:: Advanced Training in Couples and Family Therapy ::
ONE-YEAR PROGRAM IN COUPLE THERAPY
2006
Enhancing the psychological functioning of couples and families serves as the touchstone for advanced training at PCFINE. Its one-year program in Couple Therapy combines a psychoanalytic perspective with an understanding of close relationships as dynamic systems. Licensed clinicians are trained to work from multiple perspectives and to develop a sophisticated approach that appreciates both individual and interpersonal complexity. The program's core faculty consists of senior clinicians, many of whom are leading practitioners in the field.
There are 9 3-hour sessions on Sunday mornings throughout the year, with two additional 5 hour Sunday sessions. In addition, students will participate in a two-hour once a month small group discussion with a faculty member. Small-group meeting times are arranged prior at the beginning of the year and are included in the yearly fee. Additional workshops with guest faculty are offered during the year. An optional second year program is available to students who have completed the first year course.
The optional second year of training exists for students who, after completing the first year, desire to broaden and deepen their grasp of conceptual and technical aspects of couple therapy, including closer supervision of their clinical work. Since the inception of the training program, most students have chosen to continue their training with us not only for the second year, but also for less formal third and fourth years in the form of ongoing supervision groups and case conferences led by various faculty members.
Faculty includes Susan Abelson, Ph.D., Diane Englund, LICSW, Arthur Klein, Ph.D., Ira Lable, M.D., Carolynn Maltas, Ph.D., Justin Newmark, Ph.D., Anna Ornstein, Ph.D., Kenneth Reich, Ed.D., Sharon Roberts, Ph.D., Susan Rosbrow-Reich, Ph.D., Joseph Shay, Ph.D., Gerald Stechler, Ph.D., Steven Zeitlin, Ph.D.
For more information, please call 781-433-0906 or e-mail pine@analysis.com.
The Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Institute of New England announces its one-year program in psychodynamic couple therapy, with optional second and third years, for clinicians who want to expand their clinical skills in this area. We will explore multiple perspectives and integrate various theoretical models that extend the horizons of psychoanalysis to include couples.
The PCFINE faculty will present an integrated conceptual model that includes psychoanalytic ways of understanding unconscious functioning in couples, and systemic insights into the organization and structure of interpersonal conflict. In addition to training in couple therapy, this program will expand one's capacity to recognize and address relational and contextual issues in the lives of patients in individual treatment. Over the course of the year, faculty presentations will emphasize clinical practice, and time will be set aside at each session for students to present their clinical work with couples, including videotaped material.
Website: www.pcfine.org Phone: 781-433-0906
The following topics will be covered:
- Therapeutic Action in Couple Therapy, Part 1. Intimate partners often perceive one another as if they were someone else, a projection from their inner relational world, rather than recognizing and responding to the real partner. Both psychoanalytic and systemic theories contribute to our understanding of how such perceptions may increasingly constrict their interactions and create intense affect cycles.
- Therapeutic Action in Couple Therapy, Part 2. Once there is some clarity and consciousness of the origins and effects of their misperceptions, defensive behaviors and interpersonal strategies, members of the couple can begin to see their own contributions to the interpersonal conflicts and dysfunctional interactions. In this way new, more loving and complex perceptions of one another can come into being. The changes in relational satisfaction stemming from this therapeutic action will be examined from the perspectives of both psychoanalysis and systemic thinking.
- Initial Stages. The early stages of couple treatment can be critical. The challenges include managing intense affects and impulses in the relationship as well as early negative transference reactions. Simultaneously, there are multiple immediate goals of developing good working alliances, manifesting neutrality, and creating a treatment framework while determining the fundamental operative dynamics in both individuals as well as in the relationship.
- Role of the Therapist. The couple therapist must move from a dyadic to a triadic position - a developmental leap requiring a complex level of participation with the multiplicity of interpersonal and intrapsychic interactions that occur. Enactments between the partners in a couple are frequent, and often volatile or destructive. The techniques for balanced listening and the increased activity level create unique challenges: to contain intense affects, to have the capacity to move empathically between highly conflicted positions and perspectives, and to provide new relational experiences and a model for adaptive relating.
- Transference, Countertransference and Interactional Projection. Transferences between the partners are intricately entwined and more central than transference to the therapist. Under the sway of transferences partners can exert a regressive force on each other and on their relationship that unconsciously creates relational situations they consciously strive to avert. The therapist's countertrans-ference may be very intense and negative, at any given time, toward one or the other of the partners. The therapist must keep in conscious retrieval a psychological knowledge of the history of his or her own dyadic and triadic relationship dynamics.
- Technical Strategies. The therapist has to learn to recognize and articulate the adaptive, self-protective mechanisms each member of the couple uses, as well as their residual entanglement with the primary figures of their childhood. This awareness can yield a greater sense of empathy between members of the couple and guide the therapist in making active interventions to change dysfunctional interactions. A systemic understanding of circular and repetitious patterns will also inform technical decisions.
- Conjoint Individual and Couple Therapy. Frequently, couples are in both individual and concurrent couple therapy. Communication between the therapists is fraught with complexity and bias. Often a therapist sides with one of the partners, and even the couple's therapist may do this. These issues will be examined in the context of the relationship and the countertrans-ferences that arise.
FACULTY
Susan Abelson, Ph.D., Diane Englund, LICSW, Arthur Klein, Ph.D., Ira Lable, M.D., Carolynn Maltas, Ph.D., Justin Newmark, Ph.D., Kenneth Reich, Ed.D., Sharon Roberts, Ph.D., Susan Rosbrow-Reich, Ph.D., Joseph Shay, Ph.D., Gerald Stechler, Ph.D., Steven Zeitlin, Ph.D.
VISITING FACULTY
Virginia Goldner, Ph.D., Anna Ornstein, M.D.
SCHEDULE
Classes generally meet Sundays once a month from 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 noon at the homes of the coordinators, except for the first and last classes which will be from 9:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. In addition there will be an orientation brunch the Sunday prior to the first class and a second session in October. The first half year will be coordinated by Justin Newmark, and will meet at his home in Newton; the second half year will be co-ordinated by Joseph Shay and will meet at his home in Cambridge.
Tentative Dates for 2006-2007 PCFINE Classes: (Meeting times are 9-12 Sunday, unless otherwise indicated.)
9/10 - Introductory Brunch 9-11, 9/17 (9-2), 10/1, 10/15, 11/19, 12/10, 1/21, 2/11, 3/13, 4/29, 5/20 (9-2).
In addition, students will participate in a two-hour once a month small group discussion with a faculty member. Small group meeting times will be arranged prior to the orientation.
TUITION AND FEES
A non-refundable deposit of $100 is due with the application. The annual fee is $1500. Private supervision can be arranged at a reduced fee with any of the faculty.
CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS
This course is co-sponsored by PCFINE and the Massachusetts Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology (MAPP). MAPP is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education for psychologists. MAPP maintains responsibility for the program. Social Workers may call 781-433-0906 to get the authorization number.
APPLICATION
Click to go to the printable application page.
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