Fall Semester, 2026
Freud
IDP members seeking to study Freud are invited to do so with IDP Analyst Todd Dean, M.D., Dean of Education at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute.
This is an Open Analytic Theory Course, and those without either a psy discipline advanced degree or a college degree may apply to enroll. Apply online at least 4 weeks in advance of the start date.
Go to St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute to register.
The value of studying Freud for clinicians and scholars has been well described by Adam Phillips: “Freud was discovering what, if anything, the new languages of science had to contribute to this project of finding adequate – that is, therapeutic – forms of narrative coherence; a way of telling and contributing to a patient’s telling of that person’s life story that would disclose a repressed repertoire of possibilities” (Becoming Freud, p. 133). The purpose of studying his work is not to make students into Freudians, but to help them work through the problematics of mental health and therapeutics, not only in the clinic, but in the larger world.
Convenes on Fridays, 10:30–11:45 Central, beginning September 11, 2026 in person in St. Louis or via Zoom.
Facilitator: J. Todd Dean, MD
Tuition: $580 (updating soon) paid to the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute
Fall Semester, 2026
Clinical and Theoretical Foundations of Psychoanalytic Schools of Thought
Differing notions of manifest versus latent content – from Freud, Lacan, Klein, and Bollas – to object relations and the Middle or Independent School will guide us. This is a crucial concern, insofar as much of psychoanalysis has rejected—other than in name only—the critical lenses of what, in sessions, and in society, are the driving forces of symptoms and of ideology. Winnicott noted—unfortunately, only parenthetically—that he worked traditionally with neurotics, and that his contributions to theory and practice addressed severe disturbances; this goes almost entirely unaccounted for by most practitioners and theorists. Likewise, for Bollas, many of us seem to have negatively hallucinated his almost constant attention to latent content. How do we differentiate between the imaginary and the symbolic, between manifest and latent content in our patients’ speech? What are the clinical – and societal – consequences at stake here?
Convenes on Tuesdays via Zoom, starting September 8, 2026, 12:50 – 1:55 Mountain Time for 10 weeks.
Facilitator: Joseph Scalia III, Psya.D.
Tuition: $500
Register
Fall Semester, 2026
Education and Psychoanalysis: Developing Insights for School-Based Practice
Those who work with youth in schools attempt to form relationships with students that will lead to intellectual, social, developmental, and academic growth. Educating with and for critical consciousness is to act in ways that those with whom we work are equipped to go after their hopes and dreams in order to make their own unique way in the world.
Inside a classroom, a school, and a school system, educators are dealing with a wide array of complicated situations. While schools attempt to “manage” or programmatically ameliorate difficult behaviors, moods, symptoms, and acting-out, these can and should be understood as derivatives of unconscious conflicts or developmental deficits, or both, with an eye for the subjective, sociocultural, and civilizational roots of such conflicts and deprivations. When worked with in this way, recognizing the child’s hidden but authentic efforts at integrity, regarding behavior as communication, and being conscious of the undercurrents in everyday life, the educator’s experience of the child, as well as the child’s experience of themselves and the world-at-large, gains a renewed potential for empowerment and transformation.
This Study Group, which began Spring, 2026, is putting together psychoanalytic conceptualizations that could be useful to educators, from school leaders to teachers, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, specialists, and parents.
An educator and educational leader in public schools for over three decades, Lynne Scalia, with co-facilitator and budding researcher and scholar, Alex Dolabi, will continue to work toward the development and implementation of a caring and critical psychoanalytic pedagogy and that allows a child with barriers to learning to grow, thrive and use their time well in school, while getting the adults in their lives aboard by attempting to listen to that which is unconscious.
A wonderful and interdisciplinary mix of participants are currently active in the group, and we welcome anyone who wants to join and contribute — please reach out to Lynne or Alex with any questions or suggestions!
This course does not qualify for CEU’s, as it will be a co-created endeavor without a rigid syllabus, but does qualify for IDP credit.
Pre-requisite: A conversation with Lynne is needed before registering. Contact Lynne at director.dempsya@gmail.org
Convenes on Tuesdays via Zoom, beginning September 8, 2026, 2:00-3:00 pm Mountain Time for 10 weeks. (This time could change depending on the needs of the group.)
Facilitators: Lynne Scalia, Ed.D. and Alex Dolabi
Tuition: No cost, except for readings that may need to be purchased, and your active participation.
Register
Spring Semester, 2026
Study Group:
What Psychoanalysis Can Offer Pre-K through 12th Grade Education
Study Group Description: Those who work with youth in schools attempt to form relationships with students that will lead to intellectual, social, developmental, and academic growth. Educating with and for critical consciousness is to act in ways that those with whom we work are equipped to go after their hopes and dreams in order to make their own unique way in the world.
Yet, inside a classroom, a school, and a school system, educators are dealing with a wide array of complicated situations. The rate of attrition of educators leaving the field is high. While schools attempt to “manage” or programmatically ameliorate difficult behaviors, moods, symptoms, and acting-out, these can and should be understood as derivatives of unconscious conflicts or developmental deficits, or both. When worked with in this way, when recognizing the child’s hidden but authentic efforts at integrity, the educator’s experience of the child themselves, and of education of the child, has the potential to be transformed, empowered.
As well, the economic, psychological, biological, social, and political conditions that exist in our world today inextricably shape life at the level of the individual. As of April, 2026, we are putting together psychoanalytic conceptualizations that could be useful to educators, from school leaders to teachers, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, specialists, and parents.
An educator and educational leader in public schools for over three decades, Co-Director Lynne Scalia hopes to start an updated exploration of how psychoanalysis and certain psychoanalytic concepts could be useful to Pre-K through 12th grade education, as well as for analysts who work with children and/or educators. An interdisciplinary mix of folks – educators interested in psychoanalysis, analysts/analyst candidates, etc., are welcome.
This Study Group may go beyond a semester for those interested. Products might be in the form of writings or seminars we might put together. This will not qualify for CEU’s, as it will be a co-created endeavor with no set syllabus, but does qualify for IDP credit.
Spring Semester: Begins Tuesday, January, 6, 2026 4:15 – 5:15 pm Mountain Time for 10 weeks.
Ongoing: Biweekly: March 24, April 7, April 21, May 5, May 19 at 2-3 pm Mountain Time
Meetings by Zoom.
Pre-requisite: A discussion with Lynne is needed before registering: Contact: director.dempsya@gmail.org
Tuition: No cost, except for readings that may need to be purchased, and your active participation.
Facilitator: Lynne Scalia, Ed.D., Co-Director
Register
Spring Semester, 2026
The End and Aims of Psychoanalysis
Of the several guiding questions of our Institute for a Democratic Psychoanalysis, that of “the end of analysis,” and its place in groups and in society, will be our focus.
What is a psychoanalyst at the end of analysis, and how do the varying answers to this question affect our working grasps of that psychoanalysis itself is, and of what might be a true and potentially sustainable democracy? How might IDP be(come) democratic and, relatedly, what does it mean to be “capable of community,” as Freud said it late in his life?
Not meant as actual reading requirements, the following offers an indication of what we will be addressing in this course. Selected readings will be assigned as the semester proceeds
- Sigmund Freud “Constructions in Analysis” – on the rarity of those to whom sublimation is possible and of those who are “capable of community” and
- The Future of an Illusion
- “Some Elementary Lessons in Psycho-Analysis”
- D.W. Winnicott
- “Some Thoughts on the Meaning of the Word ‘Democracy'”
- Adam Phillips
- “Winnicott’s Magic: Playing and Reality and Reality” in A Cure for Psychoanalysis
- W. R. Bion
- The Dictionary of the Work of W.R.Bion on be(com)ing O
- Christopher Bollas
- China on the Mind
- Cornelius Castoriadis
- “Psychoanalysis and Politics”
- “The State of the Subject Today”
- In Dylan Evans’s An Introductory Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
- The entries on “act,” “end of analysis
- In Lacan’s Ecrits
- ‘ “On Freud’s “Trieb” and the Psychoanalyst’s Desire’
- “On the Subject Who is Finally in Question
- Willy Apollon – conveyed by Dr. Scalia as per GIFRIC’s Training and Clinical Seminars
- Joseph Scalia III and Lynne Scalia. Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education
Spring Semester: Begins Tuesday, January, 6, 2026 12:50 to 1:55 PM Mountain Time for 10 meetings.
Ongoing: Class has continued to meet on Tuesdays 12:50 to 1:55 PM Mountain Time at no cost. New students may join the class. Contact josephscalia@dempsya.org if interested. No need to complete Registration document at this time.
Zoom will be our meeting “venue.”
Tuition: $500
Instructor: Joseph Scalia III, Ed.D., Psya.D.
Register
Fall, 2025
The Cure for Psychoanalysis
What constitutes psychoanalysis? What constitutes a psychoanalyst? What constitutes a psychically sophisticated group and school? These are the three guiding questions of IDP.
Adam Phillips’s papers, “The Cure for Psychoanalysis” and “Winnicott’s Magic: Playing and Reality and Reality” both found in his The Cure for Psychoanalysis (2021[2019]): Confer Books, will be one set of two springboards for our explorations of these questions in this seminar.
Our second set of springboards for our explorations will be certain critical communications in The Spontaneous Gesture: Selected Letters of D. W. Winnicott. Rodman, F. Robert, (ed.,1987). Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England. In this provocative book, Winnicott, who is easily thought of as a gentle man, repeatedly challenges then current psychoanalytic theories and methods.
Spring Semester: Begins Tuesday, September 23, 2025, 12:50 – 1:55 Mountain Time for 15 weeks.
Meetings by Zoom.
Tuition: $500, payable to IDP
Instructor: Joseph Scalia III, PsyaD