The Advanced Specialization in Analytic Group Therapy and Group Process is sponsored by the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. We will be approaching group work from a contemporary psychoanalytic perspective, including Freudian, Interpersonal, Self, Relational, Modern and Independent thought. The Specialization is open to licensed mental health professionals who are graduates of, or currently enrolled in, an analytic program.
Group treatments are being utilized more and more in a range of therapeutic settings. Along with an increase in the use of groups, it is anticipated that certification as a group therapist will be required. The specialization will be with a 12 hour Principles of Group Therapy course held over two or three Sundays designed to meet the course requirements for inclusion in the National Registry of Certified Group Psychotherapists (CGP). We recognize that this is basic material, though it will be adapted in accord with the background and sophistication of those taking the Specialty course, and modified to incorporate a psychoanalytic perspective. We think it necessary to have a common base on which to build our understanding of analytic group therapy. The tuition for this course will be $250.
There are additional experience and supervision requirements to be eligible for the CGP, and these will be available through the Specialization..
The Specialization will offer an ongoing series of seminars aimed at contemporary issues in analytic group therapy examined from varying theoretical positions. We intend to develop an egalitarian and open environment in which to examine theory and process. To meet the full requirements for the Specialization, and receive a Letter of Completion, a participant must complete at least six of these seminars.. These seminars will vary in length and form depending upon the nature of the material and the wishes of the instructor, with an average length of about 8-10 hours.. Learning in each seminar is likely to include an experiential, didactic, and sharing of work experience component, making it appropriate for anyone concerned with learning about the therapeutic interpersonal experience. It is expected that some of the learning will take place through observing and experiencing one's own process.
Other components for completion of the Specialization:
Leadership of a supervised therapy group, 30 hours
Personal group therapy is highly recommended, 75 hours
Participation in an Observation Group related to the material under consideration. This is a here and now group in which members are asked to observe and examine their own thoughts and feelings and to express them openly and directly. This group is made up of volunteers from the seminar with either the instructor or a guest acting as conductor.
Seminars to be offered:
- Looking at Group from an Integrative Approach
This colloquia is aimed at helping group therapists form groups, address difficult emotional situations in group, work with difficult patients, consider when and what interventions need to be modified, accept and manage aggression, decide the here and now vs. there and then, understand acting out and enactments, use the group contract, and handle shame and vulnerability in group. We will attend to the therapist use of self, the effective exploration of emotional interactions, and the complexities of transference/ countertransference issues. We will address how to work with vulnerable self states, destructive aggression and undermining survival mechanisms. The transformative aspects of group will be highlighted. Ronnie L. Levine, Ph.D., CGP, FAGPA
- Dissociation, Enactment, and Emergence in Relational Group Analysis.
How contemporary Relational ideas can be constructed into a theory and practice of group psychoanalysis. Focus will be on the multiplicity of self states that comprise the group environment, group enactments of dissociated states, the emergence of unformulated experience, and a reconfiguring of the role of the group leader and the action of group treatment utilizing concepts drawn from hermeneutic philosophy and complexity theory. Robert Grossmark, Ph.D.
- Integrating Systems-Centered and Psychoanalytic Thinking in Analytic Group Therapy
This seminar will introduce systems concepts of group as a living human system with particular properties and developmental processes that are similar to and can be harnessed in the service of the individual member's growth, exploration and development. Highlighted will be crucial concepts of group-as-a-whole dynamics, splitting, projective identification and containment, attachment, isomorphy and the central method of functional subgrouping that provides a unique opportunity that supports visualizing, demonstrating and integrating these processes in analytic group work. Jon McCormick, Ph.D., CGP.
- Freud's and Bion's Model and Their Views on Leadership.
This seminar introduces the basic writings of Freud and Bion on group process. Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego was nothing short of revolutionary in that it marks the first object relational interpretation of group dynamics. Freud's central focus was on the leader's power over the group members and their identification with him as ego ideal. Bion's view of the group differs from Freud's and was heavily influenced by Melanie Klein's theory. For him, the leader is as much an object of powerful projections as the other members. He proposed three types of forces at work in process groups based on unconscious basic assumptions. Concepts of linking, containment, and projective identification are critical to Bion's understanding of group dynamics. Five hours. Danielle Knafo, Ph.D.
- Interventions In Analytic Group Therapy
This seminar will distinguish between psychotherapy interventions appropriate to the practice of Analytic Group Therapy including group maintenance, supportive, exploratory, interpretive, modeling and confrontation interventions. Elements of group addressed will also be considered, e.g., individual, sub-group, and whole group. In addition notions developed by Group Analysis, Relational and Social Constructivist theorists will be reviewed. Fred Wright, Ph.D.
- Knowing, Countertransference and Transference.
The subject of counter-transference touches on virtually every aspect of psychoanalytic practice and is particularly relevant to the practice of analytic group therapy. The nature of the group set up multiplies the opportunities for transference and counter-transference. Counter-transference effects the therapist knowing, the spaces created in which information is exchanged and the miscommunications that occur with the group as it often determines what the analyst "knows" is occurring on the various levels of group interaction. I shall offer some tentative thoughts about the process of learning about counter-transference and about the conscious and unconscious elements of group process by which the experience of both the therapist and the group is contained. I do not mean to imply that knowing the counter transference is the only dynamic at work in the psychoanalytic interaction : structural dialogue analysis, visual cues, gestures, proprioceptive responses and body sensations play some part in unconscious communication that characterize any therapy group interaction but all are crucial in forming counter transference interaction. In this seminar we will read and discuss the sparse literature on Countertransference and share work experience on the rapid and intense experiences of a multi person therapeutic set up. Bennett Roth, Ph.D.
- On Knowing and Being Known: Considerations for the Use of Self
There has been a profound movement in psychoanalysis from the analyst trying to maintain anonymity, abstinence and neutrality (as though it were possible) to the idea of an intersubjective, interactional clinical setting. The therapist's transparency is greater in the group modality than in individual. Members observe the therapist interacting with others while not necessarily in the interactions themselves. Deliberate and unconscious or inadvertent self-disclosures will be examined along with the ways in which the analytic space may be opened up or limited by self-disclosure. The complexity of group work will be explored in terms of how it is different from individual work regarding self-disclosures. Robin Good, Ph.D., CGP
Chair:
Bruce H. Bernstein, Ph.D., CGP, FAGPA, ABPP
Co-ordinators:
Freudian, Danielle Knafo, Ph.D.
Independent, Barbara Dusansky, Ph.D.
Interpersonal, Dan Epstein, Ph.D.
Relational, Ronnie Levine, Ph.D., CGP, FAGPA
Teaching in the Specialty:
Bruce Bernstein, Ph.D., CGP, FAGPA, ABPP
Barbara Dusansky, Ph.D.
Robin Good, Ph.D., CGP
Robert Grossmark, Ph.D.
Priscilla F. Kauff, Ph.D., DFAGPA
Danielle Knafo, Ph.D.
Ronnie Levine, Ph.D., CGP, FAGPA
Jon McCormick, Ph.D., CGP
Anne Slocom McEneaney, Ph.D., CGP
Bennett Roth, Ph.D.
Nina K. Thomas, Ph.D., CGP, ABPP
Isaac Tylim, Ph.D.
Fred Wright, Ph.D. |
