The Canadian Institute of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (CICAPP), formerly known as the Toronto Child Psychoanalytic Program (TCPP), began its training program in 1976.
After numerous informal discussions among colleagues, a dedicated group of psychologists, educators, social workers, and early childhood specialists met with psychiatrists and psychoanalysts who had trained together at the Menninger Institute in Kansas, where they had been impressed with the work being done with children and adolescents by trained child psychoanalytic psychotherapists.
The initial meeting in the Fall of 1975 was hosted by Dr. Gordon Warme in the board room of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. Of the twenty or more in attendance, seven brave individuals embarked on developing the training program. Inspiration from the Menninger Institute, the Hanna Perkins Centre training by Erna and Robert Furman in Cleveland, the Tavistock Institute, and the Anna Freud Centre, both in London, provided the starting point for a curriculum and training program to apply psychoanalytic techniques to the treatment of children and adolescents. From the beginning, the students took the lead to hire the faculty and developed the curriculum with the advice and collaboration of psychiatric and analytic professionals. The first class began meeting in the Fall of 1976.
With the support of its director, Dr. Vivien Rackoff, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry (now part of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) provided classroom space and secretarial services. The program proceeded under the direction of Dr. Gordon Warme. Dr. Warme, Dr. Ian Graham, and Dr. Paul Lerner worked with Lilka Croyden, Georgie Babatzanis, Fäggie Oliver, Ellen Lewinberg, Suki Faulkner, Russell Westkirk, and Judy Gardiner to put together a four-year training program. This program involved didactic sessions of four hours two evenings a week, infant observation with volunteer families, and three clinical training cases seen three or four times weekly, with supervision for eighty hours in the first case and forty hours thereafter. After ten years, Dr. Warme was succeeded by Dr. Margaret Huntley. Subsequently, graduates of the program have become its directors.
The training program of CICAPP is now recognized by the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario and its graduates typically become registered psychotherapists. In 1980, the graduates of this program formed the Canadian Association of Psychoanalytic Child Therapists, which was incorporated with the Province of Ontario with formal objectives and bylaws. Many of the graduates become members of CAPCT.
CAPCT is currently in the process of being incorporated in Canada.
