This course is designed for advanced clinicians and candidates in psychoanalytic training who wish to deepen their applied clinical thinking beyond introductory theory. Rather than revisiting the foundations of classical psychoanalysis, we focus on contemporary models that shape actual therapeutic decision-making today. The emphasis throughout is practical: how theory informs listening, formulation, timing, and intervention in the consulting room.
Modern psychoanalytic practice is pluralistic. Clinicians draw from conflict theory, structural and deficit models, object relations, self psychology, relational and intersubjective approaches, attachment theory, trauma and dissociation studies, and mentalization-based thinking. Each perspective highlights different aspects of psychic organization and implies different technical moves. The task is not to choose one school, but to develop disciplined flexibility—knowing when to interpret, when to contain, when to mentalize, when to repair rupture, and when to protect fragile structure.
Across the course, we treat the clinical situation itself as primary data. Transference, countertransference, enactment, and the frame are examined as living processes rather than abstract concepts. Through case discussion and theoretical integration, participants will refine their capacity to formulate dynamically and intervene with precision, responsiveness, and depth.
