Course description:
The overall aim of the course is to facilitate mature, reflective psychodynamic practice in order to improve professional counselling and treatment qualification. It covers psychodynamic theory, the therapeutic frame, the unique patient therapist relationship, dreams, transference and countertransference, and working with unconscious communication.
Learning objectives of the course:
At the end of the course, the students will be able to:
1. Establish a clear differentiation between psychodynamic approach and others psychotherapeutic models,
2. Draw the historical context of the emergence and the evolution of psychodynamic approach over time and sociological contexts,
3. Acknowledge the presence of the ‘unknown’ or ‘non-mesurable’ in the Psychic Apparatus,
4. Present the first topographic and the second structural Freudian model, in a topographic, economic & dynamic perspective,
5. Formulate a case presentation referring to internal and external conflicts, fixations, symptoms formation,
6. Differentiate between the Freudian conception of Trauma and PTSD, understand the role of repetitive traumatizations in childhood, and of acute trauma along the life span, and its subsequent psychopathological manifestations,
7. Refer to psychoanalytical child development models, comprehend the polymorphic child’s symptomatology, understand origins of developmental deficits in psychic structures and their reflection in later clinical presentations/symptoms,
8. Comprehend all four levels of defense mechanisms and correlate them with symptom formation,
9. Understanding the significance of the setting in its function to contain the essence of psychotherapeutic process and to create the stage where the patient's unconscious conflicts will invariably become apparent (and the therapist's as well), both with adults and with infants/children/adolescents patients,
10. Become knowledgable about all important aspects of space, time and payment arrangements as well as about therapeutic boundaries in general, knowledgable of determined rules of conduct and different ethical aspects, acquiring knowledge about therapeutic attitude
11. Understand crucial importance of first meetings in which the patient manifests his conscious and unconscious aspects, by presenting both his symptoms/suffering as well as nonverbally enacting his 'offer of transference', and understand the multiple tasks of the therapist during the initial interview, and establish during the first interviews a solid foundation of working alliance,
12. Explain why in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the decision about indication for the type of treatment is not depending only on symptoms or diagnostic category but on the nature and severity of personality pathology and motivation of the patient for the work on his/her conflicts and traumas,
13. Understand resistance as an integral part of psychoanalytic process, and identify ways if interventions in dealing with resistance,
14. Develop a special attention to somatic patients, as well as transgenerationnal aspects in psychotherapy,
15. Understand the phases of the formation of Self (before the Oedipal phase) by internalization of the relation with significant Other (Object), with emphasis on the human drive-to-relate vs. classical view of instinctual drives, develop a psychodynamic lecture of people with personality disorders, especially Narcissistic and Borderline PD,
16. Understand of clinical usefullness of Object Relations theory and Self psychology for the practical application of them in short and long-term psycho-dynamic psycho-therapy for people with personality problems/disorders,
17. Be acknowledgeable of a full range of therapies based on psychoanalytical theory and practice (Analytical Individual Psychotherapy, Analytic Group Psychotherapy, Psychodynamic Individual Psychotherapy, Psychodynamic Group Psychotherapy, Analytic Couples & Family Therapy, In-Patient Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Psychoanalytic Psychodrama…)
- Teacher: Ivona Amleh