Psychotherapy
At UCLA, we train residents in psychotherapy through a variety of clinical, didactic, and experiential learning modalities. We teach the full spectrum of psychotherapies from intensive short-term to long-term, from psychodynamic to cognitive-behavioral, from individual to group, and from couple to family-oriented. UCLA also has an active Psychiatric Clinical Faculty Association (PCFA) with hundreds of volunteer faculty who have additional psychoanalytic training and have a passion for teaching psychotherapy and supervising residents.
Outside of UCLA, Los Angeles has a large psychoanalytic community with multiple local institutes that offer short and long-term training programs that residents are encouraged to pursue.
Core psychotherapeutic modalities are taught through a number of dedicated psychotherapy clinics during PGY-3 and 4. The following represents a sampling of these clinics (for a complete list, visit our Clinics page):
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Clinic – General CBT using a transdiagnostic approach
- Anxiety Disorders Clinic – CBT for anxiety
- Psychosis Clinic – CBT for psychosis
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinic / Trauma Recovery Services – Prolonged Exposure (PE) and Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
- Adult OCD Clinic – Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
- Child OCD, Anxiety, and Tic Disorders Clinic – Habit Reversal Training (HRT), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), CBT for depression and anxiety
- Westside DBT – Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
- Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) Clinic
- Attachment-Based Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (AB-ISTDP) and Accelerated Psychotherapy Clinic
- Family Therapy Clinic
- Couples and Sex Therapy Training Program
- Hypnosis Seminar
The UCLA Resident Psychotherapy Clinic (RPC) provides a venue for our residents to treat patients using long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy as the primary modality. UCLA faculty (mainly volunteer members of the Psychiatry Clinical Faculty Association) supervise residents for at least one hour per week using process notes and/or other reporting techniques such as video or audiotapes from the psychotherapy sessions. Prior to graduation, residents will need to have seen at least two patients for long-term psychotherapy, meaning 42 sessions across a one-year period each. However, this is the bare minimum, and many residents opt for more patients. Residents typically begin seeing patients during their third year but can begin as early as PGY-2. There is no limit to the number of patients residents can see for long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy, and most residents exceed the required two patients.
The psychotherapy curriculum begins in the first year, introducing residents to core concepts in the following subjects:
- Psychodynamic Theory
- Development and Attachment Theory
- Personality Disorders and Therapy Options
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
- CBT for Depression, Complicated Grief, Panic Disorder, OCD, PTSD, Complicated Anxiety
- Family and Couples Therapy
- Interpersonal Psychotherapy
- Intensive Short Term Psychotherapy
- Modern Ego Psychology
- Recent Advances in Psychotherapy Research
- Spirituality Based Psychotherapy
- Psychotherapy for Adoptees
- Advanced CBT
- Evidence Based Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
- Kleinian Psychotherapy
- Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for BPD
- Relational Psychology
- Dialectic Behavioral Therapy
The combination of personal and professional development continues in class process groups. Each residency class has the opportunity to meet for a weekly process group, facilitated by a volunteer member of the PCFA. These groups serve as a forum both for understanding group processes and for supporting each other through the ups and downs of residency.
Every spring, UCLA holds a two-night retreat at a beautiful California home (usually beachside!) in order to provide an introduction psychotherapy in early residency and promote unity within the intern class. Highlights include a psychotherapy primer, an introduction to Process Group, and lots of time for eating, relaxing, and bonding with your co-interns.
UCLA participates in an annual group relations conference that studies group dynamics in the Tavistock tradition set out by Wilfred Bion. Over the course of a weekend, it provides experiential learning about leadership, group dynamics and first-hand engagement of splitting and projective identification in groups. Participants include individuals from psychiatry, psychoanalysis, architecture and art, from within UCLA and beyond. This is an optional conference, but residents typically find it extraordinarily fulfilling.
Psychiatry residents at UCLA have the benefit of unfettered access to two world-class groups of faculty. One is the full-time academic faculty of the Department of Psychiatry. The other is the Psychiatric Clinical Faculty Association. The PCFA is a group of 400-plus distinguished psychiatrists, most with full-time clinical practices, and many of whom are psychoanalysts affiliated with one of Los Angeles’ psychoanalytic institutes.
As psychodynamic psychotherapy can only be learned experientially under the tutelage of experienced supervisors, the supervision experience is essential to resident learning. During PGY-3 and 4, each resident works intensively with volunteer supervisors from the PCFA, often two per resident. Our supervisors do more than teach us about psychotherapy; by meeting with us in their offices and being present for us as mentors and advisors, they expand our horizons and provide an invaluable source of insight into life after residency.
For more information, visit the PCFA website at pcfala.net.
Los Angeles is a major hub for psychoanalysis and it is therefore not surprising to know that there are many institutes in the area, including:
- Psychoanalytic Center of California: p-c-c.org
- New Center for Psychoanalysis: newcenterforpsychoanalysis.org
- Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis: icpla.edu
- LA Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies: laisps.org
- Jung Institute: junginla.org
Each of these schools has their own educational lecture series, and UCLA residents are often invited for free or at discounted rates. Many of them offer short- or long-term training programs (one to two years, in the evenings) in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Every year a few residents participate in these programs, and they are encouraged by the program administration.
Los Angeles attracts an enormous amount of conferences and lectures, some of which are affiliated with the aforementioned psychoanalytic institutes but by no means all. For example, each year UCLA hosts a three-day conference on Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT), put on by the Anna Freud Center from London. Lecturers include Anthony Bateman and Peter Fonagy, the original developers of MBT, as well as UCLA’s own professors Robin Kissel and Daniel Kupper. Residents are offered subsidies to attend this certificate-bearing conference, and this is just one of the many opportunities available.
Each year, the PCFA invites a pre-eminent psychiatrist to come speak to UCLA faculty and trainees at a special conference. Past speakers have have included Allan Abbass, M.D., Frank Yeomans, M.D., Salman Ahktar, M.D. and Andrew Gerber, M.D., Ph.D. Underlining UCLA’s focus on resident education, the seminar series always includes a dedicated trainee-only lecture and case conference, in which the speaker delivers a presentation tailored for the residents and a resident presents one of their long-term psychotherapy cases for discussion and analysis.