Enthusiasm Runs High at First Annual Psychoanalytic Research Training Program in New Haven

Recognizing the need to accelerate the development of serious empirical psychoanalytic research, the Anna Freud Centre reached across the Atlantic to collaborate with the Yale Child Study Center and the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute and Society to mount the first annual New Haven Psychoanalytic Research Training Program (NH-RTP) April 20-24. Thirteen nascent researchers from the U.S. and the U.K. came as “fellows” to consult with a faculty of psychoanalytic research scholars on issues of study design and implementation.

Modeled on the successful summer Research Training Programme at University College London, now in its 10th year under the sponsorship of the International Psychoanalytical Association, the New Haven program offered intensive training in empirical approaches to psychoanalytic research through faculty presentations of ongoing research, one-on-one consultations with faculty on the fellow's project, and fellow presentations of their work in progress for discussion by the entire group.

Faculty members were Sidney Blatt, Elizabeth Brett, John Clarkin, Peter Fonagy, Stuart Hauser, Shmuel Shulman, Mary Target, Robert Wadlinger, and Linda Mayes.

The fellows' career experiences ranged from senior practicing analysts to child psychiatry fellows just completing their training. The fellows, interested in psychodynamic perspectives, brought their curiosity, creativity, and eagerness to learn the how-to's of research to sustain them through the four-day marathon of consultations, presentations, dinner meetings, and lectures. The topics of their research projects reflected a remarkable diversity of interests and the reach of psychoanalysis. (See sidebar, page 9.)

Group Progress

Clinicians brought questions from their daily work with patients. For example, Judith Schiffman, a member of the faculty of the child psychotherapy program of the Chicago Institute, works with mothers and fathers with genetic forms of cancer. Devastated by the diagnosis, they also face the dilemma of how much to tell their children about their own risk for cancer later in their lives. How does knowing impact a child's adjustment to a parent's illness, are there differences according to a child's developmental age and individual character, and how does even a basic understanding of one's own later vulnerability shape a child's emerging sense of self? Through her Genetics for Children Project, Schiffman hopes to better understand these basic concerns and also to inform standards of clinical practice with children of adults with cancer.

The fellows were astonished at how far their projects, some only barely sketched out, could progress in the course of listening to the presentations and discussions from fellows and faculty.

In her consultation with various members of the faculty, she blended her clinical insights with a thoughtful research design that sharpened her focus on children's emerging self-image, such as in instances of breast cancer in mothers of adolescent girls.

Other fellows were just beginning their careers. Laura Lomax-Bream, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Houston, works with other devel-opmentalists on a psychoeducational intervention study designed to enhance high-risk mothers' understanding of their children's developmental needs. Lomax-Bream came to the seminar with a question about how the mothers' own parenting and early attachment relationships influenced their ability to respond to the intervention. She was encouraged to explore her existing data in different ways to facilitate understanding why it was that some mothers seemed to respond more positively than others to the same intervention.

The fellows were astonished at how far their projects, some only barely sketched out, could progress in the course of listening to the presentations and discussions from fellows and faculty. The discussions were richly educative for the entire group as the experienced researchers on the faculty debated with one another, critiqued the study designs, and offered references from their broad knowledge of the analytic research literature.

Atmosphere of Trust

The program generated a healthy trust among the participants that allowed fellows to ask even the most naïve questions. The fact that fellows and faculty were present in nearly equal numbers appeared to be a prime factor in creating this critical atmosphere of trust. The intensity of the program contributed to a sense of being on retreat, further serving to unify the group. The clinical experience of the fellows was respected and valued by the researchers for the added focus and context provided for the research projects. The fellows benefited from immersion in the culture of research, its rigor and precision of thought, as well as by being alerted to the common mistakes made by beginning (and experienced) researchers.

The collaboration with the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute and Society and with Yale led to a welcoming environment for the participants. Society members, many of whom were Child Study Center faculty, dropped in on the presentations by fellows and faculty. One evening the fellows heard from the faculty in a seminar about longitudinal perspectives on attachment and, on another evening, Peter Fonagy presented the Muriel Gardiner lecture, entitled “Mentalization focused therapy: old wine in new bottles or renewed hope for psychoanalysis?” The opportunities for the members and candidates of the Western New England to join sessions and experience the excitement of research put the New Haven Research Training Program at the grassroots of psychoanalysis in America.

The 26 applications received for this first year of the NH-RTP demonstrated that interest in learning to do quality empirical research runs high in the psychoanalytic community in the United States. Only 13 applicants could be accommodated in the April program. Positions in the London program during the summer of 2004 and an additional NH-RTP session this fall were offered to those who could not be in the first program. The first NH-RTP program was funded by the American Psychoanalytic Association, the American Psychoanalytic Foundation, Division 39 (Psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological Association, and the Muriel Gardiner Program in Psychoanalysis and the Humanities. Funds are actively being sought to continue the program.

The 2005 program will be held March 15-19. This first cohort of NH-RTP fellows and subsequent fellows will be invited to join the growing cohort of fellows from the summer London program for yearly reunions in London in March. There are also plans for a yearly reunion event for New Haven fellows at the APsaA Winter Meeting. Anyone interested in applying for the March 2005 program may contact Linda Mayes () for further information.