Available courses

Continuous Case Conference

The continuous case seminar extends throughout the three-year program. During the course of this seminar, cases in treatment by students will be chosen that present ongoing work with each of the personality disorders. Cases will be supervised in class by a faculty member, and opportunities will exist for class members to offer their comments and contributions regarding the ongoing treatment process.

The extended nature of this class enables students to see the work as it develops across time, and to begin to understand the dynamics of each of the disorders as well as offering candidates a forum in which to assess the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions as they are used in actual clinical cases.

The Continuous Case Conference unit runs for the duration of the three-year training program. This unit provides candidates the opportunity to examine, in-depth, psychotherapeutic process-in-action, as it pertains to diagnosis and treatment of the personality disorders from a Mastersonian perspective.
As the unit name suggests, a clinical case is studied for an extended period (10 sessions) to facilitate reflection on theory and its application in clinical work. Cases chosen for this unit in the first year of training will ideally have bearing on the disorder being addressed in theory classes. The presenting candidate will provide a full outline of their clinical case, using the formal IMI format, and will bring prepared verbatim session transcripts to subsequent sessions.

Class discussion, as group members grapple with diagnostic and treatment considerations, strongly supports the process of internalising understanding of the Masterson Approach. Candidates are encouraged to ask questions for clarification, to reflect together, and to extend viewpoints relevant to the case being presented. Issues explored will include differential diagnosis, choice of therapeutic interventions, therapeutic alliance, stages of psychotherapy, transference and countertransference, and maintaining therapeutic neutrality.

Normal Personality Development

This course provides an overview of the processes involved in psychological development from infancy onward. It offers an understanding of the complicated interplay between the external and internal forces that influence the developing child. In the course of this learning, an attempt will be made to update and integrate a growing body of theoretical knowledge concerning affect, memory, and temperament.

Attachment theory, separation-individuation theory, psychic structure building, and the development of the sense of self as put forth in the contributions of Freud, Melanie Klein, Bowlby, Mahler, Siegel and Stern, among others, will be examined.

Making Freud Conscious

This course is designed to introduce some of the basic theoretical and technical discoveries made by Freud in his relentless pursuit of the workings of mental life. In his theories, Freud explored the workings of the individual mind, but he as well stretched his thoughts and imaginings to explore fundamental principles governing all of human nature.

In perusing Freud’s writings on the technique of psychoanalysis we will explore issues surrounding transference, resistance and defense, dream interpretation and the development of Freud’s thinking as it progressed from an affect-trauma model through the topographic model, and finally to the structural model.

Readings will be organized loosely into mainly theory and mainly practice categories, although these categories are obviously interrelated.