The Psychodynamic Capacities: Making Depth Therapy Teachable

Max Levine, Psy.D. presentspresented the teaching model he has been developing for making relational psychodynamic therapy concrete and learnable: twelve psychodynamic capacities, the skills that cultivate them, and their translation into motivational-interviewing-compatible ambivalence formulations.

He'll also previewHe also previewed his current work on relational stances: crafting the therapy relationship itself to meet a patient's particular capacities. Ninety minutes, with time for discussion. Attendance iswas by invitation and free of charge.

Learning objectives

After this session, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the twelve psychodynamic capacities and their role in a relational model of therapeutic change.
2. Identify concrete, practicable skills that cultivate each capacity in psychotherapy.
3. Formulate a patient's ambivalence as a two-sided decisional balance, with one side sustaining the status quo and the other supporting change, in a form compatible with motivational interviewing.
4. Select the capacity most relevant to a particular patient and track movement from "sustain" toward "change" over the course of treatment.
5. Explain how relational stances tailor the therapy relationship itself to a patient's particular capacity deficits.

About Max Levine

Max Levine, Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist and a postdoctoral fellow at North Star Psychological Services in Washington, DC, where his practice centers on depression, adult ADHD, men’s mental health, and care in the months after a hospitalization. He completed his Psy.D. at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, where his research focused on depression, and trained as a practicum student at Equity Health in San Francisco.

He came to psychology from art. He began drawing and painting lessons at eight, studied studio art at Wesleyan, and left a sixteen-foot sculpture of reclaimed barn wood, Trees Are Beautiful, in the university’s permanent collection. He taught art before beginning his doctorate and still works in wood, clay, and paint; he describes the studio and the consulting room as continually informing each other.

On internship at the Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio he co-directed the psychodynamic psychotherapy course for psychiatry residents, and the twelve capacities grew out of that teaching. He directs the psychodynamic program at Reflective Training, a UT Health–affiliated clinician-training platform, and is co-writing a book on integrative psychotherapy with David Roberts. He is also a poet; his “The Man in Blue Jeans” is on our Reflections page with his own reading. More of his work is at maxlevine.net.