Steering Committee

“It has been my great pleasure to be involved with the New Directions program since its inception. The faculty is among the most thoughtful and innovative group of teachers with whom I have worked. The curriculum facilitates creative critical thinking, and supports students in conceptualizing and developing their personal writing projects.”

“This excellent program provides an integration of reading, thinking and writing that is unique in the field. It permits an in-depth treatment of subject matters which creates its own consuming excitement. I warmly recommend it.”

“New Directions is well-named, for the program provides the crucial support, encouragement and fellowship so many clinicians need to turn those percolating ideas for papers into reality. Non-clinicians can take their academic interests and careers in new directions as well, as they benefit from on-going involvement in a structured group setting where the application of psychoanalytic ideas to their own areas of expertise is really appreciated and understood. Why struggle to write alone when there’s such a terrific – and fun – program that helps would-be writers make strides together?”

"New Directions is different. The workshops at New Directions are different. What New Directions gets that even professional writing programs don’t is that writers need, more than anything, a certain kind of community. Without a safe and encouraging environment, people are less likely to do their most vulnerable work – and usually our most vulnerable work is our best work. I’m not an analyst. But I’ve found that what psychoanalysts bring to New Directions is insightful, compassionate listening that gets to layers in the writing that others often miss. This psychoanalytic awareness safely moves the boundaries so that writers can explore very personal material. When I’m with New Directions people I feel more myself than in most other parts of my life. We start at a deeper, more honest place. They see me, the real me, the childhood me, the girl who’s still trying to understand."

“I have found the New Directions program to be one of the most valuable programs in the country for mental health professionals who wish both to update their knowledge of current issues in the field and to improve their writing skills. It offers a unique opportunity for therapists to develop professionally in both these ways and I highly recommend it to all those who seek to expand their knowledge and skills in these areas.”

“New Directions is a pioneering and unique program for learning to write in the field of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Refuting the prevailing sense that such programs are often advocated but rarely carried out, New Directions offers exciting opportunities, fresh methodologies, and creative dialogue with skilled writers in our field. The result of participating in the program is renewed vigor and enhanced skill for the aspiring writers amongst us!”

“New Directions really is a new direction, both for attention to writing in our field and for attention to mentoring as the means to make the writing process relational, that is, appropriate to our accumulating clinical tradition.”

“When I heard about New Directions I imagined that it would be a terrific way to continue my education as a psychotherapist while providing a springboard for writing about my clinical practice and experiences. New Directions is all about that, and so much more. The weekend conferences are the perfect interweave of contemporary psychoanalytic thinking with the creative process of writing, be it for a journal article, fiction, poetry, or a blog, to name but a few. What emerged for me, especially through the weekend writing exercises, was a stronger voice for memoir and creative non-fiction than I had anticipated. I was delighted to find in New Directions a kind and supportive group of like-minded folks that I feel simpatico with, and challenged by, in so many ways. I found a unique writing community that is both playful and serious, and I’ve developed deeply satisfying friendships as a result. Most importantly, I learned not only that I can write, but how to be a better writer.”

“Bringing together talented psychoanalysts and mental health professionals with aspiring and already published writers makes for an extraordinary catalytic experience. The program affords participants the combination of the sheer pleasure that comes from playing with the craft of words and the provocative experience of thinking deeply about the individual meanings in a story well told. New Directions should be sampled time and time again.”

“What touched me most on first encounter with New Directions was the ambiance of consistently considerate warmth, the air of comfortable candor. Status and hierarchy had no presence. Rather, all shared freely their common love for the struggle to translate experience and knowledge into language. As a result, the thinking and the language were never tediously predictable.A serious writer writes in order to learn how to write. New Directions succeeds as an intermittent writer’s camp, one offering both beginners and those who have often published a safe opportunity to practice learning to write in the company of thoughtful and respectful others.”

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