[1] Notable psychoanalysts that have been associated with the institute include Karl Menninger, Karen Horney, Thomas Szasz, Therese Benedek, Hedda Bolgar, Roy Grinker, Maxwell Gitelson, Louis Shapiro, Heinz Kohut, Arnold Goldberg, Jerome Kavka, Frank Summers, Ernest A. Rappaport, and Michael Franz Basch.
The Chicago Institute is the second oldest in the United States, preceded by New York five months earlier, and followed by Boston and Washington.
From the beginning, the Chicago Institute has nurtured innovative, and occasionally revolutionary, approaches to the psychoanalytic theory and practice originally formulated by Sigmund Freud in Vienna.
With his ascendance the institute reinstated practices that were considered more in line with the dominant American view of depth and intensity of psychoanalytic treatment.
Fleming's research group observed that there seemed to be an arrest of the personality at the age of the child when the parent died, associated with an absence of mourning.
[2] From these findings, the group reasoned that intervention at the time of the loss (i.e., in childhood) would effectively prevent later psychological problems.
Begun in 1970 and continued until 1989, this was the standard reference work for most American psychoanalysts until the recent advent of centralized computer cataloging.
The Adult Psychotherapy Program is a two-year curriculum that is equally divided between clinical and didactic courses.
Students complete a variety of diagnostic evaluations of children and their families with a dynamic perspective, in addition to several long-term psycho-analytically oriented supervised cases.
In collaboration with Rush University, the institute also offers the CORST program to Ph.D.s from a variety of non-clinical academic field, who wish to become psychoanalysts.
The Clinics of the Institute for Psychoanalysis provide psychoanalytically informed services to adults, adolescents, and children in the Chicago area at a greatly reduced fee.
All therapists and analysts are highly experienced clinicians trained in psychiatry, psychology, social work, or counseling.
Psychoanalytic treatments are based on the belief that emotional difficulties are often the result of thoughts and feelings outside of a person's awareness.
The center's mission is to provide therapeutic services to bereaved children and their families; to make intervention more accessible; to heighten awareness of the potentially harmful short- and long-term effects of loss; and to provide training and consultation for teachers, clergy, mental health workers, and other involved community members.