CURED illuminates a pivotal yet largely unknown chapter in the struggle for LGBTQ+ equality: the campaign that led the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality from its manual of mental illnesses. Before this momentous 1973 decision, the medical establishment viewed every gay and lesbian person as diseased and in need of a cure. Business and government used the mental-illness classification to justify discrimination and bigotry. As long as lesbians and gay men were “sick,” progress toward equality was nearly impossible.
Incorporating a trove of newly unearthed archival material, CURED takes audiences inside this riveting narrative to chronicle the strategy and tactics that led to a crucial turning point in the movement for LGBTQ+ rights. Indeed, following the Stonewall rebellion of 1969, the battle that culminated in the APA’s decision to remove homosexuality from the DSM, marked the first major step on the path to first-class citizenship for LGBTQ+ Americans. CURED sheds new light on this victory, while situating the APA story within the larger context of the modern movement for LGBTQ+ equality.

International Psychotherapy Institute This event addresses: Object Relations Theory and Practice provides a concentrated immersion in the fundamentals of object relations theory and therapy. The International Psychotherapy Institute offers a certificate program in Object Relations is life-changing. We provide a high quality, deeply immersive, supportive training through our two-year certificate training program. Our training is […]

Free zoom event: Connections and Conversation Psychoanalytic dialogue

The current moment in psychoanalytic thinking has made a “turn towards the social,” but what does this mean in theoretical and practical terms. This presentation aims to provide a conceptual basis for the Social Unconscious as a register grounded in groups, and operating as a different kind of psychic life than what we are used […]

Join us in this all-level study group as we utilize Nancy McWilliams’ text, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, as a guide to exploring the defining and distinguishing features of a psychoanalytic approach. Through reading and discussion, we will discuss some of the values and assumptions associated with a psychoanalytic sensibility, examine key considerations such as therapeutic frame and […]

This presentation is about interweaving somatic approaches from outside of psychoanalysis into psychoanalytic treatment, especially for patients suffering from early developmental trauma and severe dissociation. Dr. Levit is a psychoanalyst who trained in Somatic Experiencing (SE). Developed originally as a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder, SE is rooted in neurophysiology, biology and ethology. As its […]

Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute This event addresses: Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy The goal of the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Program (CAPP) is to provide participants with exposure to concepts that inform psychodynamic therapy with children and adolescents. The program includes an in-depth exposure to concepts from psychoanalytic understandings of development and psychopathology as they apply to […]

Presenter: Glen O. Gabbard, MD Description: Glen O. Gabbard, MD will discuss the forces, both conscious and unconscious, that lead clinicians to transgress the boundaries of clinical practice. I will illustrate with clinical material from my many years of evaluating and treating practitioners.

A Brief History of Psychedelic Psychoanalytic Therapy and an Introduction to Psychedelic Phenomenology presented by Jeffrey Guss, MD This talk will begin with a brief review of the history of psychedelic psychoanalytic treatment in the United States and Europe. Following this an introduction to psychedelic phenomenology from a psychoanalytic perspective will be offered, focusing on 1) […]

This workshop includes reflections on the presenter’s experiences as the first openly lesbian candidate at an institute of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She will share lessons learned from her leadership role at the national and local level before and after the APsA's 1991 decision to allow for the training of gay and lesbian psychoanalysts. She […]

In this three part study group, participants will explore the trends and controversies that have occurred over time in the psychoanalytic conceptualizations and treatment of trauma. The purpose is not to examine history as static and resolved, but to consider how the prior issues keep evolving, influencing the ways in which we view trauma, its […]

Instructor: Duane Dale, MD Course Description In these nine monthly seminars, we will be discussing the book, Here I’m Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis, written by Adam Blum, Peter Goldberg, and Michael Levin. In my reading of this book, much of the exciting growth in psychoanalytic perspectives is captured and synthesized. The musical […]

Is a patient’s distress predominantly rooted in their personality or in the cultural milieu, or both? There has been a tendency to separate the psyche and the social throughout the history of psychoanalysis, and tensions persist in theorizing about this issue. In this program, we will explore how personality is shaped by sociocultural context and […]

If deep and enduring psychodynamic change is the ultimate goal of treatment, then periodically juxtaposing seemingly contradictory “forces” (Hegel’s thesis and antithesis) will eventually jump-start the patient’s “adaptive recovery” by creating optimally stressful, growth-incentivizing “mismatch experiences.” I will be proposing use of something to which I refer as a “conflict statement” – a clinically useful […]

Michael J. Diamond, PhD, FIPA In this two-hour presentation, Dr. Diamond will examine larger social and cultural factors at play during today’s perilous times. He describes destructive populism and group regression as exemplified by malignant cult-like elements. The current political discourse. Using both a psychoanalytic and a cultural lens, he analyzes the development of paranoid, […]

Dr. Lynne Harkless of the Florida Psychoanalytic Center will be presenting her paper, forthcoming publication in JAPA, which questions and retheorizes the connection between embodiment of erotic desire and embodiment of gender. She proposes that children identify with caregivers’ modes of embodying erotic desire and that these identifications can be thought of as separable from […]

Session 2 will be held on September 30 @ 10:30 am - 12:30 pm EDT This seminar attempts to raise awareness of unconscious states of mind around race in clinical work using a variation of the Balint method. This Method utilizes group engagement with a case problem brought by a case holder who describes a […]

Ketamine and Trauma On the Couch presented by Megan Rundel, PhD In this interactive presentation, we will explore the biological and psychological effects of ketamine on mental health issues, with a special focus on trauma. We will learn about how to carefully and effectively utilize the power of ketamine for patients with different kinds of […]

Mary Jo Peebles, PhD will present on... We have all felt stuck as therapists. This may be difficult to admit (and seldom do we tell our patients). But rest assured, the experience is universal. Feeling stuck has been discussed in traditional psychoanalytic settings as being stuck; i.e., a point of non-movement, or “impasse,” whose synonyms […]

Free Angela and All the Political Prisoners (Shola Lynch, 2013) 1 hr 42 min. Contemporary psychoanalysis as a field is struggling to make sense of racism and culturally imposed trauma. The final report of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis was published this past June. In discussing this 2013 documentary, the NCP […]

Presented by Presented by Boris Thomas, JD, PhD, with discussant Huey Hawkins, Jr., PhD Regardless of our approach to treatment, a foundational aspect of the work is the relationship between therapist and client/patient. For those accustomed to working psychoanalytically or psychodynamically, how do we think about incorporating somatic work with our clients (or somatic work […]

Description: Even for those of us with prior tele-analytic experience, our sudden immersion in practicing tele-analytically during the pandemic caused a seismic shift in our ordinary way of practicing with all the psychic reverberations such a change evokes. Now that the dust has settled some, we have an opportunity to reflect on what we’ve observed […]

Join us for a clinically rich and socially relevant discussion with renowned psychoanalyst and author, Sue Grand, PhD. Across the globe, neo-fascism is on the rise and democracy is at risk. This ominous turn calls for psychoanalytic decoding. This presentation argues that we are all carrying totalitarian objects and perpetrator fragments, inherited from our forebears’ […]

Presenter: Abbot Bronstein, PhD The Comparative Clinical Methods Working Party Group started by David Tuckett and a group of European Psychoanalysts and brought to APsA and NapSac IPA institutes by Abbot Bronstein about 17 years ago, is a way to explore and study the implicit and explicit clinical methods psychoanalysts use in doing clinical psychoanalysis. […]

Presented by Tina Marie Dale, LCSW. This course is intended for clinicians new to the therapeutic field or those with little to no exposure to the psychodynamic approach thus far in their professional careers. We will look at what the psychodynamic approach can offer to clinicians treating families, treating children, and/or working with parents. We […]

The concept of self-alienation is inextricably linked to shame. Working with adult children of traumatizing narcissists, and with others who experience narcissistic abuse, Shaw’s way of working with these clients shifted as he began to study and integrate concepts and techniques from some of the contemporary traumatologists. What he has learned has led Shaw to […]

"As analysts have expanded their involvement outside of the consulting room, institutes around the world have increasingly recognized that learning about leadership, followership, membership, and social dynamics might need to be a fourth pillar in psychoanalytic training (alongside seminars, personal analysis, and supervision). In this conference, and working together over four days, the staff and […]

With Amy Levy, Psy.D. & Todd Essig, Ph.D. In her paper, “The Phone as a Subject,” Dr. Levy contests the commonly held assumptions that the smartphone is an object, susceptible to healthy or pathological employment and comparable to other objects used to ameliorate the pain of reality. Instead, she will argue that the phone is […]

This program begins with a talk on what a social psychoanalysis might look like in the clinic and draws on some earlier psychoanalysts’ concepts that have connected the social world and the psychic world without reducing one to the other. Exploring identity formation in cultural contexts and within various power hierarchies, Dr. Layton introduces the […]

Join Andrea Celenza, PhD, for our next Meet the Author event with Shari Thurer, Sc. D., and the online audience. We will be talking about Andrea's book, "Transference, Love, Being: Essential Essays from the Field".

Presented by Stuart Ozar, MD and Juliana Varela, MSW. For clinicians or mental health students who are curious about what it is that psychodynamic therapists actually do, we offer a “window” into the process and a chance to connect an introduction to theory with actual clinical material. Each class will begin with a brief theoretical […]

This weekend conference addresses teletreatment and teletraining under geopolitical conditions of pandemic, division between factions and countries, international tension with China and Russia, and war in Ukraine. We review APsA empirical studies on teleanalysis uptake, reconceptualize online teaching for challenged psychoanalytic psychotherapy training programs in China and Russia, illustrate technology-mediated support for traumatized Russian/Ukrainian colleagues, […]

Dr. Solms will discuss how the emotional mind works (using Panksepp’s scheme for core human emotions) and how psychoanalysis achieves relief of mental suffering by making emotions conscious.

This presentation is aimed to enrich psychoanalytic theory by exploring how societal and historical factors shape generational experiences in different contexts. Each generation grows up in a specific cultural, social, and historical context, which influences their values, beliefs, and psychological challenges. In these regards generation Z in general has been characterized as an environmentally aware […]

Directed by Kelly Freeman Craig, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (2023) is a film adaptation of the Judy Blume young-adult novel. Social, biological, and (to a much smaller extent) identity issues of puberty’s early edge are presented with charming verisimilitude (and earned a 99% positive rating on RottenTomatoes.com). In our discussion we will […]

Jack Drescher, MD: The history of psychoanalytic theorizing about homosexuality is more than a century old and has undergone numerous revisions. Early on, psychoanalytic attitudes toward homosexuality could be reasonably characterized as hostile. The presentation begins with Freud’s early views on homosexuality within the cultural context of his times. It then reviews later pathologizing psychoanalytic […]

Presented by Gary Hirshberg, LCSW. This two session workshop will challenge clinicians to look at our own deeply held beliefs about sex and coupling, specifically what is ‘perversion’ and what is ‘healthy’ coupling. Most of us have come of age and been trained to still consider kink as deviant and as deriving from early childhood […]

This event will focus on ideas from Galit Atlas’ new book "Emotional Inheritance."  It will address silenced experiences that belong not only to us or to our patients, but to their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, and the ways they impact our lives. The clinical tales will focus on emotional material that is passed down from […]

Danielle Novack, PhD. “Meeting Again, Meeting Anew: A Child Patient Returns as an Adult”

Masud Khan was a brilliant psychoanalyst, Winnicott’s “principal disciple,” collaborator, editor, and analysand. He was chief editor of the International Psychoanalytical Library for 20 years, wrote four books, and served as training analyst for Christopher Bollas and Adam Phillips. Simultaneously, Masud Khan was an alcoholic, antisemitic, alcoholic, who repeatedly engaged in sexual relationships with patients […]

This study group is based on a book authored by Carl Shubs, PhD, titled Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development: An Intersubjective, Object Relations Listening Perspective on Self, Attachment, Trauma, and Reality (Routledge, 2020). It describes a new conceptualization of trauma, so we can be better prepared to work with it. The book presents a psychoanalytic […]

This is a continuation of NCP's Manifest Mind Series. As psychedelic medicine moves toward wide clinical implementation, psychoanalysts are establishing a specialized set of roles and methods separate from other psychotherapists. The value of psychedelic medicine in psychodynamic care has been extensively documented in the past decade, corroborating published clinical experience in the earlier LSD […]

In this presentation, Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou urges psychoanalysts to let the debate about the validity of trans children take its place in the fossil record of analytic history. Encouraging us to stop squandering our energies sparring with colleagues who see trans existence as cause for alarm, she suggests it is time to move beyond transantagonism […]

Weekend Event - October 21 & 22 A Psychoanalytic Retrospective: Thoughts on the Essence of a Happy and Fulfilled Life Calvin A. Colarusso M.D. Training and Supervising Child Adolescent and Adult Analyst San Diego Psychoanalytic Center. Dr. Colarusso will describe the effect of more than fifty-five years of exposure to psychoanalytic theory and the practice […]

Speaker: Margarita Cereijido, PhD Discussants: Kirsten Dahl, PhD & Rosemary Balsam, MD Psychoanalysis, from its beginnings, has a long history of pathologizing certain groups – women and homosexuals, to name a few. Personal beliefs and prejudices of the times – both past and present –seep into psychoanalytic theory, education and practice. Many new psychoanalytic ideas […]

Weekend Event - October 21 & 22 Sunday, October 22 The Developmental Process: The Analysis of a Traumatized Three-Year-Old. Rex McGeHee, M.D. Training and Supervising Child, Adolescent and Adult Analyst. Denver Institute for Psychoanalysis Dr. McGeHee will present a case to illustrate how psychoanalytic treatment changes the developmental trajectory of a life. Building on Freud's […]

Our discussion of the Under the Skin screening will introduce viewers to the psychoanalytic notion of alienation from humanist (classical Freudian and relational theory) and posthumanist (contemporary French psychoanalytic) perspectives.