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The objectives of the ATPPP curriculum are to help candidates develop a sophisticated understanding of the clinical techniques and theoretical complexities of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Two seminars are combined each evening for a duration of three hours, over more than thirty weeks, for two years. One seminar focuses on the theoretical knowledge base; the second seminar is clinically based, providing an opportunity to clarify and refine theoretical concepts. Assigned readings constitute an important part of the seminars. Some alterations may be made to the seminar format.
Download the Application form here or from the tab link above. The form includes a section you can use for your referees. |
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| Click on a course title to see full details |
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| Clinical Assessment and Diagnosis |
5 Sessions |
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| This course is based on readings from two texts written by Nancy McWilliams, Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure and the Clinical Process (1994) and Psychoanalytic Case Formulation (1999). It addresses fundamental issues that arise during the initial clinical encounter, including conducting an interview, diagnosing characterological problems, assessing development, relational patterns, and levels of personality organization. The seminars will demonstrate how theory applies to practice through numerous clinical examples |
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| Development (Infant, Ages 3-11, Adolescence) |
6 Sessions |
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This seminar series is divided into three phases of development:
Infant Development
This seminar series presents researched topics about the mechanisms of development in the first years of life. It includes a discussion of the development of psychological capacities and the ways in which these permit and compel future maturation and development. Also it addresses what is required from the caretaking environment for development and the nature and impact of failures of environmental provision. Concepts covered include need versus wish, defence, holding, self-other differentiation, object constancy, psychic conflict, and empathic understanding. Finally, these seminars address the elaboration of meaning (intrapsychic versus interpersonal) in a prospective way using vignettes from the lives of infants and young children and their parents.
Ages 3-11
This seminar series presents contributions that the major psychoanalytic thinkers have made to our understanding of this period of development, including concepts of the Oedipal and latency phases. Also, it will address the psychopathologies in this period of development and how they affect later developments.
Adolescence
This seminar series reviews adolescent development from a psychoanalytic perspective, distinguishing between normal and pathological development, elaborating on the unique developmental challenges that need to be negotiated in the transition to adulthood. |
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| Basic Concepts of Treatment |
4 Sessions |
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| This seminar, based on practice, focuses on the theories addressing the frame in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, with particular attention to the issues of the setting, and regulating and maintaining the boundaries that support and protect the treatment, the patient, and the therapist. Confidentiality issues are discussed, including the protection of records, references to patients and clients in public, professional and academic settings, duties to inform or report, and rights to written or printed documents. |
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| Formulation and Record-Keeping |
2 Sessions |
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| This seminar covers the fundamentals, structure, and value of the complex and sometimes difficult process of developing a psychodynamic case formulation, including a method of approach, an outline, and clinical examples. The requirements, values, and approaches to psychotherapy record-keeping are discussed, using the 1998 text Standards and Guideline for the Psychotherapies, edited by Paul Cameron, Jon Ennis, and John Deadman. |
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| Boundaries and Confidentiality |
2 Sessions |
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| This seminar, based on practice, focuses on the theories addressing the frame in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, with particular attention to the issues of the setting, and regulating and maintaining the boundaries that support and protect the treatment, the patient, and the therapist. Confidentiality issues are discussed, including the protection of records, references to patients and clients in public, professional and academic settings, duties to inform or report, and rights to written or printed documents. |
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| This seminar presents the lively and growing literature on the proven effectiveness of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, comparing and contrasting the gains made by patients in longer-term, intensive dynamic psychotherapies where sustained character change is the goal versus those made by patients in shorter, more structured, more symptom-oriented therapies. |
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| Classical and Contemporary Freudian Concepts and Theory |
14 Sessions |
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| This seminar explores in depth central Freudian concepts such as the unconscious, the topographical model, free association, dreams, narcissism, sadomasochism and aggression, depression, and melancholia, the structural model, psychic conflict, anxiety and signal affects, and defences. The majority of the readings are from Freud's Standard Edition of Complete Psychological Works, and clinical examples are utilized to illustrate the theory. |
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| Introduction to Technique Based on Freudian Theory |
8 Sessions |
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| This seminar demonstrates the ongoing importance of Freudian technique rooted in Freud's central ideas concerning early infant and childhood memories/fantasies/motives stored in the unconscious or split off but deeply influencing current life functioning. These are accessed by following the patient's associations, the transference and counter-transference, and tracking resistances stemming from psychic pain as they emerge in the psychotherapeutic process. The seminar demonstrates with clinical material how Freudian technique, interpreted and updated by Freud's later revisions and modern extensions, is the basis of a wide range of effective clinical strategies in today's psychoanalytic psychotherapy. |
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| Specific Character Formations and Related Techniques in Treatment |
10 Sessions |
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| This seminar examines in depth various character formations and syndromes and their implications for psychoanalytic psychotherapy treatments. The basic text is by Nancy McWilliams, Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process (1994). As well, because the course is given by a number of different leaders, the students are exposed to the richness of different theoretical frameworks. The students are encouraged to bring clinical examples for discussion. Personality types studied include hysterical, dissociative, obsessive-compulsive, depressive, masochistic, psychotic/paranoid, schizoid, borderline, narcissistic, and psychopathic. |
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| Relational Theory and Technique |
4 Sessions |
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| This seminar addresses the translation of theory to technique and clinical situations from a contemporary relational theory perspective, providing the student with another framework for working with patients. |
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| This seminar focuses on the complex counter-transference reactions that arise working with suicidal and self-harming patients, with multiple clinical examples. |
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| Impasses in Treatment |
3 Sessions |
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| This seminar examines in depth the factors involved in impasses during clinical work, including concepts such as negative therapeutic reaction, masochism, and the therapist's contribution. |
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| Consultation, Medication, and Referral |
2 Sessions |
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| This seminar presents the value of and indications for consultations of various kinds, of medication, and of temporary or permanent referral. Practical approaches to the handling of what can be difficult situations in treatments are discussed using clinical examples. |
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The TORONTO INSTITUTE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
