The COPE Study Group on Pedagogy focuses on the use of new media to aid psychoanalytic training. The group, which began in the fall of 1993, has always been project-oriented Its initial project involved the teaching of first- and second-year classes at The Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Training Facility. The first-year theory course was taught by Charles Brenner of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. The first-year technique course was taught by Ralph Engle of the Boston Institute.
Both teachers spent some time in Milwaukee getting acquainted with the candidates; then they volunteered to teach the candidates by telephone weekly. Brenner and Engle knew the candidates rather well before they attempted telephone teaching. Engle's coteacher, Phil Lebovitz, and Brenner's co-teacher, Todd Davison, were physically present in the seminar with the candidates to keep an eye on the non-verbal aspects of the group's communication. Brenner and Engle spoke to their co-teachers after the classes and at each visit to the main campus to process the group's interactions.
For telephone teaching, candidates and teachers were outfitted with telephone headsets that permitted conversations to be transmitted “full-duplex.” This means that each participant (including the off-campus teacher) could talk while someone else was talking without blocking out the other's voice, allowing for a more natural group discussion. Initially, the telephone teachers received little feedback; they were hearing only snorts, coughs, and giggles. It was discovered that each candidate had a mute button on his or her headset; when not speaking, many would activate this button — leaving the off-campus teacher in auditory deprivation. Asking candidates to avoid using their mute button solved this.
Telephone teaching has disadvantages and advantages. The major disadvantage is that the off-campus teacher is dependent on voices alone for information about the class until he talks to his on-campus co-teacher. The major advantage is just a different side of the disadvantage. Depending on voice alone, much as in psychoanalysis, forces each participant to put everything into words rather than depending on glances and gestures to communicate.
In gratitude for the teachers' help, The Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Foundation named its new video teleconferencing facility for Ralph Engle and inaugurated a Charles Brenner Visiting Professorship in Psychoanalysis through The Medical College of Wisconsin.
The second year of the project saw Allan Compton of Los Angeles teaching theory by telephone and the Charles Brenner Visiting Professors teaching technique in person by spending several days with the candidates reviewing papers and clinical material. The visiting professors were Jacob Arlow, Charles Kligerman, Charles Brenner, Leo Rangell, Herbert Schlesinger, and Paul Gray.
The study group's second project was the use of taped process notes in a psychotherapy clinical conference. One member of the group taped psychotherapy process notes, and the tape was used in classes with good results. It was found that not knowing the presenter and not having him present gave the students more freedom to look critically at the presenter's work. Using the same tape more than once allowed the teacher of the continuous case conference to become familiar with the material and to focus teaching on certain nodal moments. Monroe Pray used the tape in teaching psychotherapy to residents at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and was named the best teacher in the residency twice in a row for his efforts.
The third project was to conduct a study group on the Internet. Last year the group studied boundary crossings and boundary violations. This year it is studying self-analysis by means of asynchronous bulletin board entries (i.e., the participants log on to an electronic bulletin board, read the latest discussion, and add their comments to be responded to by other discussants). The self-analysis curriculum has been picked up by The Psychoanalytic Connection and is offered to psychoanalysts all over the world.