Psychoanalytic Studies Program
Introduction to essential concepts in psychoanalysis.
Applications for the 2024-2025 academic year will be available summer 2024
About the Program
A two-year program for licensed professional clinicians and advanced scholars interested in learning about psychoanalytic approaches to enrich their work and help their clients.
The Psychoanalytic Studies Program (PSP) was created as a unique psychoanalytic educational experience for both psychoanalytic psychotherapists and for those intending to continue on to psychoanalytic training as candidates. It is also designed for academicians and others who might have an interest in learning how psychoanalytic concepts can better inform their thinking. The program is designed as an immersive experience where students are exposed to foundational psychoanalytic concepts through reading and classroom discussions, as well as through individual supervision for their clinical work. Scholars are also offered opportunities to meet in small facilitated groups or to work with a mentor. The program is designed to help clinicians develop their capacity to pay close attention to clinical material, to formulate a dynamic understanding of their client’s struggles and to think deeply about their own reactions and impact on their client. Scholars learn to develop their critical thinking and writing skills using a psychoanalytic lens.
The two-year curriculum is based on essential concepts in the field of psychoanalysis presented by a faculty of analysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Through classroom experience, case conferences, and active self-reflection, a fertile groundwork is laid for intellectual and clinical inquiry. In an environment based on listening and discussion, students share from their vantage points and can explore the applications of what they are learning to their own practice and work. Students are encouraged to bring their own unique backgrounds and experience to the conversation to enrich everyone’s learning. This diverse, multidisciplinary, and self-reflective exchange is one of the most powerful aspects of the program.
Graduates have developed valuable skills for applying a psychoanalytic lens to individual clients, groups, families and community work. Students are invited and encouraged to participate in all the Center’s activities including committees, conferences, workshops, study groups and more.
The PSP is appropriate for licensed and practicing clinicians, including MDs, PhDs, PsyDs, MSWs, DOs, RNs, psychotherapists, mental-health counselors, as well as scholars and others. Students earn CEs and CMEs for all classwork.
Seeking to become a clinical psychoanalyst?
The PSP serves as the first two years of the Psychoanalytic Training. For those on a career path to psychoanalytic practice, the training has a separate application and two additional requirements during the PSP: training analysis and clinical practice. Individuals may also choose to apply to the Psychoanalytic Training at any time during or after the PSP.
Curriculum
The curriculum of the Psychoanalytic Studies Program introduces students to the fundamental concepts, clinical techniques, and historical narratives of what has come to be called a psychoanalytic understanding of the mind. From its inception, as a body of ideas, mode of treatment, or method of research psychoanalytic thinking has aimed at the creation of new kinds of truths about how individuals, groups, and societies work and love.
The Psychoanalytic Studies Program is designed for clinicians who want to become better psychotherapists or psychoanalysts, and for scholars who hope that learning about the psychoanalytic model of the mind will help them in the work that they do. The PSP is predicated on the belief that a psychoanalytic approach to thinking is best articulated within a diverse community of learners who together explore foundational concepts enlivened by contemporary events, scholarship, and research. At its core the PSP is an open forum in which the ideas of Freud, Klein, and contemporary theorists provide a living lens on the workings of the unconscious mind and its effects on individuals, groups, and communities.
While the PSP may be taken as a two-year program of study, that is as an end in itself, it also constitutes the first two years of the Psychoanalytic Training Program. Students may enter the PSP as Psychoanalytic Candidates or choose to become so at any time during the program through a separate application process.
The PSP curriculum was designed to be both iterative and developmental fusing classical narratives with contemporary articulations of psychoanalytic concepts and research.
The First Year – immerses students in the writings of Freud viewed both as a history of ideas and that of a particular mind whose observations, formulations, and their revisions, have become synonymous with working and thinking psychoanalytically. Against this backdrop, students explore such concepts as the unconscious and transference along with more recent elaborations of psychoanalytic thought as it pertains to early relations and the social mind.
The Second Year – incorporates a closer look at psychoanalytic thinking as it is delineated through the vision of Melanie Klein, within today’s consulting rooms and communities, and across the lifespan. Through studying the writings of Melanie Klein and their contemporary elaborations, students become immersed in the growth of psychoanalytic thought and practice as it pertains to human development, race, and culture. Additionally, students engage in case conferences in which discussions of clinical material are paired with multiple theories and theoretical concepts through which they are interpreted and potentially understood.
Click this link to See More About the Curriculum
Click this link to See the PSP Faculty and Supervisors
PSP Students are required to attend the annual Colloquium. As a PSP student, you are also invited to participate in public WBCP programs and events, such as the Case Conference & Seminar Series and Scientific Meetings.
Logistics
Location: For 2023-2024, entering first-year students will meet in person at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Rockville, located at 100 Welsh Drive, Rockville, Maryland. The dates for in person classes are 2023 – 9/26, 10/24, 12/5; 2024 – 1/16, 2/27, 4/2. All other first-year classes will be conducted online.
For 2023-2024, all second-year classes will be held in an online format.
Time commitment:
Classes are seventy-five minutes in length. They are held on Tuesdays from 4:00 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. with each Tuesday divided into three classes with breaks between each class. Class times are 4:00 to 5:15, 5:30 to 6:45, and 7:00 to 8:15.
Supervision is mandatory and typically occurs weekly with absences or additional hours to be determined by the supervisor and supervisee.
Reading for first-year students is often experienced as substantial and may at times take up to 80 hours per week. Reading in the second year is significantly reduced.
Classes take place on Tuesdays from 4:00pm to 8:15pm Eastern. Each Tuesday includes three distinct courses and runs 4 hours and 15 minutes. Reading assignments average 80 pages a week in total in the first year, less in the second year; this might mean four to six hours of reading a week. Supervision would require an additional hour. This totals around 9 to 11 total hours a week (not including travel if relevant).
Admission & Tuition
Applications are now being accepted for the academic year beginning September 2023. The final deadline to submit application materials is June 1, 2023.
The Orientation Session is held in September. The Program begins in October.
Requirements
You must have a license to practice in your field.
Still working towards independent licensure? The PSP is only for licensed clinicians. We invite you to consider WBCP’s Psychoanalytic Fellowship Programs and Observational Studies Program for study options at this time.
Please submit the following to admissions via email in pdf format to mimi.blasiak@gmail.com
- A career narrative, including chronology of your career evolution and your reflections upon it.
- A 2-3 page biographical sketch
- Fill out and submit the application form below and upload a current CV and license
Applications are now closed for the 2023-2024 academic year
For more information about the PSP or your particular circumstance, please call Admissions Chair, Mimi Blasiak, MSW, at 240-447-3388 or email mimi.blasiak@gmail.com
Tuition & Fees
2023-2024 Psychoanalytic Studies Program
Application Fee $159.75
Tuition per year $2,856.00
Matriculation $266.00
For students who are admitted part-time, tuition per class is $953.00
Supervision at $75/hr
CMEs/CEs are available for all PSP coursework.
Scholarships
As part of our commitment to support increased diversity and to meet some of the financial needs of students in our training programs, the WBCP is pleased to be able to offer scholarship funding to cover the cost of tuition for eligible PSP and Institute students. We welcome applications for scholarship support. Guidelines for applying can be found in the Scholarship Application.
FAQs
Can I take the program on a part-time basis?
Yes. We recognize that some students may not be able to take the program on a full-time basis, whether because of job conflicts, travel requirements, child-rearing necessities, illness, and the like. A student considering part time study should confer with one of the program co-chairs to develop a workable academic plan.
I want to specialize in children and adolescents. Are there electives and options?
The present curriculum does not have room for electives, but there are opportunities for those who work with children to learn more. The Development sequence addresses the psychological world of the child and adolescent as do the case conferences and case discussions. The program values the contributions of individuals who work with children and adolescents thereby fostering an interplay within the group that is enriching for all.
What is your commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion?
The Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis aims to foster principles, values, and sustainable policies within the Center, that create a welcoming and nurturing environment for all members of the community, irrespective of race, class, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. We seek to engage our psychoanalytic thinking to shift our historically exclusionary and biased culture in the direction of one that is diverse, anti-racist and inclusive. We encourage and support all efforts to expand psychoanalytic thought, theory, and practice to value the richness that diversities bring to a deeper understanding of individual and community experiences.
Are all the students in the PSP required to be in supervision?
Students who are practicing clinicians are expected to complete 60 hours of supervision over the two years. Students whose work is in other fields (academia, administration, journalism, research, etc.) would not be in supervision. Such students could discuss with their advisors the possibility of having a mentor who could meet with them at a suitable frequency to discuss the application of what they are learning in the program to their own work.
How do I find a supervisor?
We have provided a panel of about fifty-five members of the faculty who are able to offer supervision to PSP students for $75 a session. Supervision is weekly and one-on-one. The Admissions Committee will help with finding a supervisor suited to the student’s particular needs and interests and who can answer other transitional questions.