The Work of Christopher Bollas

Presenter: Glen O. Gabbard, MD | Psychoanalysis, which at its core is a search for truth, stands in a subversive position vis-a-vis the contemporary therapeutic culture that places a premium on symptomatic "cure." In this communication I am tracing the evolution of Freud's thinking about the relationship between the aims of psychoanalysis and the alleviation […]

Presented by Anne Alvarez, PhD

COWAP: Women the Longest Revolution Session 4: Women’s Role as Caregivers Through Their Lifespan Panel: Jessica Benjamin in conversation with Margarita Cereijido, Erika Lepiavka and Tracy Sidesinger Presentation: Notions of woman and the feminine have changed dramatically over the last decades and this is reflected in how women perceive themselves, how they are perceived by […]

Join Steven Cooper, PhD, and Judy Kantrowitz, PhD, for our next Meet the Author event with John Martin-Joy, MD, and the online audience.

Perrine Moran

What if the leading purpose of the therapeutic relationship is to elevate the process of play? And when this capacity is absent, how might we find ways to fertilize the imagination? These questions were posed by Nora Swan-Foster, a Jungian analyst and art therapist who was invited to review and discuss Steven Cooper's recent book. […]

Aisha Abbasi, MD: Homesickness is a commonly used term, and a feeling that has been studied with interest, in psychoanalysis. The connection and distinction between homesickness and nostalgia has been noted in many analytic papers. Normal and pathological forms of both have been described. In this paper, Dr. Abbasi discusses the theoretical framework that informs […]

Donald Campbell

Paul Doyen, LMSW, will discuss Glen Gabbard’s claim that psychoanalytic therapy cannot cure OCD. He will present two cases in which the use of behavioral interventions brought on benefits as well as unexpected conflicts and transference reactions in clients with OCD. Finally, Paul will review recent research on the need to combine psychoanalytic and behavioral […]

Description: The current extension of the concept of the unconscious to different levels, configurations, and functioning of the mind is the result of decades of collective reflection on the clinic and on theory. Analysts today have a broader, more refined and complex knowledge of defensive and transformative processes, and this has also led to an […]

Presented by Tiffaney Hale, LMFT Attendees will explore Griffith Hansbury’s paper, The masculine vaginal: Working with queer men’s embodiment at the transgender edge (2017) as a conduit for both thinking about their own gendered experiences and clinical stances toward patients’ gendered presentations.

The APsA/DPE Council on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) is pleased to announce the next event in our Workshop Series. On January 19th, from 11 AM to 1 PM EST, Dr. Amy Levy will be in conversation with Dr. Luca Possati, author of The Algorithmic Unconscious: How Psychoanalysis Helps in Understanding AI. They will consider Dr. Possati’s […]

This course will focus on Butler’s experience and engagement with psychoanalysis, in order to explore what impact their thinking can hold for clinical practice. We will focus both on their early work concerning gender as well as more recent writings about non-violence.

Dr. Roger Frie asks: What does it mean to be both a social critic and a practicing psychotherapist? In this talk he draws on the early work of Erich Fromm to answer this and other questions.

Robin Holloway, PhD, CPsych, will use children’s artwork from psychotherapy to explore how drawings provide insights into a child's mind, helping to understand fears, relationships, and emotional growth. Click here for the flyer and full description. CE.

Presented by Steven H. Cooper, PhD with discussion by Joyce Slochower, PhD Through a series of clinical vignettes, the author explores the ethical undergirding of play in analytic work with adult patients. He defines play as a form of idiomatic, verbal responsiveness that emerges in the context of the analytic intersubjectivity, one that can illuminate […]

Wendy Katz, PhD. Silence, Second Skin, and the Unrepresented. Dr. Katz uses the concepts of microdialect and secondskin to to explore the patient's silence in session and how it may function on multiple levels of psychic and relational organization. Using this as a vehicle for moving between levels, it provides a potential avenue to access and creatively transform unrepresented experience.

From the start, the craft of filmmaking has been intertwined with psychoanalysis. Both were developed around the turn of the 20th century, and both involve, in practice, a fair amount of art as well as science. Perhaps most importantly, film and psychoanalysis share preoccupations with creativity, viewing and listening, primal desires, and primal fears. In […]

Chris Clulow

Presented by Perrine Moran, M.A. The dilemma of how to be emotionally dependent on another without losing oneself permeates many popular love songs and underlies issues that couples often bring to therapy. Its management results in different dynamics which place partners in couples on a spectrum going from too close to too far apart. This […]

Psychoanalytic Takes on the Cinema: Discussion of the Film: “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On" 2021 (89 mins) Directors: Dean Fleischer Camp A documentary maker struggling with finances decides to make to make his newest documentary about a mollusk shell he finds living in his Airbnb with his friends. *Film must be viewed before the […]

The Thomas and Julia Saltz Annual Adult Seminar Workshop Presents Something to Lose: Being in Dialogue About Difference When We Feel Like Leaving A special presentation by Dr. Anton Hart When: February 1, 2025 Time: 9:00 am – 11: 30 am Live Presentation Where: University Club of Washington DC 1135 16th Street NW, Washington, DC […]

Presented by Dr. Lauren Levine, Ph.D. In this presentation, Dr. Lauren Levine will reflect on the power of stories to create shared symbolic meaning and coherence out of ungrieved trauma. Through evocative clinical stories, she will explore creativity as transformative, emergent in the clinical process, drawing on film, dance, and literature and dreams as frames […]

Scholars like Sir James Fraser, Erich Neumann, Joseph Campbell, Will Durant and most Biblical Scholars of the19th and early 20th centuries wrote persuasive stories about the meanings of the figurines found by archeologists studying Prehistory, Ancient Mesopotamia, and Ancient Egypt. These scholars argued that the figurines represented mother goddesses, fertility, and perfect images of elite […]

Presenter: Sean Fitzpatrick, PhD, LPC | We live in a liminal moment in which mental health stigma is crumbling, in great part because of increasing psychological struggle triggered by the pandemic and recent social unrest.

Dina Oren and Israeli research group

Some say the love of it is the root of all evil. Others do not believe they can ever have enough. Therapists can, at times, avoid discussing it as much as anyone. Money. This course will examine how we talk about money in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. We will begin with a general overview of the […]

Ronny Jaffe

This course serves as an introduction to and overview of major schools of thought within the psychoanalytic tradition, including Freud, Ego Psychology, Klein, Object Relations, Winnicott and many more. We will focus on the distinction between theories of mind (metapsychology) which are metaphysical or structural and focus on the condition for the possibility of psychological […]

Professor David Tuckett will present on using a new theoretical framework for comparative analysis in psychoanalytic work, David will explore the different ways transference is understood, detected, and interpreted by different psychoanalysts practicing today and attempt to highlight the vulnerabilities in each approach.

An Online Reading and Discussion Group facilitated by Donald R. Ross, MD & Asli Baykal, PhD, LCSW A Note from the Program Chair: Many clinicians have heard of psychoanalytic treatment as a process of transforming ghosts into ancestors. However, there is much more than the ancestor concept to be learned from the writings of Hans […]

What makes a thought or feeling unbearable and how might psychoanalytic psychotherapy help us understand how our patients are able to bear (or avoid bearing) unbearable states of mind? In this group of clinically-driven essays, the Chilean psychoanalyst, Riesenberg-Malcolm examines how we think about what is unbearable and what it means for the therapist to […]

Discussion with Author David Mintz, MD with interview by Catherine Stevenson, MD This event would be of interest to a general audience of psychodynamic clinicians as well as those who prescribe medications. Though the book is generally aimed at prescribers, with a framework for how to integrate psychodynamic understandings and techniques to address dynamics driving […]

Presented by Huey Hawkins, PhD, LCSW

Pierre Cachia

Curious about psychoanalytic education & training? Whether you're dipping your toes into the field or gearing up to apply, our virtual Open House is the perfect place to explore what's possible. Join us for an afternoon filled with insightful conversations, meaningful connections, and a welcoming community ready to share their experiences. Meet our esteemed faculty […]

Explore the mysterious and haunting ways activated childhood memories can play out in our adult lives. The Lost Daughter, which premiered in 2021, is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut based on Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same name. It centers on the character of Leda, a 48 year old literature professor who is vacationing by herself […]

Speaker:Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., Historically, people in committed relationships have felt shame about separating. Now, they feel ashamed when they stay and their demands for equality are not met. Many of us expect fairness and reciprocity, whether or not we know anything about negotiation. We expect to be seen and known and to speak freely and […]

Tyia Grange Isaacson, PhD. Daring to Hope: A Couple's Journey from Trauma to Connection.  Dr. Isaacson presents her treatment of a deeply traumatized, high conflict couple that is massively overwhelmed by multiple stressors. She delineates how she uses concepts from self psychology within a systems treatment framework to demonstrate how to invite traumatized partners to […]

Arthur Leonoff

Psychoanalysis has been criticized from its beginnings as a treatment that is only available to the genteel and affluent; however, at the same time, it is a treatment that, from very early in its development, has been seen as a potentially powerful force in the larger world: shortly after WWI, “Freud’s free clinics”, as described […]

Presented by Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP Nowhere do we see our psychic struggles so clearly as in the world of dreams, where images call to our attention the emotionally-charged, aesthetically-driven aspects of experience, and patterned relationships help reveal aspects of our stories that have remained hidden. Dream images afford metaphors embedded in the person's own […]

Jeanne Magagna

Presenter: Jon G. Allen, PhD | This presentation will include discussion of the developmental trajectory of relationships informed by attachment theory and research; empirical findings from a study of the connections between therapists’ personal relationships and the quality of their relationships with patients; and recent findings regarding what patients value in psychotherapy.

Dr. Colarusso will share insights on his paper, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Nearness of Death, which contimues his lifelong interest in normal and pathological development. Using the psychoanalytic tools of observation, insight and introspection, he describes the very sparse, psychoanalytic literature on late-late adulthood, and describe his own experience as he approaches 90.

This symposium will focus on the effects of war on children and on parenting with three case presentations describing children and families who have experienced war and a paper by Dr. Abigail Gewirtz in which she will focus on the impact of a parent's military experience, exposure to war, and transition stressors, while also discussing […]

In this workshop, we will consider how discussions of race are avoided in interracial couples. The interracial couple's dissociation from racial stratification leaves the couple ensconced in the paranoid-schizoid position, where Internal and external pressures contribute to the couble enacting a monoracial identification aligned with white dominant norms. These racialized dynamics have an impact on […]

Presented by Howard B. Levine, MD

This seminar is presented Afsaneh Alisobhani, Psy.D, FIPA will explore André Green’s seminal paper, The Dead Mother, delving into how the experience of an emotionally unavailable maternal figure—due to loss, depression, or trauma —shapes psychic development, attachment, and identity formation. Green’s concept provides profound insights into the inner worlds of patients, particularly those he describes […]