The St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute is an educational center providing psychoanalytically oriented, professional training and continuing education through graduate, post-graduate and community education courses. Our aim is to support healthy development of the mind and emotions.
The Institute’s Schiele Clinic offers high-quality, in-depth professional assessment and treatment on a sliding-fee basis.
The Institute is a unique setting for those in the helping professions to come together, interact and learn.
Mission of the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute
The mission of the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute is to advance psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thought, through training, treatment, education, and research to benefit the mental health of our diverse community.
What we do:
- We provide fundamental through advanced psychoanalytically informed professional education. In addition to our in-depth, multi-year training programs, we offer shorter continuing education courses, lectures by national figures who are experts in their disciplines, as well as sophisticated library services.
- We provide and fund affordable, accessible, in-depth psychotherapy for people in need, through our nationally recognized Schiele Clinic. Our onsite treatment center, coupled with our unique Alumni referral network, offers low-fee, sliding-scale treatment services with no waiting list.
- We offer educational programs to the community in an effort to illuminate the complexities of human interaction and enrich community life. The Centene Speakers’ Series, for example, focuses on timely issues such as childhood trauma, anxieties, race and culture, and more.
- Our ongoing multiple diversities initiative in curriculum development, training, and recruitment is serving as a model for the American Psychoanalytic Association.
- Our footprint is both local and global. Our Faculty, Graduates and Alumni are highly active in St. Louis metro-area social agencies, school systems, universities, child centers, and more as well as private practices. They give presentations, lectures, and participate in symposia around the country and the world, representing the Institute and its core values.
- We partner with the community, collaborating with dozens of organizations, agencies, schools, and universities through a variety of programs including hosting practicum students and presenting community lectures. We are governed by an independent Board of Directors, comprised of members of the mental health, business, and volunteer communities in the St. Louis area.
Our History
The St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, originally known as The St. Louis Psychoanalytic Foundation, dates back to 1956, when a group of interested laymen, academics and physicians saw the need to increase opportunities for adult psychoanalytic treatment in the St. Louis area as well as to promote psychoanalytic education and research. In 1974, the Foundation was granted status as a training facility by the American Psychoanalytic Association and became the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute.
In 1957, the Betty Golde Smith Library was established at the Institute and today provides one of the most extensive collections of psychoanalytic literature in the Midwest that can be easily accessed by a broad spectrum of individuals and institutions in the metropolitan community and beyond.
The Institute’s Herbert S. Schiele Clinic was founded in 1957 and since 1961, has been an integral part of its educational program. The Clinic provides low-fee psychoanalytic treatment, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and diagnosis and referral services for St. Louis-area residents. In 1998-99, in order to increase its ability to meet the community’s demand for mental health services without incurring the expenses of large-scale facility expansion, the Institute dramatically expanded Clinic services for adult patients with a new concept: the Clinic Without Walls Network, which expanded treatment opportunities by drawing upon the more than 140 social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors who have graduated from the Institute’s adult programs. The clinic services were expanded again in 2002 to include our network of more than 30 child therapists.
In 1981, the Institute launched both the Adult Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Program (APP) and the Child Development Program (CDP) to expand its range of educational offerings for mental health and child development professionals. A training program in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis was added to the course offerings in 1994 and the Lectures and Seminars, offering a variety of courses for professionals and the community at large, was launched in 1997.
Diversity Statement
The St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute embraces a fundamental obligation to direct its teachers, and the professionals it trains, to understand, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1978, that the path to leadership must “be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.” We believe that this fundamental obligation extends to all individuals without consideration of sex or sexual orientation.
This Institute endeavors to provide an environment in which all members of the helping professions may interact and learn, while committed to a respectful regard for all participants. Inclusivity is integral to the Institute’s stated mission, to enrich community life through its programs and treatments. In directing awareness of cultural differences into positive action grounded in commitment, the Institute strives to nourish an organizational culture that values people of diverse backgrounds in an atmosphere distinguished by respect, integrity, and honesty.
Accreditation
The Psychoanalytic Institute is a501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. It is incorporated under Missouri state law and is governed by a lay board of directors. The Institute President heads the staff and approximately 41 faculty members. The Institute has no affiliation with any federated fund or public agency.
The Institute is accredited by:
