Events

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 […]

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 […]

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; […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Presenter: David Mintz, MD - This presentation will review the evidence base for harmful meaning effects in psychiatry and some of the common dynamics by which the meanings of medication cause harm. We will explore some of the ethical dilemmas posed by mechanisms of harm and efforts to avoid harm. We will also consider the […]

Presenter: Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP - The most destructive force waylaying development in children comes from failures in mourning that leave parents unreliably available to attend to the needs of the child, the type of small-t trauma that impedes growth. Parental failures invite overwhelming experiences of helplessness that become precursors for later feelings of shame, […]

presented by Kate Leslie, MSW, LCSW

The online application portal for the 2025-2026 Psychoanalytic Institute Training Program is now open! Prepare to practice as an adult psychoanalyst. Child and Adolescent Training is also offered. The Psychoanalytic Training Program is designed to provide psychoanalytic candidates with comprehensive training in psychoanalytic theory and technique. Successful graduates are qualified to practice clinical psychoanalysis with […]

The online application portal for the 2025-2026 Psychoanalytic Studies Program is now open! A two-year program for licensed professional clinicians and advanced scholars interested in learning about psychoanalytic approaches to enrich their work and help their clients. Tuesdays, 4:00 pm - 8:15 pm September–May Via Zoom; Note: There will be one class per month that […]

6 Tuesdays | Sept. 2 - Oct 7 Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank’s significant contributions to modern psychotherapy have been undervalued. Drawing on her comprehensive research, Sara Ekenstierna offers an overview of some of the key tenets of Rank’s psychology, with focus on his relational, integrative, and process oriented approach, and aims to show how he […]

Elliott Jurist, PhD, uses memoir as a way to understand how patients experience therapy. Memoirs provide an unexplored place to hear from patients, separate from professional opinion. Drawing from diverse sources, Dr. Jurist argues that some memoirists see therapy as transformative, but others are equivocal or even negative. He also reflects upon how our beliefs […]

Sex trafficking is pertinent to psychoanalysis because of its historical roots and its persistence in current culture. It can be traced to ancient civilizations, where adults and children were enslaved for labor and sex. Not until 1921 did the newly formed League of Nations make efforts to ‘suppress trafficking in women and children’. Since then, […]

7 Wednesdays | Sept 10 – Dec 3 | Facilitated by: Garrett Tanner, PhD | This reading group is offered to explore the foundational texts of our field. Participants will engage in the seminal works of Sigmund Freud that all subsequent psychoanalytic theory – intentionally or unintentionally – responds to. Special attention will be given […]

In this presentation, the author considers long-term psychodynamic treatments, how they develop, when they are an outgrowth of treatments that should have ended, and when they are beneficial for the patient.

What if the most important perspective in psychoanalysis is the one we rarely hear? Lay patients—those without theoretical training or professional community—constitute the majority of analysands, yet their authentic voice remains largely absent from our field's discourse. Unlike analyst-patients who can contextualize their experience through theory and peer discussion, lay patients navigate analysis without a […]

Speaker: Tom Wooldridge, PsyD, ABPP, FIPA, CEDS-C - The role of the father, both flesh-and-blood and symbolic, is explored in a subset of families of patients with anorexia nervosa. In these families the mother’s narcissistic investment in her child makes separation-individuation difficult. A factor potentially influencing whether the child goes on to develop anorexia nervosa […]

Led by our Emeritus Faculty, this event will feature a short documentary and discussion about the shared trauma of Katrina: how the Center came together to manage the crisis and evolved as a result, personal accounts of rebuilding, and how the storm impacted their career trajectories. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience the profound impact […]

presented by Tobias Wiggins, PhD

The Gender and Sexualities Education and Development Group (sponsored by the APsA Committee on Gender and Sexuality) has initiated the First Things First series to educate ourselves and other psychoanalysts on developing a contemporary psychoanalytic curriculum for sexuality and gender. This development group will be useful for those teaching psychotherapy student classes and curricula, graduate […]

Facilitated by: Erica Ehrenberg, MFA Psychoanalytic, Buddhist, and literary works indicate a vast internal expanse for which each discipline attempts to find language. However abstract the terms for describing variations of this space may seem–the unconscious, emptiness, or Keats’ concept of “negative capability,” our psychic contact with this terrain in all cases has powerful implications […]

James Anderson, Ph.D. introduces therapists and analysts to the ways that psychobiography reveals the powerful undercurrents of countertransference, to serve as a didactic tool for early career therapists and analysts, as well as a refresher for more senior practitioners. CE

Author: Katherine Marshall Woods, PsyD | Interviewer: Ricardo Ainslie, PhD | Black Film Through a Psychodynamic Lens delves into the nuanced character development and narrative themes within the struggles and successes presented in Black films over the last five decades. In this pioneering book, Katherine Marshall Woods looks at Black cinema from a psychological and […]

Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center 2025 Virtual Fall Conference The Austen Riggs Center invites you to join an interdisciplinary conference, "Rebuilding Trust in Institutions: Bridging Generational Insights.” This gathering expands Erik Erikson’s foundational insights on basic trust and mistrust, extending them into today's complex social and institutional landscapes.

Presented by Beverly Simmons, PhD, LCSW

APsA's Candidates' Council Online Seminar: Instructor: Bonnie J. Buchele, Ph.D., ABBP, DFAGPA This seminar will focus on the relationship between fashion and the frame as it relates to the analysand, the analyst and the process.  Dr. Buchele will give a brief review of the literature and speak of her relationship with fashion as well as the role it […]

Join Dr. Lawrence Hedges, Ph.D., Psy.D., ABPP for The Unfinished Copernican Revolution: An Introduction to the Work of Jean Laplanche, a thought-provoking salon exploring how Freud’s “four insults to human narcissism” continue to shape our understanding of the human psyche. Drawing on Laplanche’s revolutionary ideas about the unconscious, seduction, and the influence of “otherness,” Dr. […]

The conference will be divided between exploring four different psychoanalytic models and their relevance to the treatment of major primitive psychopathologies. Dr. Panajian will discuss Freud’s understanding of two principles of mental functioning, thinking, negation, disavowal, and delusions as an attempt to recover psychic functioning. Klien’s paranoid schizoid position, depressive position, manic and obsessive defenses […]

This seminar will present basic tenets of theory and practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, including a consideration of the differences between the two. The first half of the seminar will include fundamental psychoanalytic and psychodynamic concepts, as well as psychoanalytic models of the mind, of development, and of technique. The second half of the seminar […]

Dr. Stark’s therapeutic approach to working through neurotic conflictedness, “Conflict Statements: Leveraging the Patient’s Anxiety to Incentivize Transformation and Growth”

This conference will feature Peter Fonagy, PhD, and Ed Tronick, PhD — distinguished researchers and scholars who have had long academic careers studying and theorizing about the clinical processes that contribute to human growth and therapeutic change. The clinical processes in the psychoanalytic treatment of adult patients have long been viewed as sharing similarities with […]

Join Dr. Holly Han and Dr. Shirley Liao for a five-week, psychoanalytically-informed group exploring the text Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation by David L Eng and Shinhee Han (2019). Together, we will reflect on the social and psychic dimensions of racial identity and belonging in the lives of Asian Americans.

Selma Fraiberg and colleagues’ seminal article, “Ghosts in the Nursery,” brought our attention to the infant-parent relationship and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Since the publication of the article in 1975, infant observations and empirical studies have continued to elucidate the developmental consequences of the parent-child relationship and implications for adult treatment. In Part II […]

Kathryn Zerbe, MD will discuss how hearing secrets is an often-overlooked yet critical aspect of clinical practice, necessitating that therapists understand the ethical complications and potential for powerful, unanticipated reactions that can arise from these disclosures in order to better assist their patients and themselves. CE

The Morris Eagle Psychoanalytic Research Lecture is an annual NCP Lecture in honor of the career and contributions of Morris Eagle. Introducing the Revised Standard Edition of Freud’s Psychological Works: 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 […]

Psychoanalysis Creativity and the Arts: Session 1 of 3: “Lo creativo y lo vital” Presented by Alfredo Panceira, MD, Jani Santamaria, PhD, Ariel Liberman, PhD, and Rosa Aurora Chavez, MD, PhD, FABP Saturday, October 4, 2025 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm (2 CME/CE) Presentation and Discussion via Zoom *This first session will be conducted in […]

DEWALD LECTURE: The New Other: A.I. What have we created, and why? (Amy Levy, PsyD) Humanity has engineered a new Other. Sometimes referred to as “alien intelligence,” AI technology has the capability to think about our minds, communicate with us at conscious and unconscious levels, and act as a new “container” for human psychic life. […]

Humanity has engineered a new Other. Sometimes referred to as “alien intelligence,” AI technology has the capability to think about our minds, communicate with us at conscious and unconscious levels, and act as a new “container” for human psychic life. From a psychoanalytic perspective, AI is our symptom. What does it reflect about humanity? Our […]

LGBTQ+ Workshop Please join us as Sien Rivera, MD and Justin Shubert, PsyD, PhD present Monstrousness and Aliveness: Engaging Gender in Psychoanalysis Sunday, October 5, 2025 Public Session: 1:00 – 4:00 pm Presentation and Discussion Via Zoom Presentation: This workshop seeks to explore a range of engagements with gender in the psychoanalytic encounter. One portion […]

This paper takes up the clinical challenges of working with patients for whom the repetitive pursuit of intense, erotic relationships both expresses and conceals yearnings to be and belong. While sexual experiences can elicit core fantasies of transformation, awareness of the very otherness that offers such promise also threatens a fragile self and is thus […]

Psychoanalytic clinicians often encounter the complexities of erotic transference and countertransference, yet struggle with conceptual frameworks and language that adequately capture these intense, often ambiguous experiences. Traditional models can obscure the subtle intersubjective and developmental meanings of erotic material, resulting in impasses or missed therapeutic opportunities. This presentation aims to expand clinicians’ capacity to think […]

Speaker Linda Horrell, MDiv, MSW, LCSW. This course is for anyone curious about child development and for experienced psychotherapists who are interested in the psychoanalytic insights into the dreams of children and adolescents. We will have fun discussing the animation, Dream Productions, a Pixar-created mini-series from the creators of Inside Out.

Presented by: Elizabeth Danze, FAIA This presentation examines the concept of resilience in both architecture and human experience through the shared metaphor of the palimpsest—a form that retains traces of its past while adapting to the present. Drawing on Vitruvius’s notion of firmitas and extending it through the study of buildings, we explore how architecture […]

THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (2024) written, co-produced and directed by Mohammad Rasoulof won them Special Jury Prize of 2024 Cannes Int’l Film Festival. The film centers on a family thrust into the public eye when the father is appointed as an investigating judge in Tehran, as political unrest erupts in the streets. When […]