• Why Can’t We Want Anything Anymore? Desire, Burnout, Identity, and the Hidden Costs of Modern Life

    Virtual

    Dr. Alison Feit: We are living through a strange cultural moment. People have never had more freedom, more choices, more opportunities for self-expression, or more language for understanding themselves. Yet everywhere we look, people are reporting some version of the same experience: burnout, numbness, indecision, loneliness, endless scrolling, a loss of direction, a loss of […]

  • Dreams on the Couch Pt. 2

    Virtual

    Presented by Dr. Kathleen Fitzgerald, Psy.D., LMFT. This consultation group invites therapists into an ongoing exploration of dreams as living expressions of the unconscious. Drawing from the full arc of psychoanalytic thought, participants will bring clinical material and engage in a collaborative process of listening, reverie, and meaning-making.

  • Integrating Knowing and Being: Toward a Psychoanalytic Identity

    Virtual

    Presented by: Paul Koehler, LCSW & Michelle Pfeifer, LMHP Whether you are an early career clinician or a seasoned analyst this course will help you create and solidify your personal-professional identity. In recent decades there has emerged a strand of psychoanalytic theorizing and practice that distinguishes between what has been designated as the epistemological approach […]

  • Amy Levy, Psy.D. presents “You are my creator, but I am your master” -Exploring the fantasies and realities of Artificial Intelligence

    Virtual

    Scientific Meeting This presentation will be held virtually via Zoom. Register at the host website.  Presentation Summary: As AI systems take up residence in the consulting room, classroom, bedroom, nursery, hospital and battlefield, humanity faces an unprecedented challenge: how do we respond to this new other that is both native inhabitant and intruder? Born of human desires […]

    $20 – $125
  • Psychoanalytic Supervision (Second Section)

    Virtual

    Clinical supervision provides the foundation for ensuring patient care and professional development. This series of 4 classes introduces an approach to supervision that emphasizes developing supervisory alliance, parallel process, working with countertransference, and the supervisor-supervisee dynamic. Both didactic and experiential learning will be equally emphasized. This class is designed for those who supervise graduate students, […]

  • A Consultation Group on Zoom for Psychoanalysts and Psychotherapists

    Virtual

    Shoshana Shapiro Adler, PhD and Anita Schmukler, DO are offering a consultation group for psychotherapists and psychoanalysts who wish to engage in sustained, thoughtful dialogue about clinical work within a psychoanalytic and psychodynamic framework. The group will provide a confidential and collegial setting in which participants may present clinical material and reflect together on the […]

  • Out of Sight, Still in Mind: Intersession Processes and Suicidal Ideation in Psychodynamic Treatment

    Virtual

    2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Mareike Ernst, PhD This presentation introduces the concept of intersession processes—patients’ thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and internalized experiences of therapy and therapist between sessions—and examines their relevance from a contemporary psychodynamic perspective. Drawing on psychodynamic theory and empirical research, the talk will discuss how intersession processes may illuminate clinically meaningful fluctuations […]

  • How We Conceptualize Disability and Why it Matters Clinically

    Virtual

    2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Rhoda Olkin, PhD Clients come to therapy with entrenched ideas about illness, health, and disability. How they conceptualize disability impacts all aspects of therapy, including goals, acceptable interventions, and the therapeutic relationship. These conceptualizations, called Models of Disability in the literature, are one aspect of Disability Affirmative Therapy. The models […]

  • Resolving Therapeutic Dilemmas in Suicidal Clients Using Principles of Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy – Robert J. Gregory, MD

    Virtual

    2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Robert J. Gregory, MD Engaging suicidal clients in treatment and recovery is intense and challenging. Clients may state: “I just want to die”, “Nothing is going to help”, or “If you discharge me, I’m going to kill myself”. Therapists can sometimes feel helpless, hopeless and trapped in the responsibility of […]

  • Links Between Childhood Trauma, Psychosis, the Bayesian Predictive Processing Model of Brain Function, Transference, and the Mind Conceived as a Self-Organizing System – Michael D. Garrett, MD

    Virtual

    2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Michael D. Garrett, MD Research in the last four decades has shown a strong correlation between childhood adversity (e.g., sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional neglect) and psychosis, which recasts chronic psychosis as a trauma-related/stress/related disorder requiring psychotherapy as well as medication. This presentation will describe how psychotic symptoms can be […]

  • Authenticity: An Ethical Core for Clinical Practice

    Virtual

    The ethical codes for mental health professionals are guided by internationally recognized standards centered around core principles: respect for others, competence, integrity, and responsibility to society. Central to these standards is our integrity as a human being, a professional, and a member of society, based on principles of fairness, justice, and respect for difference. These […]

  • Saturday Salon: My Analyst Has Dementia, I Might Need a Donut

    Virtual

    Presented by: Dr. Kathleen Fitzgerald, PsyD, MFT, Training and Supervising Analyst. In this Saturday Salon, Dr. Kathleen Fitzgerald invites participants into an intimate exploration of a 10-year analytic relationship reframed through an unexpected reversal as the analyst’s mind is slowly overtaken by dementia. Through a series of vivid clinical and relational moments, she reflects on […]

  • Xenophobia, War, and the Problem of Social Disorder – George Makari, MD

    Virtual

    Keynote of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Rapaport-Klein Study Group hosted by the Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy of the Austen Riggs Center Speaker: George Makari, MD In Of Fear and Strangers, George Makari, MD, considered how different psychological models – behaviorist, cognitive, phenomenological – accounted for xenophobia, and in the end, […]

  • Reading Group: A People’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation

    Virtual

    Presented by Dr. Holly Han, Psy.D., LMFT & Ivy Zequeira, LMFT. This 6-week course explores psychoanalysis as a living, political, and decolonial practice through Daniel José Gaztambide’s A People’s History of Psychoanalysis. We’ll trace the field from Freud’s early formulations through its entanglement with race, class, and empire, to contemporary liberation psychology and decolonial movements. […]

  • Dreams on the Couch: A Consultation Group for Therapists

    Virtual

    This consultation group presented by Kathleen Fitzgerald, invites therapists into an ongoing exploration of dreams as living expressions of the unconscious. Drawing from the full arc of psychoanalytic thought, participants will bring clinical material and engage in a collaborative process of listening, reverie, and meaning-making. Together, we will explore how dreams emerge within the intersubjective […]

  • A Consultation Group for Therapists: Dreams on the Couch

    Virtual

    Presented by: Dr. Kathleen Fitzgerald, PsyD, MFT, Training and Supervising Analyst. This consultation group invites therapists into an ongoing exploration of dreams as living expressions of the unconscious. Drawing from the full arc of psychoanalytic thought, participants will bring clinical material and engage in a collaborative process of listening, reverie, and meaning-making. Together, we will […]

  • Matrix, Environment, Atmosphere: How Mother Became a Medium

    Virtual

    2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Hannah Zeavin, PhD From the mid-1940s until the 1960s and beyond, class, race, and maternal function were linked in metaphors of temperature in pediatric psychological studies of Bad Mothers. Newly codified diagnoses of aloof “refrigerator mothers” and overstimulating “hot mothers” were inseparable from midcentury conceptions of stimulation, mediation, domesticity, and […]

  • Psychoanalysis and Artificial Intelligence

    Virtual

    Speakers: Todd Essig, Phd and Oscar Hills, MD. Generative AI, especially chatbots, presents psychoanalysis with tremendous promise and significant peril. While some benefit tremendously from their AI relationships, others sink into delusion, and for most they threaten to flatten inner life, externalizing what has always been internal. Plus, so called “therapy-bots” are on the near […]

  • Book Discussion – Risking Intimacy and Creative Transformation in Psychoanalysis

    Virtual

    Presented by: Lauren Levine, PhD Discussion by: Janine de Peyer, LCSW Please join us whether or not you have read the book. Some people want to read and discuss the book; others want to learn more before deciding if they want to read it. All are welcome! In this presentation, Dr. Levine examines the transformative […]

  • Queering Classical Psychoanalytic Concepts Through the Subaltern

    Virtual

    Presented by Tiffany Hale, LMFT & Jamie Steele, LMFT Bring your cases that are outside of normative bounds. We will draw in our well-worn and well-loved analytic concepts to explore clinical material together. If you have found that your thinking, your lived experience and/or that of your patients has not quite been thinkable within analytic […]

  • Psychological Assessment and Access: A Multidisciplinary Population Health Approach – Hadas Pade, PsyD

    Virtual

    2026 Grand Rounds Series Speaker: Hadas Pade, PsyD This session highlights the need to address the current inequitable access to psychological assessment services by acknowledging and embracing different levels of assessment versus a more traditional comprehensive assessment approach, and the potential role of various health care providers other than psychologists. While comprehensive assessments are highly […]

  • Psychoanalytic Freedom and The Loving Gaze

    Virtual

    Presented by: Shir Shanun, PhD Civitarese (2024) writes we have a need to exist in the eyes of others, it is what makes relationships meaningful. Such loving connections and freedom in complex analytic system and the positive relationship between them are at the center of this paper. I will argue that restriction or expansion of […]

  • Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Laplanche Part II – Special Topics

    Virtual

    Presented by Michael Levin Psy.D. This conference will continue exploring aspects of Laplanche's work that we did not have time to cover during the February presentation. It will include a case presentation to facilitate further clinical discussion and learning. Topics covered will include: • Laplanche's view of the metapsychology of psychotic and dissociative disturbances • […]

  • Conference – Clinical and Theoretical Considerations in Telehealth vs. In-person Psychoanalytic Treatments

    Virtual

    Presented by: Arthur Niesser, Dr. Med., Derek Hook, PhD & Leora Trub Discussion by: Todd Essig, PhD This conference will consider some clinical and theoretical considerations in telehealth versus in-person psychoanalytic treatments. Dr. Niesser will explore if there might be groups of patients for whom online analysis might be advantageous compared to the traditional in-person […]

  • Race, Fear, and the American Way

    Virtual

    Speaker: Lisa L. Moore, PhD, LICSW - The deployment of racialized fear as a political strategy has a profound impact on the individuals and communities who are targeted as objects of fear. In our current climate the use of fear as a tool of racialization is an important site for practitioners to consider in their […]

  • Special Presentation – Attuned Treatment of Developmental Trauma Part II: Group Therapy with Chronic Shame and Abject States

    Virtual

    Presented by: Kathleen Adams, PhD Discussion by: Robert Grossmark, PhD In Part II of this two-part special presentation, author Kathleen Adams, PhD, discusses her book Attuned Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Non-abused, High Functioning People Living Outside of Time. Group and individual therapists who frequently encounter patients with characters organized around melancholy, anxiety, entitlement, and rage […]

  • Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Shakespeare’s Hamlet A mini-course presented by James W. Stone

    Virtual

    This mini-course explores Shakespeare’s Hamlet through the lens of psychoanalytic theory, examining the psychological dimensions of the play’s characters, themes, and dramatic structure. Drawing on classical and contemporary psychoanalytic frameworks, the course investigates issues such as mourning and melancholia, repression, desire, family dynamics, and the unconscious motivations that shape Hamlet’s actions. Participants will gain a […]

  • Anthony Bass, PhD

    Virtual

    “Unconscious Communication Between Therapist and Patient: The Ordinary Uncanniness of Everyday Psychoanalytic Life-Back to the Future of Psychoanalysis”

  • Emotional Inheritance as Diagnostic Companion: Love, Loss, and the Legacy of Trauma

    Virtual

    This full-day clinical workshop will delve into the heart of Galit Atlas's work on Emotional Inheritance. Through clinical and theoretical discussions, it will introduce a psychoanalytic model for listening to and working with intergenerational material, family secrets, and the legacy of trauma. The clinical presentation will explore the roles of attachment and the place of […]

  • Special Presentation: Attuned Treatment of Developmental Trauma Part I Non-abused, High-functioning People Living Outside of Time

    Virtual

    Presented by: Kathleen Adams, PhD In Part I of this two-part special presentation, author Kathleen Adams, PhD, discusses her book Attuned Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Non-abused, High Functioning People Living Outside of Time. Many therapists don’t even think of their patients as “trauma patients” despite descriptions of early neglect, abuse, separations and loss, and dysfunctional […]

  • Online Study Group: Exploring Sources of Liminal Data in Psychoanalytic Treatment

    Virtual

    Facilitated by J. Christopher Fowler, PhD & Stuart Weir, PsyD A foundational premise of psychoanalysis is Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and uncovering the meaning of latent content from dreams, parapraxes, and unintentional actions such as forgetting. This 6-week seminar will explore sources of latent (liminal) data from the analysand, as well as the analyst. […]

  • Becoming Raced-Psychic Consequences of Transgenerational Racial Trauma

    Virtual

    Presenter: Dionne R. Powell, MD Yasmin Roberts Memorial Lecture Racism, and otherness, continues to be contentious for psychoanalysts to consider as a psychic phenomenon. Unlike aggression and sexuality, racism is held in silence and resistance, inhibiting exploration of this aspect of mind. By closely examining how and where the analyst/psychotherapist locates themselves racially and working […]

  • Thinking Where We Are Not: Interpellation, Dissociative Enactment, and the Social

    Virtual

    Presented by: Donnel Stern, PhD In the interest of integrating the social and the individual in psychoanalysis, Dr. Stern examines the relation of Althusser’s concept of interpellation and the psychoanalytic idea of dissociative enactment. Interpellation is a way of conceptualizing the creation of subjectivity via individual participation in the ideological tropes of power. Dissociative enactment […]

  • Tender Mercies: Introducing Memoir in Prison Settings

    Virtual

    This 5 week course, taught by Gretchen Hermes, MD, PhD, offers an exploration of memoir writing as a therapeutic tool within prison settings. Through writing exercises, guided reflection, and psychoanalytic insights, participants will examine themes of transformation, conscience, trauma, creativity, and social change. Readings will include excerpts from "The House of the Dead" by Dostoevsky; […]

  • Systems and Fields: Intersubjectivity in New York, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo

    Virtual

    Dr. Soni will trace the contemporary psychoanalytic concept of the “field” to its origins in the 1950 - 70s within two distinct traditions: the Interpersonal analysts of the William Alanson White Institute and the analysts of the Rio de la Plata in Argentina and Uruguay. He will argue that both groups drew on the social […]

  • Study Group – Exploring Sources of Liminal Data in Psychoanalytic Treatment

    Virtual

    Facilitated by: J. Christopher Fowler, PhD & Stuart Weir, PsyD A foundational premise of psychoanalysis is Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and uncovering the meaning of latent content from dreams, parapraxes, and unintentional actions such as forgetting. This 6-week seminar will explore sources of latent (liminal) data from the analysand, as well as the analyst. […]

  • Mentalizing Across Contexts

    Virtual

    A virtual conference presented by the Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center, Yale Child Study Center, and the Anna Freud Centre Mentalization—the capacity to understand one’s own and others’ behavior in terms of underlying thoughts, feelings, and intentions—is fundamental to emotional well-being, learning, and effective interpersonal functioning. Yet, how mentalization develops and operates can […]

  • NCP’s Virtual Open House 2026

    Virtual

    Join us online for a lively discussion with students and faculty from each of our programs who will share how their training at NCP has fostered personal growth, a deeper understanding of their patients' experiences, and opportunities to build professional networks. You'll also have an opportunity to meet our program directors and Dean, learn more […]

  • Bridging the Gap: Holding in a Relational Context

    Virtual

    This course reviews the evolution of a relational holding model that bridges the space between Winnicottian and relational thinking. I begin with a review of Winnicottian holding, the relational critique of developmental tilt models, and then present my proposed resolution of that gap. Offering a retrospective critique of my own model, I also revisit a […]

  • Working Clinically with Overwhelm: The Cost and Growth-Inducing Possibilities of Undoing the Self

    Virtual

    Presenter: Avgi Saketopoulou, PsyD This presentation begins with a summary of the theory of overwhelm, a way of conceptualizing working with intensity and excitation that is not about guarding the self (not about emotional regulation, not about protecting the ego from the drives) but which explores what becomes possible when one reaches the limit of […]

  • Michelle Harwell, PsyD, MFT

    Virtual

    “When We Are Undone: Exploring Moments of Vulnerability, Surrender, and Creative Transformation Within the Analyst”

  • Resilience in Response to Violence: Children, Adolescents, & Adults

    Virtual

    This year, the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia's Henri Parens Symposium will focus on resilience in the face of violence. The speakers will be Ann Masten, PhD, LP, a distinguished researcher on resilience, and Merav Roth, PhD, Training Analyst and world-renowned trauma expert, as well as one of the organizers of the psychoanalytic on-the-ground response in Israel.    A case […]

  • Ethical and Responsible use of Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies in Mental Health Care

    Virtual

    Speaker: Catherine L. Grus, PhD - New tools using artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies with applications for health care and specifically mental health care are increasingly being developed. While clinicians and treatment settings vary with respect to their adoption, the rapid and pervasive development of these technologies suggests a need for all mental […]

  • Dissociative Attunement: Rhythm and Resonance in Therapeutic Process

    Virtual

    Presented by: Karen Hopenwasser, MD While moments of attunement with individuals manifesting dissociated self-states are often confusing, dissociative attunement can be used as a valuable tool in therapeutic process. Attunement is a synchronized awareness of implicit knowing that is nonlinear and bidirectional. It is an embodied rhythmic encounter that can be understood, in part, through […]

  • Monique Losson

    Virtual

    Community health institutions have long resisted psychoanalytic thinking, and the siloed psychoanalytic world similarly makes little room for the experience and knowledge of those institutions and the psychic lives of their workers and clients. A clinician who appreciates psychoanalytic insights and understanding and wants to practice in a community setting would find it nearly impossible […]