Events

This mini-course explores Shakespeare’s Hamlet through the lens of psychoanalytic theory, examining the psychological dimensions of the play’s characters, themes, and dramatic structure. Drawing on classical and contemporary psychoanalytic frameworks, the course investigates issues such as mourning and melancholia, repression, desire, family dynamics, and the unconscious motivations that shape Hamlet’s actions. Participants will gain a […]

Presented by: Kathleen Adams, PhD Discussion by: Robert Grossmark, PhD In Part II of this two-part special presentation, author Kathleen Adams, PhD, discusses her book Attuned Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Non-abused, High Functioning People Living Outside of Time. Group and individual therapists who frequently encounter patients with characters organized around melancholy, anxiety, entitlement, and rage […]

Speaker: Lisa L. Moore, PhD, LICSW - The deployment of racialized fear as a political strategy has a profound impact on the individuals and communities who are targeted as objects of fear. In our current climate the use of fear as a tool of racialization is an important site for practitioners to consider in their […]

“What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” Discussant: Clark Johnsen Join us for a screening of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Robert Aldrich’s 1962 psychological thriller starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as two sisters locked in a decaying mansion and in a decades-long struggle over envy, dependency, and humiliation. A gothic study in sibling […]

Leading researchers and clinicians will present and compare the latest findings as to how to best facilitate successful early relationships and most successfully interrupt the intergenerational transmission of trauma.

In this seminar, Dr. Reid Meloy will teach such pre-offense warning behaviors to clinicians in attendance. Based upon his research group's work over the past 15 years, and validated by numerous studies by others in North America, Europe, and Australia, these proximal warning behaviors provide important benchmarks for the clinician to identify, assess, and manage […]

Presented by: Vera J. Camden & Valentino L. Zullo Psychoanalysis has from its origins been imbricated in culture, both high and low. Sigmund Freud defined and illustrated his pivotal discoveries through explications of folklore and fairy tales as well as the works of Sophocles, Shakespeare and other venerable texts. What is less known, however, is […]

Despite the steady decrease in violent crime over the past three decades, there has been an increase in targeted attacks toward people in public places, ranging from schools and workplaces to open recreational areas. Motivations vary, but often include both personal grievances and an attraction to extreme religious or political beliefs. Mental health professionals, on […]

The Leon Levin Psychoanalytic Film Festival Movie: Speak Sunlight (La Voz Del Sol) (2023) Presented by: Noreen Honeycutt, PhD with Director Carol Polakoff Date: April 25, 2026 Time: 2:00pm - 5:00pm Doors Open at 1:30pm 3CME/CE Where: Baltimore Museum of the Arts 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218 Presentation Description: Set in 1965, teenage […]

In their presentation, “On Trauma,” Drs. Betsy Brett and Sid Phillips will explore how Freud tried to understand where emotional and psychological problems come from. From early on, he asked whether people’s symptoms grow mainly out of painful life experiences (trauma) or out of inner conflicts and instinctual wishes (drives), and he described these questions […]

Working with the Unspeakable: Shame, Self-hatred, and Relational Repair Presenter: Cynthia Mulder, LCSW-S

Presented by: Arthur Niesser, Dr. Med., Derek Hook, PhD & Leora Trub Discussion by: Todd Essig, PhD This conference will consider some clinical and theoretical considerations in telehealth versus in-person psychoanalytic treatments. Dr. Niesser will explore if there might be groups of patients for whom online analysis might be advantageous compared to the traditional in-person […]

Presented by Michael Levin Psy.D. This conference will continue exploring aspects of Laplanche's work that we did not have time to cover during the February presentation. It will include a case presentation to facilitate further clinical discussion and learning. Topics covered will include: • Laplanche's view of the metapsychology of psychotic and dissociative disturbances • […]

In-person (at the Austen Riggs Center) and virtual attendance options. Featuring: Ben Kafka, PhD Leora Trub, PhD Christian Thorne, PhD Hannah Schmitt, PsyD (Moderator) The final roundtable examines how digital technologies are reshaping psychic life within the context of place and its disembodied absence. What becomes of presence, intimacy, and therapeutic containment in virtual space? […]

Presented by Dr. Glenda Corstorphine, Psy.D This course will focus on the idea that we can access our unconscious thoughts and images through art, specifically collage. There will be an introduction to “dreaming while awake” referencing both Bion and Thomas Ogden’s thoughts. Participants will be invited to create a collage that represents work with a […]

Anne Erreich, PhD, cites the prominence of theories which locate serious adult psychopathology in the pre-verbal infant’s inability to formulate or represent traumatic experience in her paper presentation. The work of two such authors, H. Levine and D.B. Stern, is briefly considered. The frame of reference for this investigation is that clinical and academic research […]

Presented by: Shir Shanun, PhD Civitarese (2024) writes we have a need to exist in the eyes of others, it is what makes relationships meaningful. Such loving connections and freedom in complex analytic system and the positive relationship between them are at the center of this paper. I will argue that restriction or expansion of […]

2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Hadas Pade, PsyD This session highlights the need to address the current inequitable access to psychological assessment services by acknowledging and embracing different levels of assessment versus a more traditional comprehensive assessment approach, and the potential role of various health care providers other than psychologists. While comprehensive assessments are highly […]

Presenter: Nasir Ilahi, LLM, LP The term "fantasy" is foundational to psychoanalysis, yet its clinical application varies dramatically across the Atlantic. While all schools share a common Freudian root, the British Kleinian tradition added something additional. It developed the concept of "unconscious phantasy" as a continuous, somatic, and structural undercurrent of the psyche. This talk […]

Using vivid clinical material, broad theoretical references, and decades of experience as an analyst, Dr. Sugarman will explore the total situation in child analysis — and why it tends to elicit particularly intense countertransference responses and enactments. He defines transference and countertransference as the interpersonalization of mental structures, examining them not only in response to […]

Presented by Tiffany Hale, LMFT & Jamie Steele, LMFT Bring your cases that are outside of normative bounds. We will draw in our well-worn and well-loved analytic concepts to explore clinical material together. If you have found that your thinking, your lived experience and/or that of your patients has not quite been thinkable within analytic […]

Presented by: Lauren Levine, PhD Discussion by: Janine de Peyer, LCSW Please join us whether or not you have read the book. Some people want to read and discuss the book; others want to learn more before deciding if they want to read it. All are welcome! In this presentation, Dr. Levine examines the transformative […]

A CE-eligible Conference on Grief and Loss will be taught by national experts Dr. Robert A. Neimeyer and Carolyn Ng as well as Chicagoans José A. Hernández Zeind, MS, LCPC, Dr. Froma Walsh, Dr. Molly Witten, and Boston-based Dr. Linda Emanuel, offered in-person in Chicago, IL and online throughout the U.S. and around the world.

Inaugural Talk with Dr. Carolyn Laubender: We are excited to open this new series with an evening conversation with Carolyn Laubender on her book The Political Clinic – winner of the 2025 Book Prize of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the 2025 Book Award of the British Psychological Society. Examining the work of influential British […]

Presented by Salman Akhtar, MD This presentation will address the painful malady of self-loathing. Four types of self-loathing will be described: (i) primal, (ii) shame based, (iii) guilt based, and (iv) remorse based. Therapeutic strategies to lessen such self-hatred and to improve self-esteem will also be discussed. Ample clinical material will be presented to illustrate […]

Speakers: Todd Essig, Phd and Oscar Hills, MD. Generative AI, especially chatbots, presents psychoanalysis with tremendous promise and significant peril. While some benefit tremendously from their AI relationships, others sink into delusion, and for most they threaten to flatten inner life, externalizing what has always been internal. Plus, so called “therapy-bots” are on the near […]

Disability remains among the least theorized subjects in psychoanalysis. This is notable but not surprising: the relational anxiety that disability provokes in the non-disabled is pervasive, and psychoanalysts are not exempt. This paper introduces the concept of the disabling object — a persecutory internal structure through which social prejudice and structural ableism are psychically internalized […]

2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Hannah Zeavin, PhD From the mid-1940s until the 1960s and beyond, class, race, and maternal function were linked in metaphors of temperature in pediatric psychological studies of Bad Mothers. Newly codified diagnoses of aloof “refrigerator mothers” and overstimulating “hot mothers” were inseparable from midcentury conceptions of stimulation, mediation, domesticity, and […]

Presented by: Dr. Kathleen Fitzgerald, PsyD, MFT, Training and Supervising Analyst. This consultation group invites therapists into an ongoing exploration of dreams as living expressions of the unconscious. Drawing from the full arc of psychoanalytic thought, participants will bring clinical material and engage in a collaborative process of listening, reverie, and meaning-making. Together, we will […]

This consultation group presented by Kathleen Fitzgerald, invites therapists into an ongoing exploration of dreams as living expressions of the unconscious. Drawing from the full arc of psychoanalytic thought, participants will bring clinical material and engage in a collaborative process of listening, reverie, and meaning-making. Together, we will explore how dreams emerge within the intersubjective […]

Presented by Dr. Holly Han, Psy.D., LMFT & Ivy Zequeira, LMFT. This 6-week course explores psychoanalysis as a living, political, and decolonial practice through Daniel José Gaztambide’s A People’s History of Psychoanalysis. We’ll trace the field from Freud’s early formulations through its entanglement with race, class, and empire, to contemporary liberation psychology and decolonial movements. […]

Keynote of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Rapaport-Klein Study Group hosted by the Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy of the Austen Riggs Center Speaker: George Makari, MD In Of Fear and Strangers, George Makari, MD, considered how different psychological models – behaviorist, cognitive, phenomenological – accounted for xenophobia, and in the end, […]

Presented by: Dr. Kathleen Fitzgerald, PsyD, MFT, Training and Supervising Analyst. In this Saturday Salon, Dr. Kathleen Fitzgerald invites participants into an intimate exploration of a 10-year analytic relationship reframed through an unexpected reversal as the analyst’s mind is slowly overtaken by dementia. Through a series of vivid clinical and relational moments, she reflects on […]

Drawing from the works of Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Jon Dimond, PhD will use Phantom Thread as an illustration of the confounding phenomenology of The Strongman. Participants will apply psychoanalytic principles to better understand how a character structure organized around obsessiveness, dominance, and relentless control can also be so vulnerable, emotionally reactive, […]

The ethical codes for mental health professionals are guided by internationally recognized standards centered around core principles: respect for others, competence, integrity, and responsibility to society. Central to these standards is our integrity as a human being, a professional, and a member of society, based on principles of fairness, justice, and respect for difference. These […]

Discussants: Virginia Ungar, Marcelo Haber, Horacio Legras, and Belen de Martino Moderator: Margarita Cereijido, PhD Friday, July 10, 2026 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm ET Via Zoom NOTE: a link to view the film will be sent out 2 weeks prior to the event. No CME/CE Discussion of the film: Marie Langer: Desire and Revolution […]

Mikita Brottman, PhD, will present on her paper, “Nomen Est Omen: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Names.” She will discuss how personal names and naming are shaped by unconscious dynamics, implicit associations, cultural influences, and relationships to parents.

Clinical supervision provides the foundation for ensuring patient care and professional development. This series of 4 classes introduces an approach to supervision that emphasizes developing supervisory alliance, parallel process, working with countertransference, and the supervisor-supervisee dynamic. Both didactic and experiential learning will be equally emphasized. This class is designed for those who supervise graduate students, […]

2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Michael D. Garrett, MD Research in the last four decades has shown a strong correlation between childhood adversity (e.g., sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional neglect) and psychosis, which recasts chronic psychosis as a trauma-related/stress/related disorder requiring psychotherapy as well as medication. This presentation will describe how psychotic symptoms can be […]

Speaker: Dan Shaw - Beginning in 1996 with the essay “Traumatic Abuse in Cults: A Psychoanalytic Perspective,” up to the release in 2026 of his latest book, Traumatic Narcissism Theory: A Contemporary Introduction, Daniel Shaw has studied the psychology of the individual he terms the “traumatizing narcissist,” and the specific ways that they seduce and […]

2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Robert J. Gregory, MD Engaging suicidal clients in treatment and recovery is intense and challenging. Clients may state: “I just want to die”, “Nothing is going to help”, or “If you discharge me, I’m going to kill myself”. Therapists can sometimes feel helpless, hopeless and trapped in the responsibility of […]

Through the lenses of psychoanalysis, memory, and cultural reinvention, Laura McMaster, LMFT, will explore Joan Crawford, the contested narratives surrounding her life, and the film’s unexpected second life in drag culture. Drawing on Freud’s ideas about memory and recollection, this discussion examines how stories are retold, reimagined, and transformed over time.

Speaker: Deborah Farnsworth: An intensive reading group on Fred Busch’s book, Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind. Busch, an influential ego psychologist, writes complex psychoanalytic ideas in an unusually clear, usable way. This seminar cultivates a Busch-informed clinical stance and technique, with close attention to reverie, countertransference as an instrument, timing of interpretation, symbolization, working through trauma […]

2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Rhoda Olkin, PhD Clients come to therapy with entrenched ideas about illness, health, and disability. How they conceptualize disability impacts all aspects of therapy, including goals, acceptable interventions, and the therapeutic relationship. These conceptualizations, called Models of Disability in the literature, are one aspect of Disability Affirmative Therapy. The models […]

The Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center and the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine are collaborating on a morning seminar focused on Hamlet and its enduring themes of grief, conscience, identity, and inhibition. The program will bring together psychoanalytic, clinical, and theatrical perspectives. Morning Seminar 9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, Massachusetts Presenters will […]

Speaker: Phoebe Cirio, MSW, LCSW The NASW Code of Ethics is based on a set of core values: service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence. These values are stated in the affirmative as something we clinicians should strive for. Yet, at present, these core values seem […]

Through an exploration of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, Liora Diamond, M.S., LPC, applies a psychodynamic lens to examine the delicate tension between social oppression, personal autonomy, and the complexities of maternal ambivalence.

Psychoanalytic Studies Program (PSP) A two-year program for licensed clinicians and advanced scholars interested in psychoanalytic approaches to enrich their clinical and academic work. Who Should Apply: The Psychoanalytic Studies Program is open to licensed mental health professionals, including licensed psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and professional counselors. Academic scholars interested in psychoanalytic theory are also […]

Psychoanalytic Institute Training Program Prepare to practice as an Adult Psychoanalyst. Child and Adolescent training is also offered. Who Should Apply: Applicants to both Adult and the Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Training Programs must be independently licensed in a mental health field. These include (but are not limited to) psychiatry, psychology, social work, professional counseling, […]

2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Mareike Ernst, PhD This presentation introduces the concept of intersession processes—patients’ thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and internalized experiences of therapy and therapist between sessions—and examines their relevance from a contemporary psychodynamic perspective. Drawing on psychodynamic theory and empirical research, the talk will discuss how intersession processes may illuminate clinically meaningful fluctuations […]