Austen Riggs Center

Presenter: Brin Grenyer, PhD The Sheila Hafter Gray Memorial Lecture is underwritten by ACPEinc and honors Dr. Gray's role in advancing the importance of psychoanalytic education. The mechanisms of patient change have been described in detail by prominent psychoanalytic thinkers over the last 130 years. These descriptions form the basis for analytic training and are […]

Presenter: Stephen E. Finn, PhD Psychological assessment is typically viewed as something one does to diagnose psychological disorders or to plan for or evaluate an intervention. In this Grand Rounds, Dr. Finn will discuss Therapeutic Assessment, a brief intervention during which psychological testing is used collaboratively with clients to help them develop new self-narratives that […]

Presenter: Dagmar Herzog, PhD These days, the topic of intellectual disability seems frequently to function as a conversation stopper, and yet studying its history can teach us much we need to know about the seductive appeal of fascisms both past and present. The Question of Unworthy Life resituates the hundredthousandfold Nazi coercive “eugenic” sterilizations and […]

Presenter: Avgi Saketopoulou, PsyD This presentation begins with a summary of the theory of overwhelm, a way of conceptualizing working with intensity and excitation that is not about guarding the self (not about emotional regulation, not about protecting the ego from the drives) but which explores what becomes possible when one reaches the limit of […]

Presenter: Dionne R. Powell, MD Yasmin Roberts Memorial Lecture Racism, and otherness, continues to be contentious for psychoanalysts to consider as a psychic phenomenon. Unlike aggression and sexuality, racism is held in silence and resistance, inhibiting exploration of this aspect of mind. By closely examining how and where the analyst/psychotherapist locates themselves racially and working […]