How Technology is Changing Couples' Sexualities
2025-05-07 09:45 (America/New_York) | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Michael Langlois

Actual Bodies, Analytic Minds, and Artificial Intelligence
2025-05-09 09:00 - 11:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Todd Essig

Problem-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapy with Fred Busch, MD
2025-05-09 12:50 - 13:50 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Fred Busch, MD, speaks about Problem-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, a modified psychoanalytic treatment approach that addresses patient’s specific problems, including symptoms, personality issues, relationship struggles, and behavioral difficulties. The primary facets of this treatment approach will be described, including identification of problems and their associated triggers and feelings, and developing a psychodynamic formulation to aid therapists in addressing specific areas of difficulty. Modifications of psychodynamic techniques to target problems, including use of the transference, will be described. Values of this approach in managing termination and helping the patient to develop psychodynamic skills will also be discussed.

Thinking Together Without Falling Apart: A Day in Conversation with Dr. Beverly J. Stoute
2025-05-10 11:00 - 13:30 | George Washington University Hospital Auditorium, Washington, DC
Join us Saturday, May 10, 2025 for
Thinking Together Without Falling Apart: A Day in Conversation with Dr. Beverly J. Stoute
Live Presentation Only
Must be able to attend in person. No Zoom option is available.
11:00 am – 1:30 pm
E pluribus unum: An American Fantasy?
Presentation Open to the Community
George Washington University Hospital Auditorium
2.5 CME/CE
Registration Link: https://wbcp.memberclicks.net/reg_dr_stoute_public_5-10-25#!/
Flyer: https://wbcp.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/PR/24-25/5-10-25%20Beverly%20J.%20Stoute%20Public%20Presentation%20%28CE%20Version%29.pdf
—————————————————————–
*The presentations below are invite-only for WBCP students, WBCP candidates, psychoanalytic residents, and WBCP Faculty members. Please email admin@wbcp.org if you believe you are eligible and have not already received an invitation.
9:00 am – 10:15 am
Making Sense in the Chaos: A Psychoanalyst’s Perspective
Breakfast and Discussion with WBCP Students, WBCP Candidates, and Psychoanalytic Residents (Invite Only; qualifying members will receive invitations via email)
2120 L St, NW, 6th floor, Wiener Conference Room
Flyer: https://wbcp.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/PR/24-25/5-10-25%20Beverly%20J.%20Stoute%20Breakfast%20for%20Students%20%28CME%29.pdf
1 CME/CE
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Can We Bear Together What It Takes To Think Together?
Lunch and Discussion with WBCP Faculty (Invite Only; qualifying members will receive invitations via email)
2120 L St, NW, 6th floor, Wiener Conference Room
Flyer: https://wbcp.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/PR/24-25/5-10-25%20Beverly%20J.%20Stoute%20Faculty%20Lunch%20%28CME%29.pdf
2 CME/CE

Psychological Nudity in Couples: From Sexual Arousal to Sexual Sadism
2025-05-10 12:00 - 16:20 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This event will be presented by Professor Brett Kahr: Although we have all encountered naked human bodies across our lifetime, very few of us have had the opportunity to explore the fully naked human mind, namely, the true contents of sexual thoughts and fantasies and unconscious wishes and unconscious fears. In this presentation on “Psychological Nudity” and its impact on couples, our speaker, London-based Professor Brett Kahr, will share the findings of his transatlantic research project, in which he has examined the erotic fantasies of more than 25,000 British and American adults, aged eighteen years and over, investigating the early infantile and early childhood origins of private masturbatory and coital fantasies and the subsequent impact of such private thoughts upon spousal relationships.

57th Anniversary Freud Lecture: "The Revolution in North American Psychoanalysis: Enhancement or Betrayal"
2025-05-12 20:00 - 21:45 | NYU Langone Health Smilow Seminar Room, 550 1st Avenue, 550 1st Ave, New York, NJ, United States
57th ANNIVERSARY FREUD LECTURE: The Revolution in North American Psychoanalysis: Enhancement or Betrayal
The question asked in this paper is whether the various modifications taking place over the past 50 years are enhancing or undermining the core of psychoanalysis – namely the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, a theory of resistance and repression, a key role for the importance of irresolvable conflicts originating in infantile sexual experience and the challenges referred to as the Oedipus complex.

Meet the Author: Fred Busch, PhD
2025-05-13 19:30 - 21:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Join Fred Busch PhD, for our next Meet the Author event with Dan Jacobs, MD, and the online audience.

The Place From Which We Know: A Response to the “Ontological” Turn in Psychoanalysis
2025-05-16 18:30 - 20:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Dr. Hannah Wallerstein address the recent shift towards was has been termed an “ontological” approach to psychoanalysis (Ogden 2019), in which experiencing and becoming oneself more fully are seen as the goals of treatment, with the generation of knowledge taking a back seat.

International Speaker Forum: The Case of the Manufactured Child
2025-05-17 12:00 | Hybrid (Rockland – East Fairmount Park 3810 Mt Pleasant Dr. Philadelphia, PA & via Zoom), 3810 Mt Pleasant Dr, Philadelphia, PA, 19121, United States
Dr. Santa Maria will present The Case of the Manufactured Child, examining the impact of assisted reproductive technology with a solo father on a child’s development. She will discuss the father’s perfectionism, the role of “self-matryoshka” (other mothers), the cultural implications of “manufacturing” a child, and how psychoanalytic psychotherapy can support children navigating complex psychological challenges from conception onward.

The Decentered Self in Psychedelic States
2025-05-17 12:00 - 21:00 | Hybrid (Virtual & Inperson: New Center for Psychoanalysis – LA), 2014 Sawtelle Bvld, Los Angeles, CA, 90025, United States
This is a two-day program which is being presented in person and on Zoom.
MANIFEST MIND CONFERENCE III:
The Decentered Self in Psychedelic States
What actually is the altered reality of psychedelic experience? Is there more… or less… of ones self?
The experience of subjective dimensionality is a key scientific conundrum of our age. Sensed but ungraspable, how do you measure that which is beyond measurement? Can such a mystery be explained in naturalistic terms?
The conundrum is personal. In the physical world there is no “self” center in your brain. Who are you if there is no place of YOU (“self”) in your brain? Is “myself” a distributed function in your brain, or is “myself” an emergent property from another dimension? Is your existence fantasy? How real is the “you” that remains to experience an intense psychedelic experience after the ego-attachments of self are dissolved?
And what do we make of the next step, the mystical revelation of everything being connected? Of contact with a transcendent power, creativity, ever-ness and beyond-ness?
What are mind and consciousness that emerge from brain function? What distinguishes a human mind from a fish mind? What is meaning, that emotional core of relationship…and the stuff of psychotherapy?
These and other questions will be considered in NCP’s MANIFEST MIND CONFERENCE, May 17-18, 2025.
This conference promises to be both world-class and intimate. It will provide a thoughtful immersion into group process further examining the decentered self in phenomena that arise in the group-as-a-whole to which each individual contributes. Before closing afternoon on Saturday, Isabella Sledge and Cat Jenson offer a meditative soundbath for integration. Saturday evening we are offering an in-person concert illustrating the “decentered self” theme. The concert will feature PARTCH Ensemble and composer Anne LeBaron, with excerpts of her opera Huxley’s Last Trip (previously titled LSD: The Opera).

Understanding and Treating Disordered Eating Through A Psychoanalytic Lens
2025-05-17 13:00 - 16:10 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This event will be presented by Dr. Jennifer Hanlin: Attendees will explore Philip Bromberg’s paper, Treating Patients with Symptoms—and Symptoms with Patience: Reflections on Shame, Dissociation, and Eating Disorders. Bromberg’s theory is that the therapist’s task is to allow themselves to slowly discover the patient’s multiplicity of self-states and the existing gap between the states. Further, the case presented within the paper will be discussed, and the need to maintain the dissociative structures within the mind, presenting as “illness”, will be emphasized. Examples of the interpersonal relational psychotherapy process will be given to enhance the understanding of treatment.

International Speaker Forum: What Makes Us Human? Can Artificial Intelligence Play a Role in the Conservation of the Subjective?
2025-05-18 10:00 - 12:00 | Hybrid (Rockland – East Fairmount Park 3810 Mt Pleasant Dr. Philadelphia, PA & via Zoom), 3810 Mt Pleasant Dr, Philadelphia, PA, 19121, United States
Dr. Santa Maria will consider how technology has contributed to the subjective experience of living with AI and how it may be changing our relationship to the experience of otherness. This presentation will seek to generate discussion among the attendees about our emerging technological world and how AI may be impacting the conservation of our subjectivation and experience of time, both past and future.

Nursing & Psychoanalysis Group Mentorship Q&A
2025-05-18 11:00 - 12:30 | Virtual, via Zoom
Dear Nursing Colleagues Interested in Psychoanalysis:
APsA’s Advanced Practice in Nursing Committee will be hosting a free, online group mentorship Q&A on Sunday, May 18th, 2025 from 11am-12:30pm EDT/8am-9:30am PDT.

Please pre-register to attend here and bring your questions and curiosity:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Q8tJgOVZSaGeKHTaoUBpUA

Click here to access the flyer and share with nursing professionals who are interested.

Psychoanalysis and Cinema: AI and Therapeutic Action in ‘HER’; Will She Replace Us?
2025-05-18 17:00 - 18:45 | Hybrid (Zoom or In-Person New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center)
If virtual, discussion starts at 4:15pm CDT. Please use link to learn all details. This film screening explores how psychotherapists and psychoanalysts are increasingly confronted with the question of whether an AI platform (ChatGPT, therapy bots, or a future operating system) can replace the therapy relationship and to what degree it can mimic it. This talk looks at the potential and limits of AI therapy from a multi-theoretical perspective of attachment, mentalization, the depressive position, and desire and fantasy.

Embracing Tragic Consciousness in Psychotherapy
2025-05-27 19:30 - 21:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Heather Ferguson, LCSW will present on the applicability of tragic consciousness in psychoanalytic work, focusing on the way in which the psychoanalytic relationship can aid in a patient developing such a form of consciousness.

Poetry and Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique
2025-05-30 18:30 - 20:00 | Hybrid (In-person: 2460 Fairmount Blvd, Suite 312, Cleveland Heights, OH 44106 & Virtual), 2460 Fairmount Blvd Ste 312, Cleveland Heights, OH, United States
Led by Salman Akhtar, MD.
This presentation will open by discussing what poetry is in actuality. What are its components? From where does it originate? How does it exert a healing effect upon mental pain? Moving on from such issues, the presentation will highlight three links between poetry and psychoanalysis. These refer to the presence in the clinical hour of (i) poetic sentiment, (ii) poetic speech, and (iii) poetic specimen. Each will be elucidated in detail and with the help of socio-clinical vignettes. This presentation aims to demonstrate that, through the affirmative holding and partial unmasking of the instinctual-epistemic conflation in verse and free association, both poetry and psychoanalysis seek to transform the private into shared, the hideous into elegant, and the unfathomable into accessible.

Exploring Transgender Identities: Clinical And Ethical Considerations From A Psychoanalytic Framework with Alessadra Lemma, PhD
2025-05-31 09:00 | Hybrid (In-person: Oregon Psychoanalytic Center & Virtual), 2250 NW Flanders Street, Suite 312, Portland, OR, 97210, United States
In this seminar Dr. Lemma will critically review how psychoanalysis has approached the question of transgender identities and the challenges that have been proposed to the classical psychoanalytic understanding. She will introduce some key ethical points that are important for therapists working in this area. Finally, she will share some of her own clinical work with this group of patients to illustrate some of the challenges and adaptations
to technique.

Major Issues in Contemporary Psychoanalytic Technique
2025-05-31 09:00 - 11:00 | Hybrid (In-person: 2460 Fairmount Blvd, Suite 312, Cleveland Heights, OH 44106 & Virtual), 2460 Fairmount Blvd Ste 312, Cleveland Heights, OH, United States
Led by Salman Akhtar, MD.
While retaining the ‘trio of guideposts’ (Pine, 1997) constituted by anonymity, abstinence, and neutrality, contemporary psychoanalysis has witnessed many changes in its theoretical base and clinical praxis. These include (1) a greater developmental orientation, (ii) a tendency to judiciously accommodate the frame to the patient’s sociocultural ethos, (iii) a greater appreciation of bilingualism as it affects associations and revelations and, paradoxically, of the multiple functions of silence, (iv) refinement of the concepts and uses of both transference and countertransference,(v) the deployment of development-facilitating interventions, (vi) responsiveness to the religious and spiritual dimensions of the patient’s lives, and (vii) inclusion of newer and unusual interventions like refusing to listen to certain kinds of material or invocation of imaginary interlocutors for the purposes of interpretation.

Becoming Raced: Psychic Consequences of Transgenerational Racial Trauma
2025-05-31 10:00 - 12:00 | Hybrid (In-person: Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas & Virtual), 101 Cloister Court, Suite A, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Presented by Dionne R. Powell, MD

DPC Professional Development Workshop - Into the Wild’s of Melancholia By Derek Hook
2025-05-31 10:00 - 13:00 | Hybrid (In-Person at Dallas Psychoanalytic Center & Virtual)
The diagnostic category of melancholia, described by Freud, still has much to teach us in respect of effective clinical psychoanalytic treatments, even if reference to the term is largely absent in diagnostic debates. Melancholia, as understood by Freud, involves identification with a loved then lost and subsequently hated object, resulting in aggression being directed against the subject’s own ego. A Lacanian psychoanalytic approach to melancholia adds to this clinical picture: a ‘terror of closeness’ (avoidance of intimacy), difficulties in situating oneself in long-term symbolic roles, and reveries of an end (images of something beyond one’s current life). Derek Hook, Ph. D. — Research Interests or Expertise
Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory & Practice
Critical and Post-structural Psychology
Introduction to Psychology as a Human Science

Peter Shabad, PhD - Integrating Trauma and Shame with Projected Images of Death
2025-05-31 13:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Dr. Peter Shabad will briefly describe how the origins of chronic shame emerge from chronic experiences of rejected vulnerability at the hands of one’s parents. These cumulative experiences of trauma may be viewed as the psychic loss of a physically present parent, in which one’s expectant hope for a wished-for parent is continually frustrated by the actuality of the real parent. The chronic experiences of hope and disappointments are demoralizing sources of shame and often covered over in the necessity of developing the hard defensive armor of becoming an adult.

The Ubiquitousness and Intensity of Countertransference in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis
2025-06-04 19:00 - 21:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Alan Sugarman, PhD will be discussing some of his ideas regarding the prominent place that countertransference has in child and adolescent work. He notes the existence of a “Broader
Field” or “Total Situation” when analyzing children and adolescents because of the various roles required of the child analyst i.e. analyst, developmental object, and real object; because of the child’s developmentally appropriate orientation to action; and the need to involve parents and others (siblings, nannies, teachers).

Film & Mind: All We Imagine As Light
2025-06-06 23:00 - 2025-06-07 00:30 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
All We Imagine As Light is a psychological journey of revelation, a film of connection, memory, and the intricate emotional landscapes that bind human experience. Set in the vibrant, complex world of contemporary Mumbai, the film weaves an intimate narrative that delves deep into the inner worlds of two women navigating the delicate intersections of personal desire, societal expectations, and inner emotional truth.
Each character becomes a landscape of unspoken longings, suppressed memories, and quiet rebellions against the invisible boundaries that circumscribe their lives. Director Payal Kapadia crafts a meditation on the inner self—showing how our memories, dreams, and unacknowledged desires create invisible architectures that both constrain and liberate us.
Visually poetic and emotionally intricate, “All We Imagine As Light” transforms personal narrative into a universal exploration of human consciousness. It suggests that our most profound connections—to ourselves, to each other, to the world around us—are built not on grand gestures, but on the subtle, almost imperceptible moments of genuine emotional recognition.

Treating Psychosis Today: A Lacanian Perspective with Stijn Vanheule, PhD
2025-06-13 12:50 - 13:50 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This presentation first explores key concepts from Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of psychosis, highlighting its role as one of several ways humans navigate existential dilemmas such as sexuality and love. According to Lacan’s 1950s theory, psychosis arises when conventional frameworks for making sense of reality collapse due to the absence of the so-called Name-of-the-Father, the central organizing element of symbolically structured mental life. When life events bring existential dilemmas to the forefront, psychotic episodes may be triggered.
Building on this foundation, the talk examines how Lacan’s later works from the 1960s and 1970s—particularly his ideas on the fundamental non-rapport structuring mental life—further refine our understanding of psychotic experiences. Particular attention will be given to the role of creativity and invention in overcoming psychotic crises.
Finally, the implications of the Lacanian model of psychosis for clinical practice will be discussed, with a focus on ethical positioning, addressing the unconscious, handling transference, and navigating crisis and stability in psychosis.

Psychoanalysis and Cinema -I Have to Think These Things Up: Imagination, Differentiation, and Defense at Grey Gardens
2025-06-14 16:45 - 18:15 | Hybrid (In-person at New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center & Virtual)
Elevate your clinical competence by understanding the persistent impact of fused family dynamics in adult patients. This talk addresses the gap in recognizing how defenses maintain these relationships and how cultural shifts impede separation. Learn to apply these insights to your practice, fostering deeper understanding and more effective interventions with clients navigating individuation and lifespan challenges by Jon Dimond, PhD

Mark Solms: The Revised Standard Edition of Sigmund Freud’s Writings – an Updated Translation
2025-06-18 19:00 - 21:00 | Hybrid (Cantor Film Center, Theater 101, New York University 36 E 8th St, NY 10003, & Virtual)
Can the existing English translation by James Strachey of Freud’s Psychological Works be salvaged and updated, or is a completely fresh start called for?
This is the question that confronted Mark Solms, the editor of the Revised Standard Edition, when he began his massive task thirty years ago.
In this presentation, he will provide the answer that he came to, and explain why.
This will entail an interesting consideration of the widespread accusation that Strachey ‘falsely scientized’ Freud.
The talk will also entail a birds-eye overview of the many ways in which the Revised Standard Edition differs from the old one.

Psychoanalytic Consultation Group
2025-06-20 11:30 - 13:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This series of 6 closed meetings offers pre-licensed and licensed therapists a safe and confidential place to get help with difficult cases, discuss professional challenges, and explore new ways to approach clients. The instructor will provide participants with tools to cultivate a foundational understanding of various psychoanalytic theories. This course will be held on Zoom.
Led by Dr. Mauri Lynne Heller, Psy.D., LMFT

A Rapaport-Klein Study Group Presentation: Did Strachey Falsely Scientize Freud? with Professor Mark Solms
2025-06-20 20:00 - 22:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
The claim that Strachey ‘falsely scientized’ Freud, mainly through the translation of his technical vocabulary, is the red thread that runs through all the major criticisms of the Standard Edition (e.g. Bettelheim, Ornston, Laplanche). In this lecture, Professor Mark Solms will argue against this criticism on three grounds. (1) It fails to take account of the differing conventions employed in German and English scientific writing. (2) It fails to take account of Freud’s personal involvement in Strachey’s choices. (3) It fails to consider continuities between Freud’s neuroscientific and psychoanalytic writings. These points will be illustrated by way of representative examples. Professor Mark Solms will also take the opportunity to describe and defend other editorial policy decisions that he took, and he will provide a general introduction to the form and content of the Revised Standard Edition.

Daniel Goldin, MFT, PsyD - Toward a New Interpretation of Dreams
2025-06-21 13:00 - 15:00 | Virtual (Zoom)
Humans have long looked to dreams for meaning, seeing in them symbolic messages, divine signs, or glimpses of the future. Dr. Daniel Goldin suggests that dreams reconnect us with a pre-verbal mode of communication—what Tomasello calls a “natural language” of imaginative storytelling. In this immersive, symbolic space, our minds craft metaphorical narratives that mirror the deeper structures of our thoughts, much like our ancestors once did to make sense of their world. Dreams, he argues, help us reshape the hidden storylines behind our modern struggles, offering insight and transformation through symbolic drama.

CE.

Special Issue on Climate Change - BPSI Library Newsletter
2025-06-27 | Via Email Distribution by Request
Publication of the first-ever special *climate change* issue of BPSI’s Library Newsletter, with thoughtful contributions by:
–issue editor/psychoanalyst Delia Kostner
–psychoanalyst Rita Teusch: a survey of BPSI trainees on climate issues
–psychoanalyst Jack Foehl: a personal tribute to Donna Orange
–BPSI and Chicago Psychoanalytic Society/Institute member Linda Emanuel: an appreciation of Susan Kassouf’s recent paradigm-changing self-psychology article “Human Among the More-Than-Human”
–a contribution by scholar Hannah Spector, and more!
To receive a free copy, send a request to: Library@BPSI.org
