Eating and The Body:
A
Cultural, Relational Psychoanalytic
Framework
One
Year Post Graduate Training Program
OPEN
HOUSE Sun. May 5, 12:00-1:30.
For location RSVP 212-721-7005 or
wtcinyc@mac.com
The
Women's Therapy Centre Institute is known for its
pioneering work on women's relationship to food, feeding,
and their bodies. Since the publication of Susie
Orbach's Fat
Is A Feminist Issue (1978),
the faculty of The WTCI has further developed a
theory and practice explicated in Eating
Problems: A Feminist Psychoanalytic Treatment
Model (1994),
a widely used text for
psychotherapists.
The
WTCI's intensive One Year Training Program
understands eating and body image problems as the way
people speak about what is dissociated and unspeakable.
We see these symptoms as an expression of the confluence
of self, interpersonal, and cultural experience. The
prejudices of our culture regarding race, class, gender,
and sexual identities are contained in the contemporary
idealized body: racialized Euro-American, ultra-thin,
hard, toned, young, heterosexual, hypersexual, and
affluent. We analyze why this limiting ideal is so
compelling, how it becomes internalized, and the ways
that it functions to constrain and constrict the body and
mind.
Download Application
Here
Curriculum
WEEKS 1-5:
* Social
causes: gender arrangements, racism, consumer capitalism,
class, thinness as an ideal, and dieting as both a
commercial empire and an internal object relation.
* Bodies/Race/Sexual Health/Culture.
WEEKS
6-10:
* An
experiential psychoeducational group: participants learn
The WTCI's unique model of feeding oneself and living in
one's body. Participants work on their own eating and
body issues, observe an experienced clinician in
practice, and discuss her interventions as they apply the
model to themselves.
WEEKS
11-13:
*
Relational psychoanalytic theory: Klein, Fairbairn,
Winnicott, and contemporary feminist theorists.
WEEKS
14-15:
* How to
implement the model: clinical work on the psychodynamic
meanings and self states of the body--including hunger,
food choice, satiety.
WEEKS
16-20:
* The
psychodynamics and treatment of those suffering with and
speaking through bulimia, anorexia, and compulsive eating
as well as the experience of living in a larger body.
WEEKS 21-22:
*
Working with adolescents and families.
WEEKS
23-24:
* Explore
the psychodynamics, politics, and practices of cosmetic
and bariatric surgeries.
WEEKS
25-26:
* The
convergence of eating problems, trauma, and dissociation.
WEEKS
27-30:
*
Countertransference (explored throughout the
program); non-verbal communication and the psyche-soma
connection.
Fees
The fee for the course work
is $2150.00 per year. Individual supervision is $70.00
per session. Application fee of $50 is
non-refundable. Scholarship funding is available
based on demonstrated need. (Please note that any
financial aid request is due with the submission of your
application, and cannot be considered at a later date.)
Days/Times
Daytime option: Friday
mornings, 10am-noon. Evening option: Thursday evenings
6pm-8-pm
Eligibility
This program is open to those
with graduate degrees in the mental health professions
and related fields. Applications are due by June
15th.
WTCI
Faculty and Supervisors
Linda Arbus, LCSW
Linda Arkin, LCSW
Catherine Baker-Pitts, Ph.D.
Carol
Bloom, LCSW
Bonnie Gitlin, LCSW
Andrea Gitter, MA, ADTR, LCAT
Susan Gutwill, MS, LCSW
Laura Kogel, LCSW, ACSW
Deborah Liner, Ph.D.
Wendy Miller, Ph.D.
Lisa Thaler, LCSW
Anne Wennerstrand, LCSW, DTR
Lela Zaphiropoulos, LCSW, ACSW
Janet Zinn, LCSW
Additional Programs
The WTCI
offers continuing education courses; six week eating and
body image psycho-educational groups for both the public
and practitioners; an annual lecture, workshops, and our
annual event,
INDWELLING: Living in a Female Body