American Psychoanalytic Association

Connections and Conversation: Belonging and its Discontents – Eyal Rozmarin Ph.D.
2024-04-06 12:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Free zoom event Eyal Rozmarin, Ph.D: For a long time, I have been interested in the relations between individuals and collectives: the groups they are, and feel, part of; the groups they identify with, and in the act of identifying, becoming who they are. In other words, I’ve been interested in belonging: in how we are forced and-or choose belong, and in what the power-desire knots of belonging do to us. The paper I will be presenting is about my own difficult belonging with the warring collectives that lay claims to the territory I was born in, a territory known by the already revealing dual name: Israel-Palestine. The difficulty was there from the start, but it has been increasing. It has become a permanent identity crisis. The state of exception Walter Benjamin speaks of is now the rule. It is how I feel my very own self now. I believe that many of us are going through something similar in these times of wars of extinction in the Middle East and Europe, and arguably the entire planet: who do we belong with, which also means who we are. I hope my paper could serve as a springboard for us to to think together about the life and death paradoxes of belonging, and how we might address them going forward.

Loathing What We Desire: Clinical Manifestations of Kristeva’s Abject
2024-04-05 19:00 - 21:00 | Hybrid (Rockland – East Fairmount Park 3810 Mt Pleasant Dr. Philadelphia, PA & via Zoom), 3810 Mt Pleasant Dr, Philadelphia, PA, 19121, United States
Following a two-year personally driven immersive odyssey into the works of French Psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, Nancy M. Kulish, PhD has arrived at a particular understanding of the concept of the abject. Dr. Kulish will guide us on her journey to show us a new way to understand the way the very early conflictual engagement between mother and infant can shape the development of one’s subjective sense of the female body. Specifically, she will discuss the nature of the abject: the abject pertains to the developmental moment when the infant first separates from the mother, and it is in this moment when feelings of desire and fear directed toward the ‘feminine’ or maternal body are born. Dr. Kulish will discuss how the qualitative nature of this early experience can lead to the development of misogyny, both in men who simultaneously loathe and desire the female body and in women who harbor hatred toward themselves and their female bodies. Dr. Kulish will discuss case material to illustrate this concept.
CE Credit.

Where Is Psychoanalysis in the Psychotherapy Jungle?
2024-04-05 12:30 - 14:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Presenter: Jon G. Allen, PhD
Description: After its dominance in American psychotherapy in the first half of the twentieth century, psychoanalysis was marginalized in the healthcare system in the latter part of the century. This marginalization resulted from the confluence of academic scientism and tailoring of psychotherapies to DSM diagnoses in psychiatry.

Andrea Celenza: Embodied Countertransference
2024-04-05 09:00 - 11:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Andrea Celenza presents in our ongoing videoconference series on The Erotic in Psychoanalysis.
2 CEs $60

Case Presentation: A Seemingly Impossible Couple by Olga Khokhlova with James Poulton, discussant
2024-04-03 09:45 - 11:45 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Olga Khokhlova presents a clinical case with James Poulton as discussant in our ongoing Family and Couple therapy videoconference series.
2 CEs $60

Zoom (Explo) course - Adult Development: Growth in Theory, in the Consulting Room, and in the Historical Moment
2024-04-02 19:30 - 21:30 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This is a concise and accessible 5-session introduction to theories of adult development, featuring literary and historical case studies. In weekly meetings we’ll read Carol Gilligan, Erik Erikson, and Usha Tummala-Narra on processes of change in the context of social justice. In tandem we’ll read a new graphic memoir of adolescence by a Korean-American artist-writer (Deb JJ Lee, In Limbo); study how the poet Allen Ginzburg used a psychiatric hospitalization at Columbia University in his 20s; and consider how the middle-aged Mohandas Gandhi helped decolonize the British Empire. All are welcome!

Psychedelics in an Age of Freud and Pharmacology: What Happened Before, What is Happening Now, Why it Matters
2024-03-29 18:30 - 20:00 | Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center, 2460 Fairmount Blvd #312, Cleveland, OH, 44106, United States
Presenter: Anne Harrington, Ph.D.
In the 1940s, the drug company Sandoz sponsored a study of LSD at the University of Zurich which came to the conclusion that this was a drug that made normal people temporarily schizophrenic. Sandoz subsequently decided to promote LSD as a research drug for experimental investigations of schizophrenia, and especially its possible biochemical basis. But, somewhat confusingly, the company also did something else: they suggested that the psychoanalysts also take a look at the drug, because there was evidence that it gave people access to the unconscious contents of their minds and could sometimes be therapeutic.
So which was it: a path to madness or a path to health? A drug for the biologists to study, or a tool for the psychoanalysts to employ? In this seminar, I will track the contradictions and ambiguities structuring mid-20th-century clinical conversations about the meaning and uses of psychedelics. An important goal will be to identify the legacies and unfinished business from that earlier era and show the ways some of them, perhaps unconsciously, are shaping current efforts and conversations.
CE Credits.

Dreaming of an Inclusive Psychoanalysis
2024-03-27 14:00 - 17:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Presented in partnership with Casa de Salud’s Mental Health Collaborative with Patricia Gherovici, PhD; Harold Braswell, MSW, PhD
and Juliana Varela, LCSW.
Patricia Gherovici will compare two films documenting actual cures that push the boundaries of traditional psychoanalysis with two maverick psychoanalysts: Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, a 2013 French film by Arnaud Desplechin and Adieu Lacan a 2022 film by Richard Ledes. We will see how classical psychoanalytic concepts can open up to absorb radically different cultural modes: Blackfoot myth, AfroBrazilian legend, and Arabic narratives.

The Untold Story of Sabina Spielrein: Healed and Haunted by Love
2024-03-23 14:00 - 16:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
The unpublished Russian diary and letters of Sabina Spielrein represent a milestone for academics, scholars, historians, and psychoanalysts whose interest in the most enigmatic woman to have pioneered psychoanalysis and developmental psychology in the first part of the 20th century has never ceased to grow after she was rediscovered in the mid-1970s. These Primary sources, which include unreleased drawings and notes, were patiently exhumed and translated by Lothane from New York to Russia and across Europe over two decades, with the collaboration of Spielrein’s grandnephew, Vladimir Shpilrain.

Saturday Salon: Tending The Unborn
2024-03-23 13:00 - 16:10 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This is the chronical of a journey taken by patient and therapist into the black abyss of insanity, formlessness, and desperation. This is the story of how the analyst “found” his patient, and how she became psychologically born.
This course is taught by Dr. David Wayne.
CE Credits

Morris Eagle Lectures - Recognition and Disturbances of Recognition in Infant Research and Adult Treatment: Contributions of Video Microanalysis
2024-03-23 12:00 - 16:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
NCP Presents the Morris Eagle Psychoanalytic Research Lectures: Honoring the life and work of distinguished member Morris Eagle.
This event honors Morris N. Eagle, PhD, a renowned psychologist and psychoanalyst who has significantly contributed to our understanding of human behavior and the therapeutic process. He is a professor emeritus of the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University and a former president of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. Eagle has published numerous books and articles on a wide range of psychoanalytic topics, and he is considered one of the leading authorities on ego psychology and attachment theory. Here are some of his most notable accomplishments:
Developed a revised and expanded ego psychology that provides a strong foundation for a unified psychoanalytic theory.
Emphasized the importance of empathy and the process of working through empathic failures in therapeutic action.
Integrated attachment theory into psychoanalytic theory and practice.
Authored numerous books and articles that have made significant contributions to the field of psychoanalysis.
Dr. Eagle’s work has been highly influential, and he is widely respected by his colleagues. He is a recipient of the Sigourney Award for lifetime contribution to psychoanalysis and the New York Attachment Consortium Award for contribution to the interface between attachment theory and psychoanalysis.
Speakers include: NYU Professor and author Jerome Wakefield; Editor-in-Chief of the journal Psychoanalytic Psychology, Chris Christian, PhD.
In addition to honoring Dr. Eagle, we will also honor and present an award to Dr. Beatrice Beebe.
For this lecture, Dr. Beatrice Beebe will present “Recognition and Disturbances of Recognition in Infant Research and Adult Treatment: Contributions of Video Microanalysis.”
Beatrice Beebe will discuss her revolutionary contributions to psychoanalytic understanding and treatment. Her work explores the early recognition process from birth: infants perceive the similarity of expressions and gestures in the parent, and they can imitate. Her research uses video microanalysis of 4-month infant-mother face-to-face interaction to predict 12-month attachment, in which they identified 4-month disturbances of maternal recognition, particularly at moments of infant distress, in dyads where the infant was classified as disorganized (versus secure) attachment at one year. The video studies will illustrate sensitive maternal recognition of infant distress vs. disturbances in this key process. This work is used to describe nonverbal aspects of the recognition process in adult treatment, also through video microanalysis.
CE credits

Psychoanalytic Frame – a Straight Jacket or a Safe Playground?
2024-03-23 11:45 - 13:15 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Questions about the psychoanalytic frame will be discussed during the talk; clinical vignettes will be used to illustrate the points addressed.
CE credit.

Leora Benioff, Ph.D.: Projection, Otherness, Difference: A Contemporary Approach to Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy
2024-03-22 21:00 - 22:30 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Leora Benioff, PhD, is a psychoanalyst and couple therapist based in Berkeley, California. This presentation will examine contemporary methods in psychoanalytic couples therapy, with a special focus on the approach developed by the Tavistock Clinic, as well as modern Bionian and object relations techniques. It may also explore additional theories, including link theory and attachment theory. To illustrate these approaches, clinical vignettes will be shared and analyzed during the discussion.
CE credit.

The Unseen: Breaking Barriers and Building Bridges in Psychoanalysis: Community Psychoanalysis into the Future
2024-03-17 11:00 - 16:00, 2024-03-16 11:00 - 17:30 | University Club, Washington, DC and Virtual
2-Day Conference – *Early-bird Registration Ends February 1, 2024*
Presenters: Francisco J. González, MD; Kimberlyn Leary; PhD, ABPP; Daniel Gaztambide, PsyD; Paula Christian-Kliger, PhD, ABPP
Our world is on fire! Global crises necessitate a proactive response from psychoanalysts and psychodynamic therapists. The wars around the world, COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis, mass displacement of refugees, economic and political turbulence and historical racial injustices, challenge us to leverage our expertise, resources, and ethical responsibilities for the betterment of society.
In this two-day conference, featured speakers will explore the intersection of the personal and social unconscious, and how psychoanalysts must engage with the socio-political world. The conference will offer a liminal space for participants to immerse themselves in dialogue about contemporary society. A short-film “We Are Human First,” will serve as a catalyst for deeper conversations about psychoanalytic applications beyond the consulting room. Through small and large group experiences, participants will have opportunities to share reflections in a reciprocal learning environment. We will delve into theoretical discourse and clinical material with the aim of legitimizing community psychoanalysis as a vital component of psychoanalytic institutional training.
APsA Department of Psychoanalytic Education: Psychoanalyst in the Community Section
Cosponsors: Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, Contemporary Freudian Society, Harlem Family Institute, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, Oregon Psychoanalytic Center, Community Psychoanalysis Track at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis.
10 CE credits (Cultural Competence credits)

An Unlived Life: Finding Hope In Complex Trauma (ICP-LA Open House)
2024-03-16 17:00 - 20:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Join us for a live case presentation and discussion that will highlight the diversity of contemporary relational psychoanalytic approaches to clinical work available within the training programs at ICP.
Candidate, Mia Goldman, MA, LMFT will present an evocative case of trying to find hope with a patient struggling with the impact of chronic and complex developmental trauma. ICP members Estelle Shane, Ph.D.; Leena Chaugule, Psy.D., FRANZCP, MBBS; and William J. Coburn, Ph.D., PsyD. will provide commentary on the case and engage in a discussion of Mia’s case material. Audience members will also have the opportunity to discuss and ask questions about the case.
Following the program, you will have the opportunity to meet our instructors, candidates and members and to hear about ICP’s unique training opportunities in psychoanalysis. You will experience why ICP and its members are leaders in the psychoanalytic community as respected educators, scholars, clinicians, and clinical supervisors. We hope that you will be inspired by our rich and dynamic display of some of the offerings the ICP.

Film and Mind Online: Joyland
2024-03-15 23:00 - 2024-03-16 00:30 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Joyland (2022, 2 hr 1 min, from Pakistan) is a romantic tragedy written, directed and co-edited by Saim Sadiq. Beyond the plot line, the film shows what happens to “self” when societal roles prevent individuals from realizing identities. As a family drama, Joyland raises the deeper identity problem of self-obliteration when the self isn’t seen by parental eyes. Joyland is an engaging but challenging film, bringing new perspective to issues of “third gender.”
Learning Objectives
As a result of attending this session, participants should be able to:
Identify ways in which patriarchal expectations result in the stifling of characters’ vision for their life and consequently lead to unrealized potential
Apply understanding of the multilayered psychodynamic impact of colonialism and criminalization on the “third gender” community in Pakistan in psychotherapy with their U.S.-based transgender patients and clients
Discuss the developmental cost of “emotional enslavement to a self-object” as presented in Joyland when experienced by patients/clients
Joshua C. Richmond, MPW, is a vested member of the Writers Guild of America West and has written for film and television for over twenty years, writing scripts for Ron Howard, Universal, Disney etc., and has created TV shows for Fox and Disney. Currently he teaches screenwriting and sitcom writing at Cal State Fullerton and is a psychoanalytic studies candidate at the New Center for Psychoanalysis.
Manal Khan, MD, is a pediatric and adult psychiatrist at UCLA. Dr. Khan completed her residency training in general psychiatry at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she served as the chief resident of recruitment and wellness. She then completed her child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at UCLA and served as the inaugural justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion child psychiatry chief. After completing training, she joined UCLA as faculty and now serves as the Associate Program Director for the child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship.
CE credits.

When Secrets Emerge: Uncanny Impact in Analysis and Therapy on the Clinician’s Body & Mind
2024-03-15 19:00 - 21:00 | Hybrid (Rockland – East Fairmount Park 3810 Mt Pleasant Dr. Philadelphia, PA & via Zoom), 3810 Mt Pleasant Dr, Philadelphia, PA, 19121, United States
Listening to secrets is part of the everyday work of a psychodynamic clinician. Despite its importance, this topic has not received extensive attention in the analytic literature. The impact on the clinician in unexpected emotional and physical ways deserves greater scrutiny than has generally occurred in training. It can be experienced as uncanny and disturbing. This lecture describes how guilt and shame, no-entry defenses, and somatic countertransference reactions take root when ‘what has been hidden, but in plain sight’ emerges seemingly out of the blue in analysis or psychotherapy. Countertransference reactivity of the therapist when treating patients who keep secrets and the role this plays in the development of dissociated somatic reactivity and burnout will be demonstrated in clinical examples of patients with eating disorders, addictions, life transitions, and bereavement. Emphasis will be placed on how to attend to the therapist’s self-care needs and how to enhance resilience as secrets emerge, are contained, and worked through in the therapeutic dialogue.
CE Credits

Increasing Adaptive Racial Socialization for Black Boys: A Culturally Competent Psychodynamic Analysis
2024-03-14 20:30 - 22:30 | Hybrid (In-Person and Virtual)
Presented by Huey Hawkins Jr., PhD, LCSW.
Black men living in America have been designated as an “endangered species” for a variety of reasons, namely the targeting and violence done to young Black men by police. Such experiences leave the parents of young Black boys to worry on a constant basis about the safety of their sons. Few scholars, however, have examined the unconscious effects of such worry on the young Black child’s experience of the holding environment and the subsequent identifications that inform his sense of self in relation to others.
Inspired by a recent qualitative research study, this program explores the implicit and explicit psychological effects of cultural trauma. It aims to prepare the clinician: (1) to understand normative psychological experiences of racism for Black boys; (2) to cultivate a positive racial identity for Black boys; and (3) to teach Black boys ways to navigate safety in harmful racist environments.

Elizabeth Palacios: Interventions with Families in Need
2024-03-13 09:45 - 11:45 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Elizabeth Palacios presents in our ongoing couple and family videoconference series.
2 CEs $60

Connections and Conversation: Analytic Love, Self-Compassion and the Growth of Internal Secure Attachment – Daniel Shaw, LCSW
2024-03-09 13:00 - 14:30 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Free zoom event with Daniel Shaw, LCSW: Contemporary relational psychoanalytic theories have emphasized the therapeutic action of both empathy and mutuality. Trauma theories build on the establishment of relational safety and trust to focus on promoting the patient’s self-reflection and self-regulation skills, and the development of self-compassion in the service of healing self-alienation. The author discusses his integration of both approaches and resultant shifts in his clinical work.

Revisiting Soul Murder with Paul Williams, PhD
2024-03-09 12:00 - 16:00 | Hybrid (In-Person and Virtual)
Soul Murder is a crime, not a diagnosis, Leonard Shengold argues. It comprises a particularly toxic combination of chronic abuse (sexual, physical or emotional), and extreme neglect of a child’s healthy developmental needs. In this presentation, the history of soul murder will be considered together with clinical accounts and examples from literature. It will be proposed that the soul murderer is continually murdering themselves, and imposes on the infant this identification with a murderous internal part-object. So powerful is the projective identification and the introjection that the child yields their true self to a form of death by brainwashing. Less dramatic but similarly debilitating versions of this can occur in perverse relationships in which sadism is a feature. Rehabilitation of a soul murdered individual requires acceptance and recognition of murder, the absence of a true self and the growth of a self from ashes. This clinical picture provides analysts with an unusual set of circumstances, which may or may not include psychosis, but will reveal trauma at multiple levels of experience. How to think about, and modify analytic technique, particularly in the countertransference, in order to listen to a soul murdered person, will be emphasized.

Steven Stern, PsyD. “Needed Relationships: A Complexity-Based Organizing Principle”
2024-03-09 12:00 - 14:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Psychoanalytic theories are needed to sense, understand and connect with our patients but they can limit the analyst’s participation in terms of theoretical and technical categories. Using his concept of needed relationships, Dr. Stern offers a more holistic view of the analyst-patient relationship in all its therapeutic complexity. He invites the therapist to work creatively within the evolving therapeutic space with each patient.

Nancy McWilliams, PhD and Michael Garrett, MD Spring 2024 Scientific Conference
2024-03-09 10:00 - 17:00 | Hybrid (In-Person and Virtual)
Dr. McWilliams will present “Vital Signs of Clinical Progress and Psychological Wellness” in the morning session and Dr. Garrett will present “Disguised Memories of Traumatic Experiences in Childhood and Adolescence that Appear in Psychotic Symptoms” in the afternoon session.
CE Credits

I Want it All and I Want it Now
2024-03-08 12:30 - 14:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Presenter: Denia Barrett, LCSW
Description: This presentation will illustrate analytic work with a patient during late latency and prepuberty, followed by periods of psychotherapy in mid- and late- adolescence/emerging adulthood. Old problems find new solutions as development unfolds; exploring gender is one area that may lead to unpredicted outcomes.

Jonathan Slavin: The Innocence of Sexuality
2024-03-08 09:00 - 11:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Jonathan Slavin presents as part of our ongoing videoconference series on The Erotic in Psychoanalysis.
2 CEs $60

Evening Presentation - Understanding and Treating Adult Onset Trauma
2024-03-07 20:30 - 22:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
When catastrophic events overtake adult lives, they can often scar the psyche in ways that psychodynamic clinicians struggle to understand. The adult survivor of a catastrophe–whether a life-threatening assault, a serious accident, an act of terrorism, or a natural disaster- experiences a near fatal disruption of fundamental aspects of self experience. Many who have physically survived catastrophic trauma are uncertain that they have psychologically survived the ordeal. Integrating recent findings in the neurobiology of stress and developmental psychology with relational psychoanalytic concepts, Ghislaine Boulanger, PhD, shall describe the phenomenology of Adult Onset Trauma and suggest ways in which to work with it.

Writing & Creativity: A Psychoanalytic Retreat
2024-03-06 19:00 - 20:30 | St Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, 7700 Clayton Rd Ste 200, Saint Louis, MO, 63117, United States
Presented by Nikki Karalekas, PhD, MSW, LCSW and Harold Braswell, MSW, PhD.
How do we write psychoanalytically? How does psychoanalysis inform and enhance our writing practice? What role does writing have in clinical work? What is the relationship between writing, revision, and free association? How might we develop a psychoanalytically-informed understanding of—and treatment for—“writer’s block?” This retreat will start with a two hour class exploring these questions. Then we will pre-circulate our own short writing and engage in a process of peer review, attuned to the larger question of what it might mean to workshop writing psychoanalytically.
No previous writing experience required.

The Pastor and The Analyst: Internal Splitting and External Polarization An Interactive Discussion of the Connection between Divided Intrapsychic and External Worlds
2024-03-03 15:00 - 17:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Splitting and Polarization are two common phenomena in the intrapsychic and social world. Yet, in recent years, with heated and polarized divisions in various contexts breaking further apart, the topic is particularly on point. The program will offer participants an environment to explore the emotionally highly charged dynamics of splitting and polarization, which are occurring in American Society, classrooms, religious communities, and the consultation room. Different manifestations of polarization in the world and society relate to internal splitting in therapist and patient, clergy and congregant, teacher, and student. They are often repressed, making them hard to identify and contain. It is one of the goals of this program to discover creative ways for nurturing a Kleinian Depressive Position with enough structure to hold tensions without breaking apart. Ideally, participants will take an enriched sensitivity for these dynamics back into their professional context.
The program will be based on creating a shared definition of splitting as well as polarization, their distinction, and interrelation. Case examples will be welcomed to illustrate specific dynamics of splitting and polarization in individuals, groups, and society. This program is an interdisciplinary invitation into dialogue and mutual learning to all who are interested in exploring the intrapsychic phenomenon of splitting and the social phenomenon of polarization, psychoanalysis, and/or religion, including, but not limited to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, social workers, medical professionals, clergy, and teachers.
CE Credits.

Gender without Identity, Trauma as Resource
2024-03-02 12:00 - 19:30 | Hybrid (In-Person and Virtual)
Presented by Avgi Saketopoulou, Psy.D.
At a time of unprecedented legislative attacks on LGBTQ+ people, with gender-affirming care for trans youth being banned in multiple states, psychoanalysts are increasingly confused about how to approach gender complexity. Is gender a core part of the self that just needs to be discovered and granted recognition? Is it the scar tissue of an individual’s trauma or the outcome of a traumatic intergenerational transmission? And what do its origins have to do with how we work with trans individuals?
Arguing for the importance of abandoning the fiction of “core gender identity”, Saketopoulou urges us to relinquish the fantasy that there is something true or authentic about any gender. Gender, as she will discuss, is something all subjects (not just trans and queer subjects) acquire. Trauma, she proposes, may sometimes have a share in that acquisition. Conceptualizing trauma alongside diverse genders and sexualities is not about invalidating transness and queerness, but about illuminating their textures so that clinical work may enable the flourishing of queer and trans patients.
