Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research

Our Curriculum

Faculty from the Adult Psychoanalytic program at CPTR participate in discussion.

At Columbia, we aim to train psychoanalytic practitioners and thinkers who will impact the future of psychoanalysis.

Our five-year adult psychoanalytic training program offers a rigorous and immersive classroom experience. We encourage our candidates to engage psychoanalytic thinking from different angles: historical, theoretical, practical, controversial, comparative, and clinical. Rooted in a pluralistic psychoanalytic tradition, our program invites ongoing dialogue with both foundational and evolving ideas. 

Our diverse teaching faculty is passionate about psychoanalytic teaching and learning. We continually seek ways to engage and inspire our candidates. We are serious about growing as teachers and are encouraged in this effort through workshops and colloquia through the Columbia Academy of Psychoanalytic Educators (CAPE).

Click here for a link to our current class schedule.

To provide the most robust classroom experience, in years one through three, classes take place on Mondays (in-person) and Thursdays (remote).  In the final two years, Advanced Topics A (Mondays and Thursdays) and Advanced Topics B (Mondays only) alternate.

Key Topics

Our curriculum is structured around six main topics: Theory, Critical Thinking, Technique, Process, Writing, and Research. To support beginning candidates’ needs, in addition to classes in these tracks, we offer fundamental and practical courses in years one and two, such as Child Development and Psychopathology. In years four and five, we offer classes that address advanced topics–including Sexuality, Gender, and Diversity–and electives. Candidates also participate in yearly special learning experiences with invited leading psychoanalytic thinkers.

Psychoanalytic Theory

Our four-year theory track engages psychoanalytic theories from Freud to the present.

  • First-year candidates explore theory in several courses. Psychoanalytic Basic Concepts explores psychoanalytic concepts through the lens of comparative psychoanalysis. Candidates also study the development of Freud’s Thinking and Theorizing in depth with a focus on seminal papers. Throughout the year, candidates also explore theories of Development from infancy through emerging adulthood.
  • Theory II  focuses on foundational and more recent developments in four principal schools of thought: Ego Psychology, Klein and her followers, the British Middle School, and Self Psychology. 
  • Theory III focuses on theoretical integrations including Loewald and Kernberg, Relational Perspectives, Bion, Intersubjectivity/Field Theories, as well as the francophone perspectives of Lacan and Laplanche.
  • In the fourth year, candidates briefly Return to Freud, studying his texts with a focus on the “creative unconscious.” Our final theory course Theory IV engages controversies and tensions in psychoanalytic thinking, addressing such topics as race and otherness, evolving conceptions of defense and Oedipus, attachment theory, and unconscious fantasy. This class integrates theory, technique, and critical thinking, and aims to support the development of candidates’ psychoanalytic identities.

The Theory of Technique

In each of the first three years, all candidates take a course that focuses specifically on the understanding of psychoanalytic technique. Topics such as transference, countertransference, resistance, and interpretation are explored through the lenses of numerous theoretical perspectives at increasing levels of depth and sophistication over the three years. 

Critical Thinking

  • Taught in short blocks over all five years, these classes promote “thinking about thinking” throughout all aspects of the curriculum and emphasize Columbia’s comparative approach to the study of psychoanalytic theory.
  • Topics include: Pluralism, Psychoanalytic Theory and Discourse, and Psychoanalytic Process-Critical Thinking.

Theory of Technique

  • Over the first three years of training, these courses focus on psychoanalytic technique at increasing levels of depth and sophistication.
  • Topics such as transference, countertransference, resistance, and interpretation are explored through a pluralistic lens.

Psychoanalytic Process

  • Across all five years of training, candidates examine psychoanalytic process in 6 to 8-week process presentations organized around specific topics and phases of analytic work.
  • Process course topics include Engagement; Tone, Tact, and Timing; Transference and Countertransference; and Termination.
  • Clinical work is presented by both candidates and faculty.

Psychoanalytic Case Writing

  • This course is taught in five annual workshop-style blocks and is designed to help candidates develop the writing skills essential to reflecting on psychoanalytic process, communicating with colleagues, and contributing to the psychoanalytic literature.
  • The five-year curriculum develops candidates’ ability to write vividly about their work, capture microprocess, and trace longer arcs across a lengthy treatment.
  • In the fifth and final year, candidates present their write up of their longest running case to faculty and fellow candidates in a senior case colloquium. 

Research

  • Columbia is dedicated to promoting scholarly research in psychoanalysis, and we present several classes at the nexus of clinical work and research.
  • Topics explored include introductions to current psychoanalytic research, presentations by clinician researchers and those in allied disciplines including neuropsychoanalysis and trauma studies.