Curriculum: Child & Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program

First Year:

Overview of Working with Children

  • Beginning Treatment
  • Assessment and Treatment Planning with Child and Parents
  • Therapeutic Alliance with the Child

Infancy: Psychoanalytic Theory of Development from Birth to 3 Year

  • Pregnancy
  • Attachment
  • Emergent Self
  • Infant Observation

Theory and Technique of Play

  • Use of Fantasy Play & Enactments
  • Transference,Counter-Transference
  • Dreams, Drawings, Children’s Books

Early Childhood Development: 3 to 6 Years

  • The Oedipal Phase
  • Affect Regulation
  • Mechanisms of Defense

Failures in Attachment

  • Working with Schools
  • Attachment Theory
  • Problems of Attachment
    •    Immigrant Child
    •    Impoverished Child
    •    Child of Divorce
  • Childhood Trauma

Early Experiences of Loss and the Development of Language

Childhood Trauma

Middle Childhood

  • Demands of School
  • Socialization
  • The Effects of Technoculture
  • Development in Children’s Literature

Development of Children's Literature

Second Year:

Adolescence through Emerging Adulthood

  • Disorders of Adolescence – Part I
  • Body Dysmorphic Disorder
  • Self-Mutilation
  • Substance Abuse
  • Puberty through Adolescence – Part II 

Case Conference

  • Students learn to summarize and present treatment cases

Analysis of the Roots of Childhood Disorders

  • The Developmental Line of Human Feeding
  • Eating Disorders
  • Neurobiology and Autistic Spectrum Disorders
  • Sexuality/Gender Identity/LGBT
  • Psychoanalytic Theories of Development
  • The Asperger’s Child in Treatment
  • Mourning & Melancholia
  • Freud's Contributions

Working with Parents

  • Parent Loss
  • Divorce
  • Single Parent
  • Step-Parent/Adoptive Parent/Grandparents/Foster Parent

Developmental Psychopathology

  • Anxiety Disorders
  • Impulse Disorders, Tic Disorder
  • ADHD
  • Mood Disorders
  • Aggression and Depression              

Logistics of Setting up a Private Practice

  • Treatment Contracts, Fees