Testimonials
Reflections from our Guest Faculty
"New Directions is a pioneering and unique program for learning to write in the field of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Refuting the prevailing sense that such programs are often advocated but rarely carried out, New Directions offers exciting opportunities, fresh methodologies, and creative dialogue with skilled writers in our field. The result of participating in the program is renewed vigor and enhanced skill for the aspiring writers amongst us!"
Salman Akhtar, M.D.
(Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute)
"It has been my great pleasure to be involved with the New Directions program since its inception. The faculty is among the most thoughtful and innovative group of teachers with whom I have worked. The curriculum facilitates creative critical thinking, and supports students in conceptualizing and developing their personal writing projects."
Jay Greenberg, Ph.D.
(William Alanson White Institute)
"Bringing together talented psychoanalysts and mental health professionals with aspiring and already published writers makes for an extraordinary catalytic experience. The program affords participants the combination of the sheer pleasure that comes from playing with the craft of words and the provocative experience of thinking deeply about the individual meanings in a story well told. New Directions should be sampled time and time again."
Linda Mayes, M.D.
(Yale Child Study Center)
"New Directions is well-named, for the program provides the crucial support, encouragement and fellowship so many clinicians need to turn those percolating ideas for papers into reality. Non-clinicians can take their academic interests and careers in new directions as well, as they benefit from on-going involvement in a structured group setting where the application of psychoanalytic ideas to their own areas of expertise is really appreciated and understood. Why struggle to write alone when there's such a terrific-and fun-program that helps would-be writers make strides together?"
Susan C. Vaughan, M.D.
(Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research)
"New Directions really is a new direction, both for attention to writing in our field and for attention to mentoring as the means to make the writing process relational, that is, appropriate to our accumulating clinical tradition."
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl,
(Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research)
"I have found the New Directions program to be one of the most valuable programs in the country for mental health professionals who wish both to update their knowledge of current issues in the field and to improve their writing skills, It offers a unique opportunity for therapists to develop professionally in both these ways and I highly recommend it to all those who seek to expand their knowledge and skills in these areas."
Theodore Jacobs, M.D.
(New York Psychoanalytic Institute and New York University Psychoanalytic Institute)
"This excellent program provides an integration of reading, thinking and writing that is unique in the field. It permits an in-depth treatment of subject matters which creates its own consuming excitement. I warmly recommend it."
Peter Fonagy, Ph.D., FBA
(Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis, University College, London)
"What touched me most on first encounter with New Directions was the ambience of consistently considerate warmth, the air of comfortable candor. Status and hierarchy had no presence. Rather, all shared freely their common love for the struggle to translate experience and knowledge into language. As a result, the thinking and the language were never tediously predictable.
A serious writer writes in order to learn how to write. New Directions succeeds as an intermittent writer's camp, one offering both beginners and those who have often published a safe opportunity to practice learning to write in the company of thoughtful and respectful others."
Warren S. Poland, M.D.
(Washington Center for Psychoanalysis)
The Experience of Our Students
"New Directions is very probably a program like no other in the world. Grounded in modern concepts of psychoanalysis, it offers open-minded, inquiring views of the human condition. Each weekend combines writing by each participant-some critiques of contemporary psychoanalytic articles, some articles being prepared for publication, and some deeply personal ones. There is a great deal of latitude as to what each person will do. Another fascinating aspect of the program is that it draws people from many disciplines-not just psychoanalysis, but also teaching. the ministry, and other branches of medicine. The group meetings are small and supportive, the speakers generally excellent. I can't imagine another weekend experience which offers the opportunity for so much learning and personal growth, as well as the opportunity to become a writer in whatever way one wishes."
March Enders, M.D., Class of 2008
"'I've found my tribe,' is what I answered each time friends and colleagues asked me what the first weekend of New Directions was like back in 1997. Having missed but one weekend since, I continue to give the same answer. But what do I really mean? What I found was a group of like-minded professionals, many of whom have since become dear friends, who continue to be excited by psychoanalytic ideas and are interested in engaging in the serious play it takes to find ways to express these ideas. I found the support to experiment, to fail, and perhaps as importantly, to succeed. My first published article on psychoanalysis appeared in Opera News and was titled "Opera on the Couch." I presented a paper on Edgar Allan Poe at a Poe celebration in Asbury Park, NJ. Currently, I'm writing a novel. Each time that I've shifted gears, taken on a new interest, or returned to former ones, I've felt supported, challenged, and appreciated. This is a unique experience and one that I want to continue to have."
Kent Jarratt, MSW
Class of 2000
"While I could say many things about how New Directions has impacted my life as an analyst - the expansion of my knowledge of contemporary psychoanalysis, the sharpening of my critical thinking, the opening of a window into the world of psychoanalytic writing - there is one central contribution: Through this program I discovered that I can write. For anyone who wishes to develop or refine the capacities to read, think, and write psychoanalytically, New Directions can become a part of that process. The faculty and fellow participants created a kind of environment where I could enter the program at the place I was, not where I thought that I should be. I found so many people who were genuinely interested in helping others to grow and to find their own unique voices."
Fred L. Griffin, M.D.,
Class of 2003.
"Even though I thought myself an accomplished writer and had published for years, I was stuck with a writing project on child abuse in German literature when I applied for New Directions. What I found at New Directions was much more than I had bargained for. Well-chosen, stimulating speakers on current topics in psychoanalysis were the least of it. Discussion of the topics with the lecturers, and with faculty and fellow students in small groups, allowed us to come to grips with the issues raised. I left every time with a host of new intellectual avenues opened up to my own project.
"The discipline of having to write a brief essay on a given conference topic focused me on a very specific task that made it easy to write regularly again. The feedback I received on these essays from the discussion groups proved very helpful in making me understand weak points and strong points in my writing. But best of all was the encouragement to complete my project and the concrete suggestions for writing strategies that I received from my fellow students and from the analytic and writing faculty. As a result, I finished and published three of the planned chapters as essays and am well on the way to finish my project.
"A word about the summer retreats in Vermont: The experience is fabulous. I never thought that I could have so much fun with writing, accomplish so much good writing in so short a time, and bond with so many people over tears and laughter."
Ursula Mahlendorf, Ph.D.
Class of 2002
"I began New Directions as a skeptic. How could I find the words to write about my work both as a Lutheran pastor and as a psychoanalytically trained psychotherapist? I thought I would have to learn a new language, one that seemed dry and very strange to me.
"Rather than learn a new language, however, I was encouraged by New Directions to give voice to the words that were already inside me. Through the ongoing support and expertise of faculty and participants, the integration of psychoanalysis and theology in my work and in my writing has taken shape in ways that I had not imagined possible.
"One of the greatest assets of New Directions is a faculty that is flexible and open to new ideas. In particular, I remember a writing assignment given on a weekend called "Trespass." Participants were asked to write a short paper describing the experience of a boundary violation as it was taking place. After struggling for weeks with what to say, I realized that this assignment took me to a place that did not immediately give way to words. I worked with color, shredded paper, and collage. Eventually the words took shape, first in poetry, then in prose. Not only was the faculty affirming of my work, but this process led me to develop a writing group for children in which photography, art, and music were used to help the children write.
"New Directions has helped me to become intentional about my writing. As a result of this, I have been awarded a Sabbatical Grant for Pastoral Leaders by the Louisville Institute which is funded by Lilly Endowment, Inc. I will use this sabbatical time to record people's stories of how they have been carried through the most difficult times in their lives. I look forward to the new directions in my writing that are yet to come, and I am grateful to this program for guiding me along the way."
The Reverend Violet Cucciniello Little
Class of 2004
