New Center for Psychoanalysis

Michael J. Diamond, PhD, FIPA In this two-hour presentation, Dr. Diamond will examine larger social and cultural factors at play during today’s perilous times. He describes destructive populism and group regression as exemplified by malignant cult-like elements. The current political discourse. Using both a psychoanalytic and a cultural lens, he analyzes the development of paranoid, […]

Free Angela and All the Political Prisoners (Shola Lynch, 2013) 1 hr 42 min. Contemporary psychoanalysis as a field is struggling to make sense of racism and culturally imposed trauma. The final report of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis was published this past June. In discussing this 2013 documentary, the NCP […]

Directed by Kelly Freeman Craig, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (2023) is a film adaptation of the Judy Blume young-adult novel. Social, biological, and (to a much smaller extent) identity issues of puberty’s early edge are presented with charming verisimilitude (and earned a 99% positive rating on RottenTomatoes.com). In our discussion we will […]

This is a continuation of NCP's Manifest Mind Series. As psychedelic medicine moves toward wide clinical implementation, psychoanalysts are establishing a specialized set of roles and methods separate from other psychotherapists. The value of psychedelic medicine in psychodynamic care has been extensively documented in the past decade, corroborating published clinical experience in the earlier LSD […]

Bruce Fink joins NCP to discuss Lacan’s Clinical Theory"Analysts on the whole imagine that to understand is an end in itself... To think, it is often better not to understand; and one can gallop along, understanding for miles and miles, without the slightest thought being produced.” - Lacan, 1958 This meeting is designed for analytically […]

Past Lives (2023, 2hr, 23 min) written and directed by Celine Song. The film follows the line of connection/disconnection over 24 years of a Korean boy and girl who are separated when her family moves to Canada. From the opening moments, we wonder how that friendship will affect her American marriage, which we are shown […]

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 […]

Going Deeper Into Transference-Focused Psychotherapy: Details of the Diagnostic and Contracting Processes and Their Crucial Role Throughout the Therapy This live, online only, interactive two-day program with Master TFP Clinician Frank Yeomans, MD. PhD offers a refresher of basic TFP techniques and a sharp focus on the diagnostic phase of treatment with implementation of the […]

Cinematic masterpiece Saltburn, (2023) directed by Academy Award winning Emerald Ferrell, is a fascinating study in perverse autonomy. Barry Keoghan stars in the psychological drama Saltburn from which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. Keoghan plays Oliver Quick, a bright, young, brooding social outcast who lands at Oxford and is quickly drawn to […]

The Headless Woman is a 2008 Argentine psychological thriller art film written and directed by Lucrecia Martel and starring María Onetto. After hitting something with her car, a bourgeois woman’s life slowly descends into paranoia and isolation, as she fears she may have killed someone. Not well-known to American movie-goers, Martel is "arguably the most […]

Mark Solms, neuroscientist and psychoanalyst, has substantially altered contemporary understanding of both Consciousness and Self-Experience. Solms is a clear and personable writer, but his understanding draws on science largely unfamiliar to psychotherapists. In preparation for his appearance at next Spring’s NCP Manifest Mind conference, we are offering an introductory course (5 monthly sessions over Zoom) […]

Dismayed by the fragmentation haunting the psychoanalytic project for more than a century, Dr. Karbelnig has proposed an overarching clinical model for psychoanalysis. The approach intends to unify practitioners using Freudian, Jungian, Kleinian, Self-Psychological, Relational, or any psychodynamic approach. The presentation expands upon his February 2022 paper, "Chasing Infinity: Why Clinical Psychoanalysis' Future Lies in […]

A Psychoanalytic Town Hall: Controversial Issues in the 2024 Presidential Election Panel of Psychoanalysts: Michael Diamond, PhD, David James Fisher, PhD, Mark Fisher, MD, Debra Myers, MD, Peter Wolson, PhD Town Hall Moderator: Peter Wolson, PhD On the cusp of this hotly contested presidential elections with radical differences between the party platforms and candidates and […]

Asteroid City (2023) has been described by writer-director Wes Anderson as a“poetic meditation on the meaning of life”. Set in the 1950’s, Asteroid City is a young girl’s coming-of-age story that deviates from one simple narrative line. Asteroid City leaves the comfortable and familiar setting of a summer camp/and opens up to a line of […]