Report from the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research

At Columbia the programs mentioned in the previous issue are all up and running. We might consider other news which is not strictly neuroscientific. In fact it makes sense to look at the future of psychoanalytic theory and practice and realize that it will be informed by three major sources: neuroscience, empirical research, and child development research. In this issue I will mention some of the research going on at Columbia, and in a later one I will discuss the child development program.

The research program at the Center is under the leadership of Steven Roose. There are two new programs to assist beginning researchers. One is the Glass Fellowship, which provides a half time stipend for three years to a candidate or recent graduate. The Fellow will be integrated into the extensive research activities of the Department of Psychiatry, will have a mentor, will take a didactic course load, and will do research projects. Applications for this Fellowship are now being considered. Another program is a two-year course for faculty in which the participants attend one day a week of classes; this is designed to provide them with the intellectual background to do their own independent research.

I have asked for reports from some of our researchers, and I include the following responses. Deborah Cabannis, a faculty member and a participant in the two-year program, reports:

I am currently engaged in a research fellowship which is funded by the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research. Along with course work (statistics, research methodology, etc.), I am being mentored by Steven Roose and participating in weekly research meetings at the Center. My focus is on psychoanalytic education. My first study, published in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association as “The Control Case: A Unique Analytic Situation” (coauthored with Steven Roose), was designed to determine whether the need to keep patients in treatment in order to graduate affected the way to whi