course will mainly focus on experiential learning. This will be accomplished by having participants actively take part in a formal Balint group structure followed by a debriefing to process the group experience, learn about the functions of the group, and understand the role of group leader. Balint groups are not therapy groups, support groups, process groups, or formal clinical case presentations of patients. Rather, Balint groups are meetings of clinicians lead by a credentialed, trained, Balint group leader who guides the group in talking about a clinical encounter with a patient using the psychoanalytic principles of free association, divergent thinking, imagining, speculation, interpretation, and fantasy. The group focuses on the clinician, the patient, and the therapeutic relationship, with the discussion being held in an environment of mutual respect, emotional honesty and ownership, confidentiality, and camaraderie.

Important Note:  Because most of the learning in this course is experiential through participating in a Balint group structure, a minimum of 4 participants are required to make the course worthwhile and meet the learning objectives. If less than 4 participants register the course may be postponed or cancelled.

Biographical Information:

Jose R. Nino is Visiting Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. Jose is a bilingual (English/Spanish) licensed clinical professional counselor in private practice in Chicago, IL. He graduated with an MD degree from The Colombian School of Medicine, University El Bósque, Bogotá, Colombia, and obtained a master’s degree in counseling from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. He taught family medicine residents, medical students, and counseling and social work students. In 2020, he left his position as the behavioral medicine faculty at a Chicago community hospital family medicine residency program to focus full time on his private practice and consulting work. In 2021 he became a Credential Balint Group Leader by the American Balint Society (ABS) and in 2024, he completed the CCP two-year Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program.

 

Course Title: Passion, Shame, and The Freedom To Become (12 CE credits, IL)

Instructor: Peter Shabad, Ph.D

Meeting Dates (2024): Tuesdays; October 8, 15, 22, 29, November 5, 12.

Meeting Time: 7 PM – 9 PM

Location:  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 the 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 is Teaching and Supervisory Faculty of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at Northwestern University Medical School, as well as 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). Dr. Shabad is currently working on a new book entitled Seizing The Vital Moment: Passion, Shame, and Self-Realization to be published by Routledge. He is also the author of numerous papers and book chapters in psychoanalysis on diverse topics such as loss and mourning, shame, resentment, and regret. Dr. Shabad has a private practice in Chicago in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy.

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

Instructor: Peter Reiner, PhD, LMFT

Meeting dates (2025): Tuesdays; March 18, 25; April 1, 8, 15, 22

Meeting time: 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. (CT)

Location: 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 and former Vice President of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP); and Faculty at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. He is Adjunct Clinical Consultant for the Integrative Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy Program of The Institute for Clinical Social Work. Peter is a psychoanalyst who is licensed as a clinical psychologist and as a marriage and family therapist. Peter was Faculty at The Feinberg School of Medicine -- Northwestern University; 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.

Course Title: Thoughts and Thinkers in Neuropsychoanalysis (12 CE credits, IL)

Instructor: Derrick Hassert, PhD

Meeting dates (2025): Wednesdays; January 22, 29, February 5, 12, 19, 26. 

Meetings time: 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. (CST),

Location: via Zoom

Course Description:

Neuropsychoanalysis attempts to integrate insights derived from the study of the brain with the clinical findings of psychoanalysis to enrich our understanding of human experience and behavior, and offers a more detailed picture of the biological underpinnings of subjective experience. This course will provide an overview of the essential theoretical contributions that have emerged from the incorporation of neuroscientific findings into psychoanalytic thought.

After reviewing the basics of brain functioning, participants will discuss key concepts derived from the work of Mark Solms, Jaak Panksepp, Allan Schore, and Jeremy Holmes.  We’ll also appraise Otto Kernberg’s recent reflections about the implications of these findings for certain theoretical and clinical concepts, notably those regarding the centrality of emotion in clinical work and in the formation of the self.  Finally, participants will consider how debates in psychoanalysis have influenced research in the affective and cognitive neurosciences.            

Biographical Information:

Derrick Hassert, PhD is Visiting Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, Faculty at the Institute for Advanced Psychotherapy at Loyola University Chicago, and Professor of Psychology at Trinity College in Palos Heights, Illinois. He is an advanced candidate at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and a Clinical Fellow of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society. Derrick received training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy through the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology and the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He maintains a private practice of psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy in Matteson, Illinois and by telehealth.