CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT TEACHING PSYCHOANALYSIS TO UNDERGRADUATES
How does one find employment teaching psychoanalytic ideas to college students?
- Capitalize on your previous experiences. If you’re a psychologist who has taught undergraduates during graduate school, continue to do so after you graduate.
- Follow warm contacts. It’s easier to connect with professors about teaching if you know them already or if someone else can introduce you to them.
- Contact the faculty who teach courses in personality, abnormal psychology, and introductory psychology and let them know you will volunteer to give a lecture.
- If you have any connections to someone in a psychology department, meet with the department chair and talk about what you might be able to contribute, such as teaching a few hours in an abnormal psychology class. Don't charge for guest teaching. Bring a syllabus in case the conversation gets to that point.
- Lecture about whatever you are asked to talk about, but from a psychoanalytic point of view.
- Reach out to colleagues who teach relevant college courses and ask if your expertise can be of use. Find a time to meet and bring teaching materials with you to share.
How might one approach teaching psychoanalytic ideas to undergraduates?
- Don’t be rigid or dogmatic. Focus on how psychoanalysis has expanded beyond Freud to fields such as self psychology and object relations.
- Teach what you are most interested in teaching.
- Teaching undergraduates is different because you have to make the concepts understandable for people who are not immersed to them. Translating concepts into plain English helps.
- Before you teach a course, learn about the culture of the school: subscribe to the student newspaper, observe a few classes in the department, and talk with full-time faculty and adjuncts.
- Speak in jargon-free language. Be prepared. Don't just sit and read a paper to your students. Get supervision on how to teach if you aren't familiar with teaching.
- Be a good team player. Learn about the counseling center and meet people there, partly in case you need to refer one of your students. Make connections with the center for learning-disabled students, and find out at the beginning of a course if students are learning disabled to arrange special accommodations.
- Undergraduates expect you to be available to talk with them. Maintain office hours and make yourself available.
- Respect your students and colleagues and recognize that you are learning from them as much as they are learning from you. Maintain an attitude of respect, cooperation, and collegiality.
- Tell only brief stories about patients. Use thoroughly disguised clinical material. Don’t rely on undergraduate students for clinical material. Avoid having students talk about their families, or, especially, their own problems, in class. Their wish to do so is based on compliant transferences that are defensive, and quickly, hostility (and defenses against it, like reaction-formation) will arise if a teacher persists in allowing self-revelation.
- Refer to movies, such as the Lion King (the Oedipus complex), A Beautiful Mind (Psychosis), Like Water for Chocolate (Separation-individuation), West Side Story (Dedifferentiation and Idealization).
- Use graphic metaphors. Refer to literature; the more current it is, the better. Make your presentations interesting and fun, yet impress on the students how serious psychological problems are.
- In a small class, meet with students at mid-term to get feedback about the course. Spend about 2-3 minutes meeting with each student asking the following: how do you like the course, what don't you like, and what irritated you. In this way, you can modify your teaching method, if necessary, and see if the students had any problems with the material or my approach.
What kind of salary, per semester, can an instructor expect to receive for teaching an undergraduate course?
- On average, adjunct instructors receive about $3000 per course, but reimbursement can vary widely.
Besides psychology, what other college departments teach psychoanalytic ideas to undergraduates?
- Psychoanalytic ideas are taught to undergraduates in a wide range of disciplines. Consider approaching any of the following departments about teaching a course focused on psychoanalytic ideas:
Anthropology
Art History
Comparative Literature
Drama
English
Film Studies
French
Philosophy
Political Science
Religious Studies
Women’s Studies
What are some of the specific undergraduate courses typically taught by people with an interest in psychoanalytic ideas?
- Abnormal Psychology
- Current Psychoanalytic Theories
- Film and Psychoanalysis
- History of Psychology
- Human Sexuality
- Introduction to Psychology
- Personality Psychology
- Psychoanalysis and Tragic Drama
- Psychoanalytic Theory and Research
- Psychology of Religion
- Psychology Laboratory
Is there anyone I can contact for further advice on teaching psychoanalytic ideas to undergraduates?
- In addition to providing the answers to the frequently asked questions listed above, the following psychoanalysts have offered to provide further guidance to prospective college teachers.
Dr. Jerome Blackman: jblackmanmd@aol.com
Dr. Mariam Cohen: mariam@psychoanalysis.net
Dr. Rosemary Cogan: r.cogan@ttu.edu
Dr. Lynn Friedman: drlynnfriedman@comcast.net
Dr. Eric Nuetzel: ejnuetz@swbell.net