Overview
New Directions is a three-year postgraduate training program for clinicians, academicians, and writers who want to develop a richer understanding of modern psychoanalytic perspectives and apply it to their own work. In seasonal weekend conferences and optional summer and winter retreats, our community of students, alumni, teachers, and guest faculty come together to explore selected aspects of the psychoanalytic domain. The range of conference topics has been broad: memory, gender, trauma, infancy, evil, dreams, the body, creativity, mourning, projective identification, and the psychology of the therapist, have been the subjects, among others, of our weekends.
A special focus of the program is writing. While some of our students are extensively published and others are inexperienced, they are all invested in developing their authorial skills. While some are pursuing professional writing, several are interested in the crafting of essay, memoir, fiction, and poetry. Exposing our work to others is vulnerable business, and getting the wise support of mature colleagues is crucial in enabling us to take that risk.
We clarify and sharpen our thinking by writing. A variety of program components support this effort. We use groups that review brief assignments written for each conference, craft-oriented writing workshops, forums for critical review of published writing, and collaborations that facilitate ongoing writing projects. We have recruited a cadre of English teachers from area universities who are paired with our psychoanalyst faculty as writing group leaders.
Many of our graduates continue to participate in the program because they find New Directions a supportive professional community in which they can continue to develop as thinkers, as writers, and as professionals. Some have found that they have made substantial progress as writers particularly during their alumni years. Our students range in age from their thirties to their eighties, they come with a variety of perspectives, and, given the program’s design, they are able to come from all over the continent and even from overseas.
Components
Weekend Conferences
Each year we use three weekend conferences, scheduled in the Fall, Winter, and Spring, to focus in depth on topic areas chosen for their contemporary interest. The function of the conferences is to look critically at the emerging ideas in these developing areas, thus training the participants to become rigorous psychoanalytic thinkers. At each weekend, we are helped in this project by a faculty of local and national teachers who are expert in the relevant fields. Each conference is also aimed at developing the students’ capacities as writers, using both group meetings and brief writing assignments. Each weekend includes an interactive writing workshop event, led by an experienced writing instructor, in which the group as a whole collaborates on a writing task. For a detailed description of the weekends click here.
Weekends run from 9 am Friday morning to 12:45 pm Sunday afternoon, including one evening session. The format includes both large group lectures and discussions and small group meetings, the latter primarily focusing on the participants’ writing. Each weekend offers approximately eighteen hours of continuing education credit.
Original Writing
In addition to writing brief essays for each weekend, the participants are encouraged to take on larger writing projects. Some participants may opt to write books or substantial papers, others may want help in writing shorter essays or pieces for oral presentation, and yet others may choose to take the Program without a formal writing goal. Those participants who choose to undertake a writing project can be assisted in this endeavor by a writing consultant chosen from an international roster, which includes many leading contemporary theoreticians. Participant and consultant will develop their own format for working together, and they may collaborate in person or by phone, fax, mail or e-mail. . A listing of the current roster of consultants appears here.
Participants interested in undertaking an independent writing project will have the option of working with a consultant. The topic selected may be theoretical, clinical, or applied, and may be on research already in progress. Some students may choose to write memoir, fiction, or poetry. Participants can select from an international roster of consultants; the current panel is listed on the following page. Program advisors will help the participants to select appropriate consultants. In addition, we will make available bibliographies of the consultants'writings to assist in consultant selection. Work with the consultant may include discussions of how to define the research area, finding resources for background study, the elaboration of the concept, and review of successive drafts of the paper. Collaboration may be conducted by mail, phone, fax, e-mail, or, where possible, in person. The participant will pay for the consultant's time.
Summer & Winter Retreats
An optional week-long summer retreat at a vacation site involves half-day sessions composed of a two-hour writing workshop and two-hour small group discussion of ongoing writing projects. The retreat has been held each year at a resort in Stowe, Vermont. Because the format is designed to allow time for recreation, participants may wish to bring family or friends to the destination. Students beginning the program in the fall of 2008 are welcome to attend the summer retreat in August 2008. More details.
Starting in 2006 we held our first winter retreat. This four-day event was focused on writing projects. Each day’s work was reviewed both with an individual mentor and in an evening small group.
