This 16-session program is designed to meet the needs of psychiatry residents, graduate students, and early-career clinicians interested in learning about practice and treatment approaches in psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. The seminars, taught by PANY faculty, have a practical focus, providing participants with an opportunity to hear and discuss clinical material. Most sessions are structured around a key clinical or theoretical concept, including psychodynamic approaches to specialized topics, and may include optional readings.

In this era of increasing recognition that most individuals who enter our consulting rooms are struggling with symptoms that mark developmental impasses, we encounter bright individuals who appear to have the capacity for reflective thought but there is often insufficient grounding in integrating thoughts and feelings to learn from experience. In that context, adaptive efforts that fail to resolve the underlying dilemma tend to become addictive. Such difficulties have been traced to inconsistent parenting that leaves the child insufficiently able to mindfully attend to internal and external cues, impeding the symbolization of experience so essential for interpersonal communications and relationships.

We will note commonalities and differences in the anorexic versus the bulimic dilemma, recognizing that each position may be seen as a waystation along the road to self-development in relation to overly intrusive and/or neglectful parents. Explorations into the metacognitive and affective difficulties associated with eating disorders can provide useful anchors for our efforts to create space for development in our consulting rooms. Case examples will explore some of the dynamics underlying such difficulties and the value of interactive modeling of reflective capacities and of creative, playful engagement in effecting change.