Extension Course The History of Psychoanalysis

Instructor

Thomas Wolman, M.D.

January 7 – February 25, 2019
Mondays, 7:00 – 8:15 p.m.

No class: 1/21, 2/18

Pay Fee $150

No CME or CE credits offered.

Course Description

This course will consider the history of psychoanalysis as a series of critical moments and decision points. Examples of crises include the Controversial Discussions in the basement of the British Psychoanalytic Society, the mass immigration of analysts to Britain and the USA in the late 1930’s, and the boom in psychoanalytic training during the immediate post-war period. In addition to surveying events, we will look at the ways analysts view their own history. In that regard, we will examine the roles of repression, revision, splitting, and of course, repetition. We must also turn a critical eye to the bias and pre-conceptions we all hold. Do we, for example, see the arc of our history as progressive? Regressive? Do some developments in our history function as “correctives”? And most important for our everyday practice, how are the controversies that beset psychoanalysis today the result of past decision points such as the handling of the question of lay analysis.

In these six sessions, Dr. Wolman will try to touch upon such topics as: The context of the first psychoanalytic cures, the challenges faced by the pioneer generation of psychoanalysts, the creation of the international psychoanalytic association, the origin of divergent paths within our field, and psychoanalysis as an international movement. He will also spend time on a special point of interest: the alliance between Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry in America and its subsequent erosion. We will briefly explore the consequences of the 1975 Bolder Conference of psychologists and the 1980’s suit against the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Thomas Wolman, M.D. was born and raised in in New York City. He moved back here recently after having lived in Philadelphia for 45 years. He attended Johns Hopkins University and the Pennsylvania State University Medical College. Subsequently he trained at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, where he taught in both the psychoanalytic and psychotherapy training programs. He has taught at Jefferson Medical College, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and most recently, the psychiatry residency at Temple University School of Medicine. He has written on Winnicott, Mahler, Kohut and Lacan, as well as on contemporary film and literary themes. He is married with two adult children and three grandchildren.