Much ink has been spilled over two situations that do not bode well for the future of psychoanalysis: the lay public's failure to value psychoanalytic ideas and the poverty of interest among young professionals in pursuing psychoanalytic careers. To address both of these problems, the American Psychoanalytic Association has initiated the 10,000 Minds Project, a major outreach effort that aims to increase the positive exposure of college students to psychoanalytic ideas. A significant portion of the funding for the 10,000 Minds Project comes from the International Psychoanalytical Association's Developing Psychoanalytic Practice and Training (DPPT) project, which supports programs designed to increase the number of psychoanalytic patients and/or candidates.
By connecting with undergraduates, the 10,000 Minds Project hopes to inspire a lifelong appreciation for psychoanalytic thinking, an interest in potential careers in psychoanalysis, and the pursuit of psychoanalytic treatment when help is needed. A number of gateways have been identified through which psychoanalytic ideas might reach undergraduates and several 10,000 Minds projects are well underway (visit apsa.org search “10,000 Minds” and click on the first result for a detailed description of all current projects).
One 10,000 Minds initiative already showing promising results is the creation of a Web site for college instructors who are teaching psychoanalytic content. The Web site is accessible through the Training and Education menu of the APsaA main page and also through teach-psychoanalysis.com. On the Web site, college teachers from all disciplines can find specific information, ideas, and resources to help them engage undergraduates in psychoanalytic ideas.
The impetus to develop the Web site came from an experience I had two years ago in the undergraduate child development class I teach at John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio. After spending the better part of a lecture describing Freud's psychosexual stages, I noticed one of my students looking particularly pensive. When I asked what was on her mind, she said, “This is the third time I've heard Freud's developmental theory, and the first time it's made sense to me.”
By connecting with undergraduates, the 10,000 Minds Project hopes to inspire a lifelong appreciation for psychoanalytic thinking, an interest in potential careers in psychoanalysis, and the pursuit of psychoanalytic treatment when help is needed.
Needless to say, she got me thinking. First, it was apparent that she had actually been taught psychoanalytic ideas in at least two other courses. In general, that's good news as it counters the sad reality that many college teachers present psychoanalysis as bizarre or out-of-date—that is, if they teach psychoanalytic theory at all. Second, she confirmed what I have long suspected: teaching psychoanalytic ideas to undergraduates is very hard to do.
Indeed, it has taken me a long time to hammer out my own technique for introducing the psychosexual stages to my child development students. Now I begin by asking my students to share their observations of the infants and toddlers in their families. I invite them to tell the stories their families tell about their own early experiences around toileting, feeling competitive, or feeling small and left out. It's surprisingly easy to hit a home run. Last semester one student volunteered that he still teases his now college-aged brother for declaring, at four, that he was “going to marry mom.” Together, we build Freud's theory.
Before I came upon this way of teaching the psychosexual stages, I spent a lot of time doing what college teachers hate most, having my students look at me like I was crazy. It should come as no surprise that, at first blush, much of psychoanalytic theory is quite off-putting to the average 18- to 22-year-old. While we may not be able to prevent wholesale Freud-bashing in college classrooms, we can give college instructors who feel neutral-to-friendly about psychoanalytic theory a fighting chance as they try to illuminate the theory for their students.
To build the undergraduate Web site, I, with technical wizard Heather Davidson, developed and then deployed a survey of teaching methods to all of the members of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Members were asked, through the survey link delivered by e-mail, to share their best practices for engaging students of every level in psychoanalytic ideas. The initial survey responses were used to fill in the basic framework of the Web site. From there, we solicited further contributions from several quarters, including members of Division 39 of the American Psychological Association, members of listservs populated by college psychology teachers, and interdisciplinary psychoanalytic organizations. At present, we are in the process of adding new responses to the Web site as they come in.
Lisa Damour, Ph.D., is a practicing psychologist, an adjunct instructor at John Carroll University, and the co-author (with Jim Hansell) of Abnormal Psychology (Wiley, 2005) and (with Anne Curzan) First Day to Final Grade: A Graduate Student's Guide to Teaching, University of Michigan Press, 2006.
We have discovered that people are eager to share what works in their own classrooms. The Web site includes the syllabi for several college courses featuring psychoanalytic theory, recommended readings, effective writing assignments, useful Web links, and guidance about how to introduce specific psychoanalytic concepts. For example, Jerome Blackman, a training analyst at the New York Freudian Society and adjunct professor of psychology at Virginia Wesleyan College, contributed the following advice on introducing defense mechanisms to undergraduates: “I explain that defenses are like circuit-breakers—defenses shut off some aspect of affect (sensation or thought content) when the current (intensity) gets too hot.”
Soon, the Web site will be advertised to its many potential users as a free service sponsored by the American Psychoanalytic Association. It will be promoted through listservs populated by college teachers, announced to faculty in the many relevant undergraduate departments, and offered to textbook companies as a useful supplement for teachers using their books. Web site users will be encouraged to share their own teaching techniques in the hopes of developing a lively forum for supporting the challenging, rewarding enterprise of bringing psychoanalytic ideas to life in the college classroom.