NYU Psychoanalytic Institute
Training & Education Programs

Adult Psychoanalytic Curriculum

Technique I:
Introduction to Technique

Reading List

With this class, candidates begin a series of courses that, combined with supervised analytic work and continuous case presentations, fosters the development of clinical analytic skills. This course is a first introduction to such concepts as "analyzability and the ability to analyze," "psychoanalysis versus psychotherapy," "working alliance," "psychoanalytic interventions," "resistance," "countertransference," and "psychoanalytic process."

Return to Top

Psychoanalytic Assessment

Reading List
In this course we review evaluations of several patients who are being considered for psychoanalytic treatment. We will focus on how to determine if psychoanalysis is the preferred treatment for a given patient, discussing readings in conjunction with the clinical material. Ongoing work-ups will be presented by two or three candidates and one of the instructors.

Return to Top

Development I
Introduction to Development

Return to Top

Freud's Clinical Sources

Reading List
In the eight weeks of this course, we read two of Freud’s case histories indepth: the first, Dora, and the last, the Wolfman. We use these to explore the clinical origins of psychoanalytic understanding, to look at the unsolved puzzles and also to anticipate subsequent theory while experiencing the excitement of discovery.

Return to Top

Psychoanalytic Case Presentation

Return to Top

Methodology I
Psychoanalytic Listening

Reading List

Methodology is an internal part of technique. It deals with the way that a psychoanalyst gathers information and understanding of a patient. This course is designed to introduce new candidates to the various ways psychoanalysts listen to their patients. Clinical material from instructors is utilized along with a survey of readings on how an analyst listens to material by such authors as Freud, Arlow, Levy and Inderbitzen, Gray, Schwaber, Poland, Gardner, McLaughlin, Smith and Helm.

Return to Top

Theory I
Overview of Psychoanalytic Theories

Reading List
This course is intended to provide an overview of the most important theories that have arisen in the history of psychoanalysis thus far. The overview is chronologically organized, so that when these theories are encountered in greater depth in subsequent courses, candidates will have some historical and conceptual context by which to evaluate them. The course will examine a theory in relation to the work that preceded it, and indicate what future theoretical developments are hinted at, or allowed for, by the theory under examination.

Three questions will guide our discussions of any theory:

1. What perceived deficiency in a previous theory was the newer one attempting to address?

2. If there was not a deficiency per se, what aspect was felt to require special attention or highlighting that was neglected in the previous theory?

3. What are the implications for technique of the replacement theory?

Return to Top

Theory II
Origins of Freud's Drive Theory

Reading List

This course deals for the most part with the revolutionary concept with which Freud founded psychoanalysis—the theories of the instinctual drive and the dynamic unconscious. We read the foundational texts of drive theory with some essential commentaries. We use this inquiry into the drive as an occasion to explore what theorizing is in psychoanalysis. The drive is the mainspring of wishing, it is the mind's active principle, the subversive, sexual constituent of the unconscious. It comprises the radical core of psychoanalysis, an inner nucleus supplemented, but never surpassed, by all subsequent theory." These are the words of the course instructors who teach Freud's original model of the mind not as dead history, but as a living text and conceptualization from which springs their own understanding of the human mind.

Return to Top

Freud's Papers on Technique

Reading List

This course traces the thought of the first psychoanalyst as he comes to understand what is involved in treatment and puts his understanding into rules and terms that guide us. It was conceived and is taught by a very creative thinker in our field. To better appreciate the logic of the rules and the meaning of the terms, we compare Freud's beginning problems with our own. Practitioners will feel more at home with their role as they get a sense of how the analyst's role developed, and their understanding of Freud's purpose will liberate their own creativity, show them what's at stake in controversies about treatment, and tantalize them with the mysteries that remain for continued research.

Return to Top

Introduction to Clinical Work: Part II
Selection I: Concepts of Analyzability and the Process of Assessment

Reading List

Return to Top

Development II
Infancy and Early Childhood

Reading List

Return to Top

Development III
Infant and Child Observation

Reading List

Return to Top

Introduction to Clinical Work: Part III
Continuous Case I

This is the candidates first "taste" of analytic work in the curriculum, a presentation, usually by one of the first year candidates, of material from the opening of an analysis. The early unfolding of the analysis in its technical and theoretical aspects is followed by the class with two senior analysts. The candidates get a first chance (the first of many) to see how the technical and methodological precepts they have been learning are put into practice.

Return to Top

Theory III
Freud's Papers on Metapsychology

We turn our attention in the development of psychoanalytic theory to what are known as Freud's "metapsychological papers." On the way to the structural theory, Freud examined narcissism and its ancillary topics: narcissistic erotism, paranoia, sadism, masochism and melancholia. We look closely at Freud's changing ideas about the ego ideal, object relations, transference and his new understanding of aggression. The lead instructor brings a unique and thought-provoking perspective to these issues. The course prepares candidates to understand the range of psychic functions that the structural model of 1923 attempts to encompass.

Return to Top

Scholarly Reading & Writing I

Reading List

This five-week course introduces candidates to the notion that reading and writing are considered integral elements of their emerging psychoanalytic identities. From the first week, we establish the candidates as members of the editorial board of an imaginary journal. Our readings are each considered as though they were being submitted to that journal. In weeks 2 and 3, candidates share critical responses to texts already published in the analytic literature. In preparation for weeks 4 and 5, candidates write editorial responses to texts that have been submitted for publication.

Return to Top

On to the Second Year