American Psychological Association Publishes High School “Lesson Plan” on Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Psychology

We all know how important high school can be in creating lasting identifications and ideals. As a result, APsaA has been interested in bringing psychoanalytic ideas into high school curricula as part of our effort to attract the best “10,000 minds” of the next generation. For example, APsaA's own Andrew Gerber first met APsaA member Stuart Hauser at a national high school science fair. That encounter sparked a change in Gerber's primary interest from the physical sciences to psychoanalysis.

For more than 15 years, the American Psychological Association (APA) has maintained an active educational and outreach program aimed at high school psychology teachers and their students. This program, Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS) has almost 2,000 teacher members (called Teacher Affiliates of APA), and offers them workshops, lesson plans, teaching standards, networking opportunities, as well as scholarships, grants, and awards. It is estimated that half a million high school students take a psychology course each year. While the number of college students studying psychology is far higher, high school is often the first time that young people are formally exposed to the field, making it a critical time for the formation of first impressions.

One of the “signature products” of TOPSS is a series of “unit lesson plans” written by college psychology faculty that enable high school teachers to teach specific areas of psychology; they are provided free of charge to interested teachers via hard copies and the Internet. To date, TOPSS has developed 17 different week-long lesson plans on topics such as learning, memory, developmental psychology, and cross-cultural psychology. Psychoanalysis, as you might guess, is virtually nonexistent in these 17 lesson plans.

Enter Dottie Jeffries, APsaA's public affairs director. Jeffries became aware of the TOPSS program and asked me to take a look at the current lesson plans. She saw this as an opportunity to bring a positive, accurate picture of psychoanalysis to this critical population of teachers and young students before they are turned off to psychoanalysis by the typical negative misrepresentations. When I confirmed that psychoanalysis was not adequately covered in the existing lesson plans, Jeffries made contact with the staff of TOPSS to ascertain their interest in the development of a new week-long lesson plan on psychoanalysis. With her usual effectiveness, Jeffries quickly persuaded the TOPSS staff of the usefulness of a psychoanalysis unit, and they agreed enthusiastically to support its development. (TOPSS support includes underwriting the eventual publication of the lesson plan along with development and editorial assistance from the TOPSS staff and the high school teachers' network.)

INTRODUCTION

Psychodynamic theory, despite criticism that it is unproven, continues to be a popular and influential approach to explanation and treatment and is, in fact, supported by a substantial research basis. Psychoanalytic theory also has a particular place of importance in the field of psychology as the first and most comprehensive theory of personality and psychopathology.

Excerpt from Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Psychology

With TOPSS sponsorship in place, Jeffries and I began to conceive the project. Most of the existing units involve five or six separate lesson plans which can be covered in one week. College faculty write content outlines, and then high school teachers with an interest in the subject add additional content such as in-class exercises, multimedia supplements, and homework assignments. With the help of the TOPSS staff and the teachers' network, we came up with a plan for a six-lesson unit on “Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Psychology” covering the following topics:

Lesson 1: Overview of Freud and psychoanalysis

Lesson 2: Psychoanalytic perspectives on mental disorders and treatment

Lesson 3: Psychoanalytic perspectives on development and personality

Lesson 4: Psychoanalytic perspectives on dreams

Lesson 5: Psychoanalytic perspectives on motivation and emotion

Lesson 6: Neo-Freudians and contemporary psychoanalysis

I then recruited some respected colleagues to help write the outlines. Joshua Ehrlich, from the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, drafted Lesson 2. Howard Lerner, also from Michigan, drafted Lessons 3 and 5. Wendy Katz, from the Columbia Psychoanalytic Institute, wrote Lesson 4, and I drafted the others. After many months of e-mails and conference calls to edit, coordinate, and consult (including very helpful input from honorary APsaA member Nancy McWilliams, then president of Division 39), the six outlines were finalized in 2006. In 2007, the high school teachers added the supplemental content, and another round of editing began. Currently, I am pleased to report that APA has just published, and has begun to publicize, the whole, final package. (APA members can check it out at: ). As a result, we hope that some of next year's 500,000 high school students of psychology will be turned on to psychoanalysis, and may make their way in our direction at some point in the future as mental health professionals, patients, or supporters.