Matthew Steinfeld, PhD, an instructor in psychiatry at Yale in the Department of Psychiatry's Psychology Section, has been selected as a Teaching Scholar by the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), and will participate in the organization's 2013 APsaA Teachers’ Academy.
The prestigious Teachers’ Academy is designed to nurture and develop the psychoanalytic educators of the future. The program advances best practices in teaching psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy to clinical trainees.
Each year six applicants—two psychologists, two psychiatrists and two social workers who are on the faculty of a graduate school or academic medical center—are selected to participate. The Academy will be held during APsaA’s 2013 National Meeting in January in New York City.
"During my graduate training, I was fortunate to have studied with several senior clinicians in the psychoanalytic community. I found few things as interesting as being introduced to new ways of considering how intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics play out in the therapeutic relationship and how these dynamics constitute the psychological architecture within which we all live,” said Steinfeld. "I am eager to learn from the teachers of the Academy and am looking forward to further refining my teaching skills to share wisdom from the psychodynamic tradition with trainees."
As a postdoctoral associate at Yale, Steinfeld co-created a psychodynamic clinical case conference in the Department of Psychiatry's Division of Substance Abuse. Now in its second year, the case conference affords trainees an opportunity to become more fluent in psychodynamic concepts and techniques.
This year Dr. Steinfeld was invited to teach two lectures within the core seminar for the Yale Predoctoral Internship in Clinical & Community Psychology.
"Dr. Steinfeld has an amazing capacity to synthesize complex material into dynamic and thoughtful teaching," said Donna LaPaglia, PsyD, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale and director of the Substance Abuse Treatment Unit of the Connecticut Mental Health Center. "I am very excited about his promise as an educator."
Steinfeld completed his PhD at The New School for Social Research and is an alumnus of the Yale Predoctoral Internship in Clinical and Community Psychology. During 2011-2012, he was a postdoctoral associate in the Division of Substance Abuse of the Yale Department of Psychiatry as well as an APsaA Fellow. He joined the Yale Department of Psychiatry faculty in July 2012.