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Find Your Community
With many sessions and events at the National Meeting there is something for everyone. We’ve gathered here some of the social events and gatherings happening that are of broad interest to the community. Keep reading to find an event of interest to you!
Events on Monday, February 1
First Time Attendee Gathering
Monday, February 1, 2027 | 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
For those attending the meetings for the very first time join APsA staff, Executive Committee members and other first timers at this informal cocktail party. Our goal is for you to meet leadership, staff, and other attendees so you’ll recognize familiar faces throughout the rest of the meeting week! Explore other information for First Time Attendees.
Register for this event when you sign up for the meeting sessions.
Events on Tuesday, February 2
Ticho Breakfast
Tuesday, February 2, 2027
7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Information will be posted when available. **Awaiting information**
Plenary- Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D.
Tuesday, February 2, 2027
9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Saving Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapies are facing devaluation from corporate interests, from mistaken assumptions that there is no evidence supporting psychoanalytic treatments, from the characterization of Sigmund Freud as a cocaine-addled misogynist, and from political and generational stresses within psychoanalytic organizations. As analytic supervisors age out of medical schools and graduate programs, students are losing access to psychoanalytic ways to think about patients. Yet there is a growing interest in psychoanalysis among clinicians trained in other perspectives and among scholars of sociocultural privilege, power, and trauma – areas that neither biological psychiatry nor cognitive psychology illuminate adequately. Dr. McWilliams will focus on factors that have undermined the standing of psychoanalysis and will suggest ways to preserve and expand psychoanalytic thought and practice in the contemporary environment.
Events on Wednesday, February 3
Yoga
Wednesday, February 3, 2027
7:00 a.m. – 7:45 a.m.
Start your day with yoga on both Wednesday and Thursday. APsA is happy to welcome back yoga teacher Elizabeth Manne, RYT500.
Elizabeth has a long history with APsA: she served as Executive Director of the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis, led the online stretching session during APsA’s first virtual meeting during COVID, and taught the in-person yoga classes the past two years. We’re thrilled to have her back to teach two morning sessions in 2027.
Bring your mat and a water bottle. A limited number of yoga mats will be available.
Breakfast Gathering for Candidate Members
Wednesday, February 3, 2027
7:45 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Join colleagues from around the country for breakfast. All are welcome to stay for the Candidates’ Council meeting following breakfast.
International Dinner
Wednesday, February 3, 2027
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Information will be posted when available. **Awaiting information**
Psychotherapy Department and Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN) Information & Networking Event
Wednesday, February 3, 2027
7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Venue: Edgar Restaurant – Tolson Room of the Mayflower Hotel
Would you like to learn more about APsA’s Psychotherapy Department and Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN)? Join us at APsA’s 2027 National Meeting in Washington, DC, for an evening of cocktails and conversation. Light appetizers will be served, and each guest will receive two complimentary drinks.
All are welcome! This informal gathering is an opportunity to meet members of APsA’s Psychotherapy Department and Psychotherapist Committee, learn more about the benefits of APsA’s Psychotherapist Clinical Membership, and connect with PsiAN, the national advocacy organization championing access to psychotherapy and the clinical standards that sustain it.
RSVP by January 15, 2027. Click Here to register.
Moonlight Monument and Museum Tour
Wednesday, February 3, 2027
8:30 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.
$65 per person
Curious about the state of the White House, the Kennedy Center, the Reflecting Pool, and the “Arch” amid Washington’s ever-changing landscape? Join us for a private nighttime tour of our nation’s monuments, illuminated after dark!
Travel in a comfortable luxury coach with a professional guide, accompanied by art historical, architectural, and psychoanalytic commentary and discussion. We’ll explore monumental tributes to iconic presidents, consider how monuments facilitate communal mourning and memorialization, admire the beauty of the museums along the National Mall, and enjoy the U.S. Capitol in all its stately, peaceful splendor.
Enjoy an illuminating evening of beauty, history, and lively conversation in our nation’s capital!
Pickup and return at the Mayflower Hotel. It couldn’t be easier!
$65 per person, including beverages, dessert, and great camaraderie.
Events on Thursday, February 4
Yoga
Thursday, February 4, 2027
7:00 a.m. – 7:45 a.m.
Join your colleagues for our second morning of yoga with Elizabeth Manne, RYT500.
Bring your mat and a water bottle. A limited number of yoga mats will be available.
Poster Session
Poster presenters will have the opportunity to discuss their research with interested attendees during the Poster Session taking place during APsA’s 2027 National Meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C.
The Poster Session takes place on Thursday, February 4, 2027 from 10:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
For more information about the Poster Session, including submitting a proposal, visit the Poster Session webpage.
Poster Session Co-Chairs:
John Porcerelli, Ph.D., ABPP
Email: [email protected]
Eric Fertuck, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Grieving Together
6:45 p.m. – 7:45 p.m.
In this event, space and time will be opened for shared acknowledgment of multiple losses experienced in our community on all levels. We believe that engaging in this activity together strengthens our capacity to mourn and come together in shared recognition of losses that we are aware of and not aware of. Through the use of reflective time, poetry and mutual sharing we want to recognize the impact of losses due to deaths over the course of the year, resignations over the past several years, the nature of national and world events and the task of holding our patients and our own personal losses with the potential to realize more as we share together in community.
Joint Candidates’ Council/IPSO Winter Party
7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
There is no cost to attend. However, registration is required, and space is limited, so be sure to reserve your spot!
Please note: This event is for current APsA/IPSO Psychoanalytic Candidates only.
Venue: City Tap House
1250 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC
Current APsA/IPSO Psychoanalytic Candidates are invited to the annual Joint Candidates’ Council/IPSO Winter Party!
Join us for an evening of great food, drinks, music, and the opportunity to make new connections or catch up with friends and colleagues from across the country and around the world.
Questions: Iraira Butcher, Psy.D. [email protected]
Events on Friday, February 5
Plenary- Dionne R. Powell, M.D.
Friday, February 5, 2027
4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Ghosts in the Institutions: Psychoanalytic Education In a Raced World
A critical gap exists in psychoanalytic education regarding how systemic racism, institutional structures, and unconscious resistances impede the field’s transmission and evolution. Educators often conflate diverse training standards with a deflation of clinical rigor, reinforcing exclusionary practices illuminated by the Holmes Commission. Furthermore, a lack of non-hierarchical, culturally humble approaches leaves training systems ill-equipped to integrate the diversities of current psychoanalytic/psychotherapy candidates/trainees with the modernity of AI and virtual treatments. Of particular educational and clinical interest is to return to the origin story of psychoanalysis, founded in the biopsychosocial model, as a discursive enterprise that disrupts the frame by confronting internal resistances to exploring our raced selves, securing an immersive, rigorous, and sustainable structure for the future of psychoanalytic education, analytic identity and the profession.
After attending this session, learners will be able to: 1) Analyze how internal resistance to including the “raced other” stems from childhood-transmitted, devalued self-projections that are sustained by familial and institutional ties rather than the externalized other; 2) Integrate the biopsychosocial model and the Holmes Commission recommendations into a comprehensive re-imagining of immersive, psychoanalytic/psychotherapy training/education and transmission.
An Evening of Dinner and Dance
Friday, February 5
8:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.
$xx per person
Information will be posted when available. **Awaiting information**