DPC-Center

The Center’s purpose is to provide full training in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis to qualified candidates and to teach psychoanalytic principles to other mental health professionals. The training program is structured according to the rigorous requirements of the Board on Professional Standards of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

The psychoanalytic approach to the study of the mind is the foundation of most psychiatric and psychological therapies. Psychoanalysis is based upon the evidence that unconscious mental processes significantly influence conscious behavior and thought. It encompasses a method of investigation, an evolving body of theory, and a therapy for emotional illness. Despite numerous other theories and approaches, psychoanalysis remains the bedrock to understanding human thought, emotions, behavior and motivation. Psychoanalysis has endured for one hundred years and continues to be an actively growing and productive field.

More than ever, one is impressed with the value of analysis and analytic understanding as a clinical tool to promote intrapsychic change. Psychoanalysis has impacted every aspect of our culture. It has influenced literature, the arts, sociology, and philosophy. Even our everyday language demonstrates that psychoanalytic thought has become an integral part of Western Civilization.

The vitality of the science and art of psychoanalysis rests on the vigorous pursuit of scholarship. Its practitioners, teachers and students devotedly maintain the highest quality of education and continually attempt to incorporate findings from other fields of investigation into an ever-broader understanding of the mind. Psychoanalysis continues to attract those with a genuine curiosity about why people think, feel, and behave as they do. The essential characteristics of the student of psychoanalysis are that curiosity, coupled with a love for scientific scholarship, and a talent for the art of exploring human interaction and motivation.

The Dallas Psychoanalytic Society, Dallas’ original psychoanalytic organization, was established in May of 1982 as a component society of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA). The Dallas Psychoanalytic Center began as a Division of the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute in 1983, became a Provisional Institute independent of New Orleans in May of 1988, and achieved full, autonomous Institute status within the APsaA in May of 1992. In February of 2006 the Society and the Institute consolidated to form the Dallas Psychoanalytic Center.