by San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis

EAST BAY YEARLONG PROGRAM
THE THERAPIST AS INSTRUMENT: LISTENING FROM WITHIN PSYCHOANALYTIC WORK

Psychoanalytic work unfolds in the space between spoken and felt experience. Therapists listen to patients’ words and to emotional and bodily experiences that arise within. These experiences—often elusive and at times deeply disturbing or disorganizing—can become essential guides in understanding another person’s inner life.

This East Bay Yearlong SFCP course centers the therapist’s experience as a primary instrument of psychoanalytic thinking. We will explore how personal history, unconscious motivation, countertransference, relational patterns, and broader social and cultural contexts shape how we listen, think, and respond in the consulting room.

Through shared readings, reflective discussion, and a case conference component in which participants present their own clinical work, the course offers a space to slow down, deepen attention, and think together.

We invite clinicians to enroll via this link in a year of thoughtful inquiry and shared reflection.