Pricing options

Dates & Times

All 12 sessions are live on Zoom, classes are not recorded

  • Weekly on Wednesdays

    Sep 21, Sep 28, Oct 5, Oct 12, Oct 19, Oct 26, Nov 2, Nov 9, Nov 16, Nov 30, Dec 7, Dec 14 2022

  • 10:00 AM EDT - 11:30 AM EDT Live/Online

    Reminder: USA Daylight Saving Time ends on November 6, 2022

Instructor

Psychoanalytic Program Director and Trainer Jeffrey Guss, MD

Jeffrey Guss, MD is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and researcher with specializations in psychoanalytic therapy, addictions and psychedelic therapy. He was Co-Principal Investigator and Director of Psychedelic Therapy Training for the NYU School of Medicine’s study on psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of cancer related existential distress, which was published in Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2016. He currently is a study therapist in the NYU study on Psilocybin-Assisted treatment of Major Depressive Disorder, a collaborator with Yale University’s study on psilocybin-assisted therapy for Major Depressive Disorder and a study therapist with the MAPS study on treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy. Jeff is interested in the integration of psychedelic therapies with contemporary psychoanalytic theory and has published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality and Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He co-authored a paper on the influence of therapists’ first hand experience with psychedelics on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy research in The Journal of Psychedelic Studies. He is an Instructor and Mentor with the California Institute of Integral Studies’ Center for Psychedelic Therapies. He maintains a private practice in New York City.

Trainer Lawrence Fischman, MD

Lawrence Fischman, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who has practiced in New York and Maine for 36 years. In addition to his full-time private practice in New York, he was a Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry at New York-Presbyterian/ Weill Cornell Medical Center. In 1996, he moved to Maine, and became a Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine Maine Track, where he also serves on the Admissions subcommittee. In 1983, he published a paper comparing psychedelic drug states with dreams and psychosis in Schizophrenia Bulletin. In 2019, inspired by the renaissance in psychedelic research, he published a paper in Neuropsychoanalysis on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. He has enjoyed living, working and raising a family in Maine, and is excited by the emerging possibilities for integrating psychedelic experiences with psychoanalytically-based psychotherapy.

Course Description

15 hours of CE

This 12-week course will focus on the application of psychoanalytic concepts and theory to psychedelic therapy. Contemporary psychedelic research and theory is bringing a new level of inquiry into such psychoanalytic concepts as narrative identity, the mechanisms of defense, regression, free association, and connection/attachment. We will read relevant papers from contemporary writers from both the psychoanalytic and psychedelic fields, with the intention of understanding psychedelic experience and therapy using the language of psychoanalysis. We, in turn, will inquire into the ways contemporary psychedelic research and theory may bring about a revision or extension of contemporary psychoanalytic theory.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this workshop, the learner will be able to:

  • Access NOSCs (Non Ordinary States of Consciousness), without the use of substances, through music, poetry, film and literature.

  • Demonstrate a phenomenological understanding of DIED (Drug Induced Ego Dissolution).

  • Analyze prior dynamic concepts of the psyche, consciousness, and the process of psychotherapeutic transformation with DIED.

  • Explain the differences between the concepts of “connection”/“connectedness”, as described in the psychedelic-assisted therapy literature, with the psychoanalytic processes of attachment, including, self-other boundaries, ego defenses, and ego dissolution.

  • Apply the core elements of subjective change identified in psilocybin-assisted therapy for cancer-related existential distress to concepts in psychoanalytic theory and practice.

  • Compare contemporary models for “defensiveness” and “reduction in defensiveness” that are commonly reported as an effect of psychedelic therapy with the psychoanalytic concepts of nature of threat, signal anxiety, and danger.

  • Apply Winnicott’s concept of transitional phenomena to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

  • Describe how a transitional space can support the psychedelic-assisted therapist’s approach to working with drug-induced non-ordinary experience.

  • Describe the concepts of “moments of meeting” as “the something more than interpretation” from the change process of psychoanalytic therapy.

  • Explain how “implicit relational knowing” and “moments of meeting” may be experienced in psychedelic therapy.

  • Describe what is meant by “native healing intelligence” and “inner healer” in contemporary psychedelic therapy.

  • Explain how these concepts are utilized in Randomized Clinical Trials using psychedelic-assisted or MDMA-assisted therapy.

  • Compare how these concepts relate to analytic approaches to psychedelic therapy.

  • Compare ethical guidelines for the use of touch in recent psychedelic-assisted therapy trials to guidelines in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapy.

  • Describe the many meanings of physical touch and emotional touch.

  • Discuss the implications on transference and countertransference from the use of touch.

  • Analyze the components of “flight instructions” commonly used in contemporary psychedelic-assisted therapy with the explicit goals and unconscious effects of these instructions.

  • Compare shamanic models of psychedelic healing to “flight Instructions.”

  • Describe the impact of eyeshades, music, headphones, and the couch in psychedelic-assisted therapy from a psychoanalytic framework.

Continuing Education

Continuing Education Credits for Health Professionals (CE)

  • Fluence International, Inc. is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Fluence maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

  • Fluence International, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0232.

  • Fluence International, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0674.

  • Fluence International, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0167.

  • The Department’s approval of a provider of continuing education does not constitute the Department’s endorsement of the content, positions or practices that may be addressed in any specific continuing education course offered by the approved provider.

  • For questions about receiving your CE/CME Certificate or Certificate of Attendance, contact Selah Drain, [email protected].