For More Information
Please contact
Alison Brown, PhD
Chair, Psychology Division
alisonbrownphd@gmail.com
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Find out what Columbia trainees and faculty think most distinguishes the Center as a place to learn, teach, and grow.
Course of Study
CLINICAL training
Externs will treat individual patients in twice-weekly psychodynamic psychotherapy for up to 6 hours each week. At full caseload, each extern carries 3 patients, ranging in age from late-adolescence through adult.
Clinical work takes place in the Residents' Clinic at New York State Psychiatric Institute (PIRC), a teaching site of the Columbia University psychiatry residency program.
Externs have one hour of weekly supervision for each patient, up to 3 hours per week. Supervisors are licensed psychologists-psychoanalysts, with diverse psychoanalytic orientations, all graduates and faculty members of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Supervision is scheduled at mutually convenient times and takes place at the Psychoanalytic Center or at supervisors' private offices.
CLASSES
Externs participate in seminars at our Adult Psychoanalytic Program or Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Program.
Classes include "Freud's Thinking and Theorizing", "Core Concepts in Psychoanalysis", "Clinical Theory and Technique", and "Child & Adolescent Development", among others.
TESTING
Externs will learn to integrate the results of psychological testing with basic psychodynamic principles. Supervision will emphasize the use of testing to elaborate patients’ ego capacities, quality of relationships conflicts, defenses and fantasies. Two test batteries will be completed during the year. Externs will give verbal feedback to referring clinicians and write up a formal report.
It is expected that externs will have completed the basic assessment sequence provided by their doctoral training programs prior to the start of the externship year.
OTHER LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Externs will attend 4-5 case conferences during the year, organized by the psychology faculty of Columbia Psychoanalytic. They will have the opportunity to hear clinical material presented by faculty and to write up and present their own work.
Externs are also encouraged to explore intellectually and clinically rich opportunities at our Center and CUMC, including Department of Psychiatry Grand Rounds, monthly Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine scientific meetings, and "Why Psychoanalysis?" seminars.
QUALIFICATIONS
The externship program welcomes applicants who are advanced students in APA-accredited Clinical Psychology doctoral programs. Preference is given to applicants who are in at least the third year of training at the time the externship begins.