Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (CAPPTP)

2023 - 2025 Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program

Madeleine Lansky, MD, and Mary-Stone Bowers, Co-Chairs

LATENCY AND ADOLESCENT - SECOND YEAR

Psychoanalytically oriented treatment of children and adolescents makes demands on the therapist that are different than treatment of adults. Older children are on the threshold of new experiences of their minds and bodies. How do we reach these inner worlds when they often can’t use words to tell us about their experience? The therapist has to bring together the child’s behaviors, and their own countertransference reactions, to try to arrive at the underlying meanings of the child’s world.

The Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (CAPPTP) is a two-year training program consisting of seminars that address the relational, environmental, and intra-psychic processes for both parent and child, and offers in-depth examples of interventions. The training program uses class discussion, readings, case presentations by instructors and participants, and individual clinical supervision to enrich and enliven clinical work and theoretical understanding.

Students participate in at least 50-hours of weekly individual supervision in order to foster clinical growth and in-depth understanding to their work as well as provide a place for mentorship. Supervisors are chosen from SFCP faculty, occurs in the supervisors’ private offices, and can be provided at a reduced fee.

Year two of this two-year program addresses latency and adolescence, focusing on school-age children, adolescents, and the integration between child and adult work. Year one of this two-year program addresses infancy and early childhood. Both years will include a case conference seminar where students will have the opportunity to present and discuss a specific clinical case to the group. Attention will be paid to different theoretical orientations and to cultural and sexual diversity.

Benefits of enrollment include a subscription to PEP-Web, Community Membership at SFCP, admittance to Child Colloquia held at SFCP, and admittance to a free series of presentations provided by The Child Analytic Program of SFCP demonstrating the scope of child psychoanalysis today.

Please Note: This is a two-year commitment and students are required to complete 50 hours of supervision with a supervisor chosen from any Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy faculty.

Dates:Wednesdays, September 4, 2024 – May 21, 2025
Time:07:30pm – 09:00pm
Sessions:34 Sessions
Location:San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
444 Natoma Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
(remote option to attend the program virtually is available)

Framing our Thinking - Diversity and Inclusion - Latency and Adolescence

This course will look at psychoanalytic thinking related to race, racism, national identities and trauma and examine how these impact the psychology of latency and adolescence.

     Benjamin Fife, PsyD and Erika Solis, LMFT
     Wednesdays, September 4, 11, 2024

Working with Parents of Adolescents and Latency Age Children

Parent work is an integral part of treating children & adolescents. It is only by restoring the parent-child relationship that we can contribute to long standing therapeutic change in the families we work with. The therapist alliance with the parents is critical in supporting the child’s treatment and healthy development. Our goals for the course on “Working With Parents” are:

  1. How to build a framework for developing a relationship with the parents prior to beginning treatment.
  2. By offering many clinical examples we address the challenges of working with parents.

We will explore various dynamics such as:

  • The role of rescue fantasies in the therapist’s hostility to parents 
  • Parent’s denial and competition for the child 
  • Transference to the parents and clinician’s counter-transference.

We will also have time to discuss some practical tips for working with parents and containing parent anxiety.

     Kiyomi Ameriks, MD and Shahla Chehrazi, MD
     Wednesdays, September 18, 25; October 9, 16, 2024

Latency

This seminar explores the latency period, a crucial phase in child development characterized by complex psychological dynamics. The course examines nonlinear developmental models, focusing on the anxieties, affective systems, and unconscious group experiences of middle childhood. Key topics include the fluidity of development during this stage, the defense mechanisms such as splitting, and the role of forgetting in borderline children. Additionally, the seminar addresses strategies for working with parents, particularly those of children exhibiting challenging behaviors. Through a combination of readings and discussions, participants will gain a deeper understanding of the psychological processes at play during latency, preparing them to effectively support children and their families in clinical practice.

     Stacie Degeneffe, LCSW
     Wednesdays, October 23, 30; November 6, 14, 20, 2024

Transition from Latency to Adolescence

The seminar description will be posted shortly.

     Mali Mann, MD
     Wednesdays, December 4, 11, 18, 2024; January 8, 15, 2025

Adolescence

This conversation about adolescence will consider “what’s normal, what’s not.” Through didactic material and case discussion, we will consider such issues as gender identity, sex and sexual development within the context of the psychological and physiological stages of adolescence. From Middle School to High School, peer pressure, school and family provide a context for the development of the adult mind, distinct but engaged with the oedipal and preoedipal family. Sex, drugs, and social media all provide for the expression of the seething cauldron of this complex developmental period.

     Chaya Rivka Mayerson, PsyD; and Erika Solis, LMFT
     Wednesdays, January 22, 29; February 5, 12, 19, 26; March 5, 2025

Child and Adolescent Case Conference

Participants will have the opportunity to present detailed process notes of sessions from their own active child and adolescent cases to their fellow classmates and to two experienced clinicians who will facilitate the discussions. Following each session closely, we will track the emotional tone of the patient-therapist interactions and the transference-countertransference. We will try to identify the child’s level of psychic functioning and his or her anxieties and defenses. We will discuss how to establish an appropriate frame and how to formulate interpretations or interventions that have the potential to facilitate the child’s psychic integration and growth. Working with the child’s, or adolescent’s parents to support the treatment will be considered as well.

     David Shaner, MA, LMHC, FIPA
     Wednesdays, March 12, 19, 26; April 2, 9, 16, 23, 2025

Integrative Seminar: What Can We Learn from The Parallels between Adult and Child Treatment

In this class we will discuss a life cycle perspective of therapy, and explore how the transgenerational transmission of trauma works using clinical examples from both child and adult therapies.

If we are trained in understanding the life cycle, we can treat a person of any age. We show by playing and speaking with a child that we believe in putting the meaning being conveyed into words, one step removed from the experience of play. We can think about the play, which symbolizes what is felt and needs to be known for integrative purposes. When does the transition occur to a therapy with an adolescent or an adult who is sitting in the chair talking, using language symbolically, to describe an “as if” instead of acting out a reality? I would argue that all therapy is a kind of play therapy, in which we interact at the level of play, while starting to “think about” the play with the patient of any age. When we work with an adult we talk about their childhood in order to understand how they unconsciously hold past experiences. When we work with a child we talk to the parents in order to understand the transgenerational transmission of trauma. We help the parents speak about the “ghosts in the nursery”, the traumas of their past, that are unconsciously conveyed to their children via projection and unprocessed, split-off affect.

     Kathy Sinsheimer, MFT
     April 30; May 7, 14, 21, 2025

Tuition and Fees

You will need to pay annual tuition fees each year you are enrolled in the program. Please note that tuition rates and feess are subject to change and typically increase 3% each year.

Annual tuition fees cover the following resources and services:

  • Seminars and Case Conference for the full academic year
  • Access to Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEP) and EZ Proxy online databases of books and articles
  • Community Membership at SFCP – Community Membership is an entry into a diverse and vibrant community of clinicians, scholars, and educators united by their common interest in psychoanalytic practice and thought. Access to a broad range of educational and professional development activities is available to Community Members of SFCP, including free attendance at Scientific Meetings and reduced fees for other programs.
  • Access to the SFCP Library – extensive collection of psychoanalytic books and journals.

Annual tuition fees do NOT cover the following resources and services:

  • Supervision fees – Please note that supervision fees are additional to tuition and are arranged individually between supervisor and supervisee.  A list of CAPPTP supervisors will be provided, all of whom are committed to providing a reduced fee for students when needed.
  • Occasional assigned readings which are not on PEP Web or EZ-Proxy – these will be available online for a small additional fee (see Readers Fee section below).
  • CE/CME credit fees – if you wish to receive CE/CME credits, these are available according to the SFCP CE/CME credit policy (see CME/CE Credits Fee section below).

Refund Policy (for both Leaves of Absence and Withdrawals from Training)

The initial deposit you paid is not refundable; however, your initial deposit can be credited toward your future tuition if you elect to resume CAPPTP classes at a later time.

Once the first day of a new class begins, no refunds for that class will be given if you need to take a leave of absence or withdraw from training for any reason. If you have paid the tuition in full for the academic year, you will receive a refund for any classes not yet started at the time of withdrawal/leave of absence.

Readers Fee

Charges for reading material required for the seminars are not included in tuition. Your readers will be prepared by CopyCentral, and the readers cost are based upon copyright laws and change based on the content of the readers. The SFCP Office will inform you when your readers are available to be purchased from CopyCentral’s website. Please note that CopyCentral may take 2 weeks to print and mail the readers to you, so we recommend you to purchase them as soon as they become available.

Upcoming Events

Wednesdays, January 8 to 22, 2025
Psychoanalytic Student Seminars
Promoting Depth and Analytic Process in Psychotherapy With Patients in Internship and Clinical Settings
Beth Steinberg, PhD (instructor)
Thursdays, January 9, 2025 to May 8, 2025
Extension Education Programs
2024-2025 Coalition for Clinical Social Work Extension Division Program: Foundations of Psychodynamic Clinical Work in Community Mental Health Settings - Year ONE
Genevieve Vidal, LCSW; Sebastian Melo, LCSW, MPH; Julia St. George, LCSW; and Beth Kita, LCSW, PhD (instructors)
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Child Colloquium Series
Therapy and medications: How can child and adolescent clinicians work collaboratively with psychiatrists?
Ross Andelman, MD, MFA (presenter)
Saturday, January 18, 2025
Dialogues in Contemporary Psychoanalysis
The Social Unconscious: Beyond the Individual and Beyond the Group - Juan Tubert-Oklander in Conversation with Jyoti Rao
Juan Tubert-Oklander in Conversation with Jyoti Rao
Thursday, January 23, 2025
SFCP Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Conversations
SFCP Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) Conversations - Module 2
David Luna, MBA, JD
Saturday, January 25, 2025
The James Grotstein Memorial Lectures in Comparative Psychoanlaysis
Part 1: Winnicott in San Francisco: "On Communicating and Not Communicating"
Peter Goldberg, PhD (presenter)
Sunday, January 26, 2025
SFCP Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Conversations
SFCP Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) Conversations - Module 2
David Luna, MBA, JD
Saturday, February 1, 2025
Scientific Meetings
Leadership in a Time of Polarization
Harriet Wolfe, MD; and Brett Penfil, MFT, MPH (presentes)
Monday, February 3, 2025
SFCP Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Conversations
SFCP Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) Conversations - Module 2
David Luna, MBA, JD
Wednesdays, February 5, 2025 to March 12, 2025
Coalition for Clinical Social Work
Managing Our Internal Experience
Elizabeth Simpson, LCSW (instructor)
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