A DAY & A HALF, LIVE ON LOCATION IN NYC and OFFERED ONLINE
FEATURING 25 SPEAKERS
Presented live at Constantino Hall, Fordham University School of Law, 150 West 62nd Street (between Amsterdam & Columbus Avenues), New York City
ABOUT THIS EVENT
Irreverence (n). ir⋅rev⋅er⋅ence
As regards blasphemy: an act of great disrespect shown to God or to sacred ideologies, people, or things
As regards subversion: a form of revealing hypocrisy, protesting power, and engaging transgression.
As regards comedy: a form of humor that challenges established norms, traditions, and authority through satire, mockery, or unexpected twists.
As regards psychoanalysis:all of the above.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Saturday, May 31st 8:30am-5:15pm, presentations begin at 9:00am.
Sunday, June 1st 9:00am-1:30pm, presentations begin at 9:15am.
Saturday includes continental breakfast and coffee breaks with light snacks. There will be a break for lunch of 1 1/2 hours on Saturday.
Sunday includes continental breakfast and one coffee break with light snacks.
Registration for in-person attendance is now closed, however registration for online attendance is still available. All speakers and discussions will be live-streamed in real time.
CONFERENCE COSTS
Professionals: $375
Candidates and students – $185
Please Note: Price includes entry for the entire conference, with breakfast, coffee service and snacks for our in-person attendees. There is no one-day rate.Registration cancellations and refunds will be made upon request through May 9th, 2025. No refunds will be made after that date.
10.25 CEs are available for attending this program. In order to qualify and receive a CE letter, registrants must follow instructions that will be sent prior to and/or given out at the conference.
DAILY SCHEDULE, PANELS AND SPEAKERS
SATURDAY, MAY 31st
8:30am Registration & Breakfast
9:00-9:10am
Welcome: Jean Petrucelli, PhD, CEDS-S, Chair of the Conference Advisory Committee (CAB)
9:15-10:45am
Getting Into Good Trouble: Race, Sex, and Enthusiasms
Presenters: Dorothy Holmes, PhD, Sarah Schoen, PhD, Stephen Seligman, DMH, andModerator Anton Hart, PhD
Psychoanalysis began as a subversive challenge to everyday thinking. Although this has never entirely disappeared, caution and conservativism have proliferated. Analysis has assimilated to its socio-cultural surrounds while remaining in tension with them. From different vantage points, this panel turns analytic inquiry onto ourselves: How have we gone along with broader cultural biases about race, sexuality, and gender? How do institutional and personal interests become stultifying and hegemonic, rather than enlivening and expansive? What are the best ways to integrate clinical and theoretical innovations and traditions, while preserving vital psychoanalytic values? How do we “decide” what should be dismantled or jettisoned, and what should be retained?
BREAK 10:45-11:00am
11:00am-12:30pm
Between Two Points: Stretching Beyond Outside in and Inside Out as our Loyalties are Challenged
Orna Guralnik, PhD, Susie Orbach, PhD, Jean Petrucelli, PhD, and Moderator Michael Becker, PhD
We may be unaware of how grounded our interventions are in the beliefs we hold about ethics, moral standing and our own goodness, until those are ripped out from under us by events in the world highlighting how increasingly de-linked we are from experiences that will help us navigate the world as humans—from hunger to horror. In the consulting room, our loyalty to the experiences and utterances of our analysands – challenge us to examine our own beliefs, identifications and loyalties to other ’shareholders’ of our psyche. In the space of the analytic relationship, we hope to be able to think, feel, question, and consider ideas that are often subversive, irreverent and surprise us. We do this within a frame – under strain – but which we hope can support our process. How does this frame withstand the pressures – economic, social and political which enter? From war to Ozempic, social media prattle to fundamentalist modes of thought, to interpersonal familial cruelties, to the denial of appetite, we –our frame and our bodies – are tested.
LUNCH BREAK 12:30-2:00pm
2:00-3:30pm
Are Artificial Intelligence and Natural Stupidity a False Dichotomy or an Inevitable Choice?
Presenters: Amy Levy, PsyD, Todd Essig, PhD, Fred Gioia, MD, and Moderator Cleonie White, PhD
The AI revolution promises historically unprecedented advances. Some artificial intelligence agents already demonstrate utilitarian value by providing companionship, aid, and useful new information. But the psychoanalytic tradition has also always revered truth, embodied minds, human intimacy, and the complexities of the unconscious. Unfortunately, many AI revolutionaries are taking an irreverent, dismissive approach to those fundamentals. This panel will consider the accelerating AI revolution from several psychoanalytic angles: what risks does AI pose to how we experience ourselves and each other? Why have we created AI? What human needs does it meet? In short, what are we becoming and why? And, most critically, how might the psychoanalytic tradition positively influence the AI revolution because, after all, the future is not yet written?
BREAK 3:30-3:45pm
3:45-5:15pm
Approach with Irreverence: Psychoanalysis, Gender & Sexuality
Ann D’Ercole, PhD, ABPP; Jack Drescher, MD; Willa N. France, JD; Jack Pula, MD, with Moderator Jack Drescher, MD
Sexuality, or at least Freud’s theories of libido and universal bisexuality, was once central to psychoanalysis. Yet, while Freud actively engaged with major sex researchers of his time, today’s psychoanalytic mainstream has little or no engagement with modern sexology. In fact, contemporary sexual science journals rarely refer to psychoanalytic theories of sexuality, past or present. Nevertheless, presentations of sexual and gender identities are changing, obliging analysts to think in ways never envisioned by their psychoanalytic forebears. These changes require analysts to be aware of limitations of their own theoretical traditions. For example, how can one seriously address the state of psychoanalysis today when Freud’s 1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is required reading in most training institutes, treating distinctions between “sexual object” and “sexual aim” as the greatest discovery since the invention of sliced bread? Can historical psychoanalytic theories about sexuality and gender help disentangle a burgeoning increase in today’s sexual and gender identities? Can metapsychological constructs proffered by contemporary analytic theorists of gender and sexuality provide answers? This panel does not aim to provide answers to the questions it raises but irreverently hopes to raise awareness of the field’s limitations, past and present.
SUNDAY, JUNE 1st
9:00-9:15am Breakfast and Welcome
9:15-10:45am
Don’t talk to THOSE People! Does irreverence calm the waters or fuel the flames of toxic polarization?
Sue Kolod, PhD, Tom Hennes, Suzannah Heschel, PhD, Tarek El-Ariss, PhD, and Moderator Mary B. McRae, EdD
Today’s divisive political climate has made the idea of talking to those on the “other side” an act of shocking irreverence if not traitorous betrayal. At the same time psychoanalysis has a long history of attempting to bridge what can feel like irreconcilable differences and splits, as they appear in both individual and group dynamics. This panel will focus on how a psychoanalytic point of view can open up space that collapses under the weight of toxic polarization. In particular, we will address the question of when a willingness to disregard normative constraints and pressures fuels polarization and when such irreverence can alleviate the destructive impact of us vs them dynamics. Rather than following the expectable, and often appropriate, tendency to avoid conversations that break down into attacks and opposition, we explore what is possible when we are willing to place ourselves intentionally in the line of fire between polarized groups. This requires accepting the projections of group members and metabolizing them thereby (hopefully) challenging their rigidity and lessening their toxicity.
Break 10:45-11:00am
11:00am-1:30pm
Irreverence and Orthodoxy in Psychoanalysis
Presenters: Adam Phillips, PhD, Avgi Saketopoulou, PsyD, Joel Whitebook, PhD, and Moderator Velleda Ceccoli, PhD
Freud inaugurated psychoanalysis with a number of “irreverent” gestures that challenged the age’s humanistic self-understanding: child sexuality, the amoral unconscious, repression, and so on. Yet many of Freud’s ideas subsequently hardened into a new “orthodoxy,” defining both the psychoanalytic establishment and “deviations” from it. Nonetheless, for this tradition to develop, it seems that each generation must take up an attitude of irreverence towards the previous generation’s convictions and ideals. The panel will explore this dynamic, asking: what is the place of irreverence in our intellectual history? What were the major turning points in this rolling self-critique? And what, given today’s climate, would now count as a properly “irreverent” intervention?
The Conference Advisory Board [CAB] is:
Jean Petrucelli, PhD, Chair; Michael Becker, PhD; Jack Drescher, MD.; Todd Essig, PhD; Anton Hart, PhD; Sue Kolod, PhD; Sarah Schoen, PhD; Naomi Snider, LP; Cleonie White, PhD.
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CONTINUING EDUCATION AND CONTINUING MEDICAL EDUCATION CREDIT INFORMATION
For Psychologists:
The William Alanson White Institute is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor Continuing Education for Psychologists. The William Alanson White Institute maintains responsibility for these programs and their contents.
William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0004.
For Social Workers:
William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0159.
For Licensed Psychoanalysts:
William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts. #P-0007.
For Physicians:
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and the William Alanson White Institute. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.”
The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 10.25 [AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE INFORMATION FOR ALL LEARNERS: None of the planners and presenters for this educational activity have relevant financial relationship(s)* to disclose with ineligible companies* whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.
*Financial relationships are relevant if the educational content an individual can control is related to the business lines or products of the ineligible company.
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William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0019.
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