Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis

What you'll study

Coursework gives candidates a lifelong-development and intrapsychic perspective on psychopathology and clinical technique. Topics and learning experiences explicitly include:

• Development of the human psyche from infancy onward and unconscious processes such as repetition, defenses, transference, resistance, and symbolism.
• Advanced psychoanalytic theories and thinkers (including Freud, Klein, Bion, Spotnitz, successors, and contemporary analysts).
• Clinical seminars on resistance analysis, transference and countertransference, symbolism, and theory of technique.
• Psychoanalytic research methods to support systematic observation, inference, and dissertation work.
• Clinical Fieldwork Program: a three-semester placement providing contact with regressed patients in hospital or comparable settings to learn to read responses, symbolic communications, and to build therapeutic contact with regressed or narcissistic clients.
• Therapy Center Internship: ongoing supervised analytic cases (three or more analytic cases at least weekly) and progression through clinical seminars from Case Management to advanced seminars.
• Training analysis: a minimum of 450 hours of personal analysis (up to 150 of which may be group analysis).

Entry requirements

The program is offered as a post-master’s degree, so applicants must hold a relevant master’s-level credential. Progress through the program is staged: students complete pre-candidacy coursework and fieldwork, then sit an untimed Candidacy Eligibility Exam to demonstrate readiness for candidacy and the Therapy Center Internship.

Career prospects

Graduates leave with integrated clinical, theoretical and research preparation for work as psychoanalysts or psychoanalytic psychotherapists in outpatient and institutional settings. The program emphasizes the capacity to work with a wide range of character structures and levels of pathology; individual career paths typically include private practice, clinic-based psychotherapy, and roles requiring advanced analytic formulation and supervision.

Scholarships & funding angle

The program page does not list specific scholarships. Prospective applicants should consult the school’s admissions and financial aid offices for information about tuition support, fellowships, or payment options and consider external funding sources common for doctoral clinical programs.