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Certificate Courses

Individual Certificate Courses at ORI correspond with the courses in all  Certificate Programs.

All Individual Certificate Courses are offered in VIRTUAL and In-PERSON format. Any Certificate Course at ORI offers 12.5 hrs of academic/ continuing education psychoanalytic/ psychotherapy credit, and it can be used for transfer to the appropriate Certificate Program in future.

Certificate Courses Offered in 2021-2022Academic Year:

9/2, 9, 23, 30 (Thursdays, 7pm – 9:55pm) – Psychoanalysis after Freud: Creative and Controversial Successors (with Jeffrey B. Rubin, PhD)
9/26/21 (Sunday, 9:30am – 4pm) – Childhood trauma and psychological development of a mass murderer through the lens of Fairbairn’s Object Relations theory (with David Celani, PhD)

10/14/21 – 12/23/21 (Thursdays, 8:40pm – 9:55pm) – Introduction to the Object Relations Clinical Theory and Its Clinical Experiential Applications (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
10/14/21 – 12/23/21 (Thursdays, 8:40pm – 9:55pm) – Self-analysis, Self-Transformation, and Self-Creation: Bringing Together East and West (with Jeffrey B. Rubin, PhD)
10/14/21 – 12/23/21 (Thursdays, 7:15pm – 8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
1/13/22 – 3/17/22 (Thursdays, 8:40pm – 9:55pm) – The Internal World, Psychic Fantasy, and the Evolution of the Psychic Self (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
1/13/22-3/17/22 (Thursdays, 7:15pm – 8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
3/31/22 – 6/9/22 (Thursdays, 8:40pm – 9:55pm) – Sandor Ferenczi and His Disciples  (with Stefanie Teitelbaum, LCSW-R, NCPsyA)
3/31/22 – 6/9/22 (Thursdays, 7:15pm – 8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
April 2022, TBA –  IPA’S Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis on NACHTRÄGLICHKEIT (with Eva Papiasvili, PhD, ABPP) – elective course for the students of the One Year and Two Year Programs

Dates TBA – Infant Observational Research and Its Impact on Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique (with Ann Rose Simon, LCSW-R, LP)
Dates TBA – Examining Cultural Artifacts: A Tool for Personal and Professional Development (course/ seminar with Robinson Lilienthal, PhD)

Certificate Courses Offered in 2020-2021 Academic Year:

9/10-10/1 (Thursdays, 7pm-9:45pm, with 15 min break included); & 10/3, 2020 (Saturday, 9:30am-12:15pm, with 15 min break included) – elective for trainees of the One Year and Two Years Programs – The Developmental Self and Object Relations approach of James F. Masterson (with Loray Daws, PhD)
10/8/20 – 12/17/20 (Thursdays, 8:40pm – 9:55pm) – Introduction to the Object Relations Clinical Theory and Its Clinical Experiential Applications (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
10/8/20 – 12/17/20 (Thursdays, 8:40pm – 9:55pm) – Ronald Fairbairn’s Psychoanalytic Model of the Human Psyche and Its Clinical Applications (with David Celani, PhD & Jack Schwartz, PsyD, LCSW)
10/8/20 – 12/17/20 (Thursdays, 7:15pm – 8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
1/14/20-3/18/20 (Thursdays, 8:40pm – 9:55pm) – American Object Relations School of Psychoanalysis (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
1/14/21-3/18/21 (Thursdays, 7:15pm – 8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
4/01/21-6/10/21 (Thursdays, 8:40pm – 9:55pm) – Psychoanalytic and Object Relations Theory of and Practice with Dreams (with Stefanie Teitelbaum, LCSW-R, NCPsyA). 22.5 CEs
4/01/21-6/10/21 (Thursdays, 7:15pm – 8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
4/10/21 & 4/24/21 (Saturdays, 9:00am – 2:00pm) – The Role of Free Associations in Psychoanalysis: Then and Now. Free Associations: IPA’S Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (with Eva Papiasvili, PhD, ABPP) 21 CEs

Certificate Courses Offered in 2019-2020 Academic Year:

10/3/19 – 12/19/19 (Thursdays, 8:40pm – 9:55pm) – Introduction to the Object Relations Clinical Theory and Its Clinical Experiential Applications (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
10/3/19 – 12/19/19 (Thursdays, 8:40pm – 9:55pm) – Attachment, Psychosomatics, Trauma and Post-Traumatic Growth through the Lens of Neuropsychoanalysis (with Inna Rozentsvit, M.D., PhD)

10/3/19 – 12/19/19 (Thursdays, 7:15pm – 8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
1/9/20 – 3/12/20 (Thursdays, 8:40pm – 9:55pm) – Dissociation, splitting, and closet narcissism (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, D.Litt)
1/9/20- 3/12/20  (Thursdays, 7:15pm – 8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
3/26/20 – 6/04/20 (Thursdays, 7:50pm – 9:05pm) – D. W. Winnicott: The Lens of Primary Creativity (with Stefanie Teitelbaum, LCSW-R, NCPsyA)
3/26/20 – 6/04/20 (Thursdays, 6:20pm – 7:35pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with usan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)

Certificate Courses Offered in 2018-2019 Academic Year:

10/4/18 – 12/20/18 (Thursdays, 8:40pm -9:55pm) – Introduction to the Object Relations Clinical Theory and Its Clinical Experiential Applications (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
10/26, 11/16, 12/07/2018; 1/11/19 (Fridays, 6:30pm-9:00pm) – Transference: Evolution from Freudian to Object Relations and Other Perspectives Worldwide (with Eva Papiasvili, PhD, ABPP)

10/4/18 – 12/20/18 (Thursdays, 7:15pm -8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
1/10/19 – 3/14/19 (Thursdays, 8:40pm-9:55pm) – Contribution of the British and American Object Relations Theorists to Clinical Work (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, D.Litt)
1/10/19 – 3/14/19  (Thursdays, 7:15pm-8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
4/04/19 – 6/06/19 (Thursdays, 8:15pm-9:40pm) – Object Relations Perspectives on Classical Cases in Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Schreber Case (with Stefanie Teitelbaum, LCSW-R, NCPsyA)
3/28/19 – 6/06/19 (Thursdays, 6:15pm -7:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with usan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)

Certificate Courses Offered in 2017-2018 Academic Year:

10/5/17 – 12/21/17 (Thursdays, 8:40pm -9:55pm) – Introduction to the Object Relations Clinical Theory and Its Clinical Experiential Applications (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
10/6, 10/27, 11/17, 12/15/2017 (Fridays, 5:30pm-7:40pm) – Countertransference: Clinical Theory and Technique (with Eva Papiasvili, PhD, ABPP)

10/5/17 – 12/21/17 (Thursdays, 7:15pm -8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
1/11/18 – 3/15/18 (Thursdays, 8:40pm-9:55pm) – Narcissistic Character And Narcissistic Dynamics (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, D.Litt)
1/11/18 – 3/15/18 (Thursdays, 7:15pm-8:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NCPsyA, DLitt)
4/12/18 – 6/14/18 (Thursdays, 8:40pm-9:55pm) – Caesura and Thalassa; A Dialectical Playground with FREUD – FERENCZI – BION (with Stefanie Teitelbaum, LCSW-R, LP, NCPsyA)
4/12/18 – 6/14/18  (Thursdays, 6:15pm -7:30pm) – “Analyst as Instrument” Group Supervision Class (with Stefanie Teitelbaum, LCSW-R; LP, NCPsyA)

Certificate Courses we offer in 2016-2017 Academic Year:

Certificate Courses Offered in 2015-2016 Academic Year:

Certificate Courses Offered in 2014-2015 Academic Year:

Certificate Courses Offered in 2013-2014 Academic Year:

FEES:

Registration fee (for each course, if not taken as a part of one of the certificate programs) is $25.
Tuition for each 10-week class/course (Clinical Theory or Group Supervision) is $450 (unless specified otherwise in the course description).

Cancellation policy for training courses/ educational activities:
a) if cancelled before the first session/course date – full tuition refund is afforded, but not the registration fees (if any);
b) if cancelled after the date of the first session – 1/2 of tuition is refunded, but not the registration fees (if any);
c) if cancelled after two sessions of the course – 1/4 of tuition is refunded, but not the registration fees (if any);
d) if cancelled after the third session – no refund is afforded.

Useful information related to getting financial assistance for your education from your employer:
Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (Training Foundation)  is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization.
Our EIN # 13-3697333. We are chartered by NYS Department of Education to provide post-graduate training in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

Certificate Courses offered in 2015-2016 Academic Year:

For more information, please contact ORI Administrator, Inna Rozentsvit, M.D., PhD, MSciEd, Administrator/ Registrar, @ 646-522-1056 and/ or .

Certificate Courses offered in 2014-2015 Academic Year:

Certificate Courses offered in 2013-2014 Academic Year:

Certificate Courses in 2012-2013 Academic Year:

Introduction to the Object Relations Clinical Theory & Technique of Psychotherapy

Dates: October 3 – December 20, 2012, Thursdays; 8:15-9:30 pm.
Instructor: Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NPsyA, D.Litt
Location: 115 East 9th Street; 12P, NYC, 10003

This 10-week course will offer an interplay of readings on clinical technique, in vivo role-playing of patients in the class
with the instructor playing the psychoanalyst, and readings on in-depth clinical cases.

The course will introduce students to critical psychic structure issues related to character disorder pathology and
the related developmental issues.  Clinical technique will be addressed through both readings in British Object Relations
Theory and American Object Relations theory, as well as in “in vivo” role playing demonstrations. Trough the role playing,
the students will have an opportunity to “get inside the skin of their patients,” or experience their patients from the inside
out, while the Instructor will play the role of the psychoanalytic object relations psychotherapist-analyst. British Object relations theory will come alive through the writings and work of American Object Relations theorists.

Course syllabus
Course description

Post-graduate psychoanalytic education credits offered: 12.5hrs.

Borderline Personality Disorder:  Its Phenomena and Treatment

Dates: October 11 – December 20, 2012, Thursdays; 8:15-9:30 pm.
Instructor: Eva Papiasvili, PhD, ABPP
Location: 136 East, 55th Street, Apt. 6A, NYC, NY 10022 (SE corner of 55th Street and Lexington Ave, on a IRT line) or virtual participation via audio/video or audio only.

Readings of Freud, Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Kernberg, Segal, Masterson, Jacobson, Bowlby, and others – about Borderline character disorder patients and their developmental disruptions and pathology will be discussed.

Role-playing will also be employed, to help students to appreciate self-sabotaging behaviors of patients with BPD and to introduce boundaries and limits.

Issues of self-integration and separation-individuation will be discussed, along with the character defenses related to developmental arrest, such as primitive splitting, primitive idealization and primitive devaluation (spoiling), paranoid rage, and concepts of “border-land insanity”; “middle ground”;  “between neurosis and   psychosis”, “latent psychosis”, projection, introjection, projective identification, and others.

Course description

Psychoanalytic Technique: Freud and Beyond

Dates: October 3 – December 12, 2012; Wednesdays, 10 – 11:15 am.
Instructor: Susan Mellan, LCSW
Location: 9 West 34th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues); 12th floor; Suite 1200; NYC, 10001 or virtual participation via audio/video or audio only.

In this course we will explore the development and the evolution of Freud’s psychoanalytic technique. Freud’s seminal papers on technique, from 1890 to 1905, were written before the introduction of the structural model and so were developed, primarily within the framework of the topographical model which rested on the recovery of repressed memories to affect a cure. During the second phase, he grappled with transference manifestations in the clinical situation.  Transference posed as a resistance to the patient’s coming to understand their internal conflicts and so it needed to be interpreted and worked through.  Later readings begin to introduce other models of technique and their theoretical underpinnings.

Evolution of Freud’s ideas on psychoanalytic technique will be looked at through the works of James Masterson and Thomas Ogden. We also will use class member’s clinical material to explore applications.

Course description

Sigmund Freud as an Object Relations Theorist

Dates: January 10 – March 7, 20113, 8:15-9:40 pm
Instructor: Rafael Javier, PhD, ABPP
Location: 217 E 12th St. 4A (between 2nd and 3rd Ave) and via virtual participation

This course offers a careful critical examination of major original works of Freud from its very beginning of his publication
on hysteria to his later works on the extent to which the work of psychoanalysis is greatly limited by the strength of
the instincts in terms of its capacity to produce permanent cure. The emphasis of this course is on the careful
delineation of how Freud’s concepts  of the “object” is present in his major works, and how his thinking contributed
extensively to current theoretical positions on object relations.  In this context, we examine his work on symptom
formation, narcissism, sexuality, masochism, to name a few.  Students are expected to read these original works,
which are also supplemented with other relevant writings from current thinkers.

Course syllabus

Schizoid Personality, Schizoid Phenomena, and Contributions of Ronald Fairbairn  

Dates: January 3 – March 7, 20113, 8:15-9:30 pm
Instructor: Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, NPsyA, D.Litt
Location: 115 East 9th Street; 12P, NY, NY, 10003 and via virtual participation

This course will offer readings, lectures, and discussions of all the psychodynamic mental operations and psychic phenomenology related to the whole human continuum of schizoid phenomena, including schizoid personality disorder.  The course instructor, Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler , is an object relations psychoanalytic theorist who has published cases on well known schizoid artists and writers (Emily Dickinson and Emily Bronte), as well as on patients with schizoid phenomena in clinical treatment.

With readings by the classic British object relations theorists Ronald Fairbairn and Harry Guntrip, as well by more current American theorists, such as Jeffrey Seinfeld, James Masterson, Thomas Ogden, and Susan Kavaler-Adler, this course offers various fundamental and critical perspectives to open up the clinician’s consciousness to the traps, impasses, and developmental arrests related to treating people with schizoid personality disorder and those with more moderate schizoid dynamics.  This course will also help open the clinician’s consciousness to the slow and gradual psychic change and psychic integration process that takes place at a profoundly primal core-self level.

Within this course, we will look at the “need/fear dilemma” of the schizoid, and at the “in and out solution,” as well as at the “schizoid compromise” and the desperate need for contact and connection in the sealed-off person. This person usually lives through intellectual permutations of internal world self and other object constellations, and through related fantasy and dream imagery, while simultaneously feeling suffocated and empty. A schizoid person desperately craves the connection with others and the outside world, but  he/ she is frightened about devouring and destroying the other with his/her own “vacuum cleaner” “sucking” needs.

We will look also at the attempt of a schizoid to live life vicariously through vivid and sophisticated psychic fantasy, as can be seen in the literature; e.g., in writings of Henry James and Emily Dickinson.  We will look at an arrested psychic structure of a schizoid personality that cannot psychically digest the others. This results in attempts to “swallow” others whole, as in a form of psychic anorexia and psychic bulimia, when psychic internalization is not possible. Then, psychic incorporation and “living through identifications” is the fate of an affectively isolated and often literally withdrawn individual, who looks at others in the world as if peering through a window, always on the outside, looking in at the others, who seem so alive, involved, and connected.

Creating oneself and others through stories in one’s mind (based on preverbal mother and self primal incorporations) becomes a world of illusions that is often mistaken for reality in the schizoid personality. When living in the world is aborted, one can live a “living death” in “alabaster chambers” as Emily Dickinson did at her most withdrawn and regressed times, and yet create some of the world’s most profound literature and poetry.

Course syllabus

Infant Observational Research and Its Impact on Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique

Dates: January 9 – March 6, 20113; 10 – 11:25 am
Instructor: Ann Rose Simon, LCSW
Location: 1225 Park Avenue; 1225 Park Avenue, Suite 1E; New York, NY 10128 or via virtual participation

This course is also a part of the Parent-Child Development Center Program at ORI.

Theories about child development changed over the past fifty years as researchers and theorists began to observe infants and parents closely and to base their theories on these actual observations of infants and of the parent-infant dyad.  This course will help all professionals working with children and adults to become familiar with the major infant research projects and the theories of development that have emerged from this research.  The course will explore the impact that infant research has had on accepted theories of child development, especially those of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein and Donald W. Winnicott.  Participants will explore how changing theories of child development have influenced psychoanalytic techniques, educational approaches, and therapeutic and educational interventions to strengthen parent-child bonds and relationships. In addition, they will come to understand various research protocols and critically assess the validity of the research studied in the class.

Course syllabus

Post-graduate psychoanalytic education credits offered: 12.5hrs.

Donald Winnicott and His Contribution to Object Relations Clinical Thinking: The Theory, Practice, and Importance

Dates: March 28 – May 30, 2013, 8:15 – 9:30 pm. Video files of the sessions will be available for those who had registered but cannot attend classes in-person or via live virtual participation.
Instructor: Ruth Danon, PhD
Location: 88 University Place, 4G; NYC or via Virtual Participation

“Psychotherapy takes place in the overlap of two areas of playing, that of the patient and that of the therapist. Psychotherapy has to do with two people playing together. The corollary of this is that where playing is not possible then the work done by the therapist is directed towards bringing the patient from a state of not being able to play into a state of being able to play. (from “Playing: Its Theoretical Status in the Clinical Situation,” 1971)”

This is a ten week introduction to the theory, practice, and significance of the work of the British Object Relations theorist and practitioner, D. W. Winnicott. We will first place Winnicott in context and then move through some of his major concepts. In each class we will do close reading of significant papers and discuss application to actual practice.

This course shows how D.W. Winnicott transformed the practice of psychoanalysis, enlarging its scope to understand the developmental progressions, disruptions, and traumas that take place within with the whole, or the leaking container of the “mother-infant matrix.”

We will be working mainly with primary material, though other texts may appear along the way or in the course packet. Through Pediatrics to Psychoanalysis is required. I will provide a course packet that includes the articles we will use from other texts. If you’re really interested, you should get the wonderful collection of Winnicott’s letters, called The Spontaneous Gesture.  I will use excerpts from the book during the class. These, too, will be in the course packet.

Supplementary material by Ogden, Kavaler-Adler, and others will be included in the course packet and referred to during the course.

Course syllabus

Post-graduate psychoanalytic education credits offered: 12.5hrs.

For more information, contact ORI Administrator at 646-522-1056.

Child’s Play & Its Role in Development of Children and Adolescents

Instructor: Charles Bonerbo, LCSW
Location: 19 W. 34th St., Sociometric Institute, Penthouse Ste, NYC, 10001, or via Virtual Participation. Video files of the sessions will be available for those who had registered but cannot attend classes in-person or via live virtual participation.
Dates: March 27 – May 8, 2013, 10:15-11:55 am

This course is also a part of the Parent-Child Development Program at ORI.

This program will focus on children’s and adolescents’ play as an essential ingredient of healthy emotional development and integrated personality and whole relatedness.

Each week we will focus on a child’s phase-specific development, and highlight, discuss, and explore the specific “play tasks” that are relevant for that phase.

Participants will have a greater understanding of the essential elements of play and how it directly affects a child’s and adolescent’s emotional development. Also, the notion of spontaneous gesture will be explored and understood as a goal of emotional development.

Other topics to be explored will include:

  • Precociousness and its vicissitudes
  • Traumatic Experience, Cumulative Trauma, and Pre-mature exposure as it pertains to the overwhelming of the ego and the subsequent foreclosure of symbolism
  • Concreteness and lack of spontaneity (anxious and autistic states), and others

Course syllabus

For more information, please contact ORI Administrator at 646-522-1056 or

Advanced Dream interpretation

Dates: May 2 – May 30, 2013 (8:15 pm – 9:40 pm); June 6; 13, 2013 (6:45 pm – 9:40 pm)
Instructor: Margaret A. Yard, PhD, APRN, BC
Location: 160 East 84th Street, NYC or via virtual participation

“…To die to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause…” (Hamlet. William Shakespeare)

Although more than 100 years have elapsed, the conception of dream life which Freud established in 1900s is still today the essential referent in therapy. “The Interpretation of Dreams” which Freud maintained as his most important work, goes far beyond the explanation of dreaming, by proposing a general model of how the mind works, both on a normal and a pathological basis. From 1900 until the present day, both post-Freudian contemporary developments, as well as discoveries in neuropsychiatry have increased knowledge regarding dream formation, but still we remain with no other new theory.  This course will study the legacy of the interpretations of dreams applied in clinical practice using case methodology. We will review Freud’s revisions in his theory of dreams, and its application for dream psychology in the analytic and therapeutic situation.

Further, we will use the same case (Martha) for clinical interpretation of different theoretical dream models, with more intensive focus on the Object Relations Model. Trauma and bereavement dreams will be analyzed, as well as patient cases presented by students.

Finally, we will explore dreams within the postmodern context reflecting changes in cultural, environmental, political and emotional contexts.

Course syllabus

Post-graduate psychoanalytic education credits offered: 12.5hrs.

For more information, contact ORI Administrator at 646-522-1056.

Sandor Ferenczi and Michael Balint: The Use of Therapeutic Regression in Psychoanalysis

Instructor: Jeffrey Lewis, PhD
Location: 103 East 86th Street, 5B; New York, NY 10028

Regression, in the classical psychoanalytic vernacular, usually refers to a powerful defensive operation whereby, should an individual find themselves overwhelmed by anxiety in a current developmental state of affairs, they may be transported backwards to an earlier developmental stage either ear-marked due to fixation (that is, having not been gratified or conversely having been overly gratified at that step and hence retaining a libidinal residue there) or due to this early stage providing a safe retreat to a place and time when things were better. In either case, Freud noted these phenomena in his clinical practice, and tended to see regression as therapeutically undesirable and a process which signified a treatment failure which needed to be ceased and reversed…if not prohibited.

On the other hand both Sandor Ferenczi and his protégé Michael Balint saw regression as therapeutically useful (provided it wasn’t malignant) and actually a non-optional component of a complete analysis for the most serious pathological presentations. If the patient is not allowed to regress to the point of the “trauma” or alternately, to the “basic fault”, how will the necessary reparative processes be instituted and the growth process restarted such to elicit and encourage a “new beginning”?

This course via readings, a ten class didactic explanation of critical topics, and finally actual clinical material from both instructor and students, will make comprehensible and useful the powerful treatment modality of therapeutic regression. Sandor Ferenczi’s techniques will also be studied, including the “active technique,” the “humanistic method,” “relaxation therapy” and “mutual analysis.”  In addition, the place of regression in modern clinical technique will be explored.

Bio: Jeffrey Lewis, PhD – psychoanalyst in full-time independent private practice, Ferenczi scholar, Editorial Board of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Faculty and Board Member of the Object Relations Institute, and Associate Clinical Professor in the doctoral program at St. John’s University.

Course syllabus

Introduction to Melanie Klein

This course serves as an introduction to the major psychoanalytic concepts of Melanie Klein. The class will examine the history and subsequent development of core clinical concepts of Kleinian theories and explore their relevance and applications to treatment.

Depressive and Paranoid-Schizoid Positions, “Phantasy”, “Manic Defenses,” Envy and Gratitude, and Projective Identification will be studied and discussed.

Clinical examples will be offered. Candidates are also requested to provide their own clinical examples.

Course syllabus
Course description

Post-graduate psychoanalytic education credits offered: 12.5hrs.

Contributions of Ronald Fairbairn to the Object Relations Theory

In 2012-2013 academic year, this course is combined with the Schizoid Phenomena course (with Dr. Kavaler-Adler).
Instructor: Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD

Ronald Fairbairn was the first psychoanalytic theorist to explicitly proclaim that from the beginning of our lives, we strive to connect with another human being, and that this striving is primal and fundamental for being a human. In contrast to any thinking about narcissism as a primary rather than a secondary phenomenon, Fairbairn was also the first to postulate that all psychopathology stems from early attachments to “bad” objects (primary caregivers); “bad” in terms of disruptions of and failing to support developmental growth of the human psyche. Addiction to those “bad” objects, who abandon, abusively intrude, or attack, or those who detach from the child’s most fundamental emotional needs, becomes the cause of internal and external world repetitions of failed parenting. Loyalty to the sabotaging internal object, derived from the primal caregivers, results in perpetual self sabotage, unless successful object relations psychotherapy intervenes.

Fairbairn saw an infant as a person who has wholeness within itself in the beginning, with human motivation having both energy and structure, his “libidinal ego.”   It is only due to the weakness and failures of all parenting, and particularly of parenting by parents with character pathology, that a whole being with energy and structure gets split up and divided apart, with one (“bad”) part attacking or inhibiting the healthy strivings towards connection with others in the external world. By understanding that the full pathological characters are compulsively “swallowed whole” by innocent children, who are by their very nature hungering for relationships and identifications with their parents, Fairbairn was particularly able to pin point the core causation of any character disorders that stem from trauma in the first three years of life. He also was then able to understand that children will inevitably blame themselves for the problems of their parents, as they are totally dependent on parents, while full but dissociated parts of the parents oppose and attack their most powerful emotional and psychological needs. No child can survive with consciousness that the early mother, and the later parents (who they are bound to by absolute dependence) are inadequate, incapable, or even seriously dangerous to their well-being. Instead, children will turn the blame against themselves to protect the image of the parents, and to create the illusion that they are safe, when the truth would devastate them to the point of psychic self-annihilation.

Fairbairn was the first to envision what all modern infant research has validated, that the craving for the primal other dominates each human being’s life, often causing profound dissociative splitting, and sealing-off of the potential self, when this primal connection is traumatically disrupted, resulting in an internal drama where the vacuum-cleaner-sucking feeling of early need is experienced as the evisceration, robbing, entrapping, exploiting, or draining of the self. And wasn’t it Fairbairn who spoke of the “poison pudding”-parent who must be swallowed whole when there is no other psychic food that could be good enough to eat and digest?
Fairbairn understood this, and spoke of the moral defense in the language of the church, as he had once studied to become a minister. He wrote in his famous 1952 “Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality” that “…it is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the Devil”(pp.66-67). Fairbairn perceived that “the moral defense” compels those deprived, abandoned, abused, and generally traumatized children to always blame themselves, to psychically survive in a world with the parents they were forced to totally depend on? An idealized image of the parent is preserved then, at the price of the emaciation of the soul, because psychic annihilation would have been the alternative.

Here, Fairbairn conveyed to the world that a helpless child must idealize a parent, no matter how pathological that parent is, in order to preserve a fragile sanctity based on a belief that the world is safe enough. The child would rather be “bad,” and make up reasons to attribute badness to herself or himself, than to have to face the intolerable truth that the parent is bad in the sense of being actually dangerous or seriously inadequate. This kind of thinking overlaps with Ferenczi’s view of trauma in children, and with Michael Balint’s view of “the basic fault,” and with many others, including D. W. Winnicott, who looked at trauma disrupting early human development.

Fairbairn also overlaps with Melanie Klein in seeing that each person carries inside an internal world of fantasy object relations, however for Fairbairn the internal object relationships are vividly created through the internalization of the actual maladies in the child’s parents, and in how the parent ignores, abandons, or abuses this child in reality. The internalization of malignant or poor attachments then plays a major role in determining the personality of the growing child. As Freud said in Mourning and Melancholia (1917), “the shadow of the object [i.e., a parent] fell upon the ego” of the growing child.

This ten-week course will touch on all this seminal theory along with Fairbairn’s clinical contributions related to visceral body enactments in hysteria, and the somatic body enactments that go further into playing out their monotone primal dramas in the internal world as internal object repetitions. Fairbairn is the perfect theorist to describe the phenomena of Hamlet’s “ghost,” when he spoke of people in psychological purgatory throughout a lifetime, unless object relations treatment slowly intervenes. According to Fairbairn, we are all haunted by ghosts; the ghosts of our internal objects, so much more trenchantly alive than introjects that require a level of symbolic evolution that only small parts of us ascertain. Those interested in a prelude can read Nightmares and Object Relations Theory (by Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler), in Nightmares: Psychological and Biological Foundations, edited by Dr. Henry Kellerman (1987).

Course syllabus

Post-graduate psychoanalytic education credits offered: 12.5hrs.

Integration of the British and American Object Relations Clinical Theory

Instructor: Richard Alperin, PhD, LCSW
Location: 170 West 73rd Street (@Amsterdam Avenue), Lobby Suite, 10023 or virtual participation via audio/video or audio only.

Post-graduate psychoanalytic education credits offered: 12.5hrs.

Wednesday Morning Courses

Individual 7-week Course Series on Object Relation Theory and Clinical Practice

These courses are offered on Wednesday mornings, 9am – 10:15 am, at: 115 E 9th street, 12P, NY, NY 10003. Each course of this series is followed by a Group Peer Mentoring course, 10:15 am- 11:30 am, same location. (Please, note that in order to receive a certificate, you need to sign up for both courses at a time.)

Fees (payable to ORI): $300/ 7-week Clinical Theory course; $300/ 7-week Group Peer Mentoring course.
Fees for each course are fully refundable before first class, but only partially refundable after the first class of each semester.

The Theories of Melanie Klein

This course addresses fundamental clinical and developmental contributions of Melanie Klein, stressing qualitative
issues over content issues. Some topics include concepts of interpreting object, historical subject, self-reflective
capacity, and symbolic level of being.

D.W. Winnicott’s Writings and Theories

This course shows how D.W. Winnicott transformed the practice of psychoanalysis, enlarging its scope to
understand the developmental progressions, disruptions, and traumas that take place within with the whole,
or the leaking container of the “mother-infant matrix.”
For those interested in Melanie Klein works and Klein-Neo-Kleinians- Winnicott dialectic, but unable to attend
morning events, please contact Dr. Kavaler-Adler for information on her private study groups.
Also, visit www.kavaleradler.com for more information.

Writings of Ronald Fairbairn, the Theoretical Founder of the Object Relations Theory

Students will learn about Fairbairn’s understanding of fundamental human strivings as strivings for connection,
as well as about the “moral defense,” “the poisonous pie”-parent, about ghosts of our internal objects, and
body enactments.
For the Course Syllabus, click here: Syllabus/ Fairbairn

The Theories of Wilfred Bion

This course will explain Bion’s dialectic with Melanie Klein and Neo-Kleinians regarding every-day containment
and processing of what patients “put into us,” as well as “attacks on linking,” “therapeutic containment,”
“psychic pain”, “psychic birth”, and the “journey of reverie.”
For the Course Syllabus, click here: Bion/ Syllabus

British Object Relations Theory

This course will explore contributions of American psychoanalysts in Object Relations psychoanalytic
theory and clinical technique.

Cancellation policy for training courses/ educational activities:
a) if cancelled before the first session/course date – full tuition refund is afforded, but not the registration fees (if any);
b) if cancelled after the date of the first session – 1/2 of tuition is refunded, but not the registration fees (if any);
c) if cancelled after two sessions of the course – 1/4 of tuition is refunded, but not the registration fees (if any);
d) if cancelled after the third session – no refund is afforded.

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