Since 2007, more than 200 CC students have spent a block in Chicago in the Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Theory and Practice class with Dr. Marcia Dobson, Professor of Classics, and Dr. John Riker, Professor of Philosophy, meeting distinguished psychoanalysts and experts at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute.
“Many of the students we have had over the fifteen years we have taught the course have said that it was the most important course they had taken at the college because it taught them more about themselves and those close to them than any other course,” Dobson and Riker say. “The course is an unremitting inquiry into the nature of the psyche and especially into the psychic distortions and constrictions that affect ourselves and others.”
The class studies Sigmund Freud and Heinz Kohut and the transformation of their theories in modern psychanalysis. Students are assigned readings from distinguished psychoanalysts and then get to meet and learn from the psychoanalysts who share their new approaches to understanding psychoanalytic theory and therapeutic action.
Riker and Dobson met many inspiring psychoanalysts in Chicago when Riker was the Kohut Professor at the University of Chicago in 2003. A few years later, they started teaching the class at CC and realized what an incredible opportunity it would be for students to be able to actually meet the experts in the field.
“We realized it would be too expensive to bring them all to campus and then thought that we would bring our students to Chicago,” Dobson and Riker say. “The course has been successful beyond our dreams. Undergraduate students studying with psychoanalysts at an institute is such an innovative experiment that we were asked to devote an entire psychoanalytic journal to this theme.”
The journal issue, The Future of Psychoanalysis in Undergraduate Education, can be found here.
Dobson and Riker continue to co-teach the course on a regular basis, where they arrange for about a dozen Chicago psychoanalysts to be guest teachers. Some psychoanalysts present theoretical papers about their understanding of the nature of human psyche and others share their own case studies with students during the class, helping them understand therapeutic processes.
“Students get to learn about psychoanalysis from those who practice it,” the two professors say. “Several of the analysts they meet are world-famous for their innovations in the field.”
“This class was magical in every way possible,” says Fargol Yeganeh Fathi ’24, a Psychology major and German minor, who was one of 16 students to take the class during Block 7 in 2023. “I still talk about it very often. First off, Marcia and John invited different psychoanalysts almost every other day to join our class and cover a topic. For me, that aspect was very interesting and certainly innovative. I got to see what psychoanalysis as a career looks like in different people with very different personalities.”
In addition to the resources available at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, teaching the class in Chicago also gives students a chance to be in a major city, where they can better understand what they learn by observing people.
“Learning psychoanalysis is something that engages your mind almost every second of the day because of how relevant the topics are to every single thing that you do,” says Yeganeh Fathi. “Being in a lively city like Chicago was of importance to the learning curve. Not only could we see what we studied in ourselves, but also we could see it all around us when we just sat down at a cafe and observed all the people with their different stories walk past us.”
Yeganeh Fathi has been interested in psychoanalysis since she was 14, and wanted to take this class even before enrolling at CC. While she enjoyed all aspects of the class and her time in Chicago, her favorite part of the class was the friendships she made.
“This course involved living together, eating together, and exploring Chicago together,” the professors say. “The students often comment on how much it means to be with one another as well as their professors, and to focus their discussions solely on the content of the class and what it means to them.”
While in Chicago, students are encouraged to take in the rich history and culture, particularly the city’s art, theater, and architecture, as the class spends time studying how psychoanalysis can deepen understanding of these arts. These experiences contribute to the overall effectiveness of the class and supplement the academic sessions and expert talks.
“We often had class with working analysts, sometimes in their homes,” says Tate Gibbons ’23, who also took the 2023 Block 7 course. “Hearing their interpretations and applications of Kohutian concepts helped me understand them comprehensively. I found our discussions of the analyst-analysand relationship particularly interesting. Because the analysand unconsciously casts the analyst into certain psychological roles, the analyst must manage the version of their identity formed by the patient. Exploring the unconscious conversations that shape the analyst-analysand relationship was one of the most exciting parts of the class.”
From meeting famous psychoanalysts and observing life in a city to bonding with classmates and professors, this class continues to be a massive success among students, so much so that they encourage classmates to take the course.
“I think this class is innovative in the sense that it offers a unique class structure that focuses on immersion with experts in that field,” says Grace Nguyen ’26, a Neuroscience major who is taking Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Theory and Practice in Block 8 this year. “While typical psychology and neuroscience classes are based in lecture and exams, I feel that this class offers something with much more depth. We will be able to see firsthand the material of our class being applied to the real world with the guidance of experts, and that for me is truly an innovative way to teach a course. I believe this will heavily benefit my learning as I consider myself a hands-on learner who appreciates any opportunity to take what I learned and apply it to real-world situations.”
Nguyen is especially looking forward to learning from and meeting psychoanalysts at the Chicago Psychoanalysis Institute.
“I am intrigued by getting to see what their profession entails and how they have made a career out of the field, and also to hear them speak about something I’ve always wanted to know more about,” she says. “Overall, I cannot wait to take this class and to see what I will learn!”
Without the Block Plan, this class would likely not happen. Members of colleges that work with Riker and Dobson have told them that they wish they could reproduce this program but cannot because of their semester or trimester schedule.
Dobson has taught in the CC Classics Department since 1976 and Riker has taught in the CC Philosophy Department since 1968. They taught their first class together at CC in 1976, when they taught Greek History and Philosophy, which they co-taught for almost 20 years and have taught occasionally since then.