Psychoanalytic Training Institute
CFS DC’s psychoanalytic training offers the option of training to be an adult psychoanalyst or to be a lifecycle psychoanalyst. A lifecycle psychoanalyst is trained to be able to work with people of all ages. As such, in addition to the minimum two adult control cases, lifecycle candidates need to treat two control cases with a child or adolescent, as well as gain experience of working with parents. We also have supervisors who have experience of working dyadically in infant-parent and toddler-parent psychotherapy for interested candidates.
We were officially approved to offer what the IPA called an ‘Integrated Training Track’ (ITT) in 2015. We at CFS call that Lifecycle Psychoanalytic Training. Our courses take a lifecycle approach to theory and technique as no matter which population of patients a candidate may come to specialize in, a more in-depth developmental point of view informs psychoanalytic practice. As we have only a small number in-house who are trained in child/adolescent psychoanalysis, we have teamed with other IPA and ApsaA institutes to form the Eastern Child Consortium (ECC). The ECC was formed in 2025 to bring together psychoanalysts with an interest in a lifecycle psychoanalytic and development approach. At present, there is a continuous case conference with alternating child and adult analytic case presentations. Each seminar has both a child analyst and adult analyst co-teaching, with the aim of strengthening candidates’ capacities to think about technique in light of the continuities and discontinuities of development. Furthermore, thinking about how a young person shows up in analysis next to an adult expands the capacity for identifying the patient’s psychic and bodily development as it emerges in treatment for analysts-in-training. Feedback from this inaugural year has been that the seminar is fertile ground for helping candidates and faculty alike to develop further as analysts who help all ages of patients, and that comparing of the two different age groups has been riveting and profound.
In addition to the requirements for Adult Psychoanalytic Training, candidates choosing a lifecycle concentration fulfil work with children and adolescents
at least two supervised cases under age 20 at different stages of development (under-five, middle childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood), and wherever possible of different sexes;
- treatment of these supervised cases for a period of at least one year at 3-5 times per week frequency for a total, across all cases, of 150 hours of supervision;
- one supervised case of working with parents (can be parents of an analytic case) of at least six months’ duration;
- supervision and evaluation normally conducted weekly for at least 40 sessions per year
- clinical and theoretical seminars in Child and Adolescent psychoanalysis, including development, psychopathology and technique, and including those ethical principles and procedures which apply specifically to the treatment of children and adolescents.
Lifecycle candidates who opt to include child and adolescent cases during training are required to participate for at least one academic year in Advanced seminar in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis that is co-sponsored with the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis, and are strongly encouraged to participate in the seminar for more than one year;
Lifecycle candidates are strongly encouraged to participate in an Infant Observation Seminar of at least one year. Infant observation is an experiential form of learning designed to help candidates develop an awareness of internal and external forces very germane to child but also adult treatment. Infant Observation develops the candidate’s capacity to tolerate not knowing how to evaluate all of the information that a clinician encounters in a therapeutic situation. Observations of an infant in his/her family are discussed and learned about through close process analysis. For example, the Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Program, a program affiliated with CFS-PTI in NY, regularly has videoconference opportunities in which candidates can participate.