William Alanson White Institute

Donnel Stern, PhD, Thinking Where We Are Not: Interpellation, Dissociative Enactment, and the Social
2025-02-28 19:30 (America/New_York)
The Colloquium Series of 2024-2025
Psychoanalytic Synthesis and Innovation in Times of Upheaval
presented by the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute
DONNEL STERN, PhD
Thinking Where We Are Not: Interpellation, Dissociative Enactment, and the Social
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28th, 7:30-9:30PM
with Deborah Fraser, PhD, Moderator
Presented in person, on location at the Institute
20 West 74th Street (between Central Park West & Columbus Avenue)
Seating for this and all Colloquium events are on a first come, first serve basis.

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
In the interest of integrating the social and the individual in psychoanalysis, the author examines the relation of interpellation and enactment. Interpellation is a way of conceptualizing the creation of subjectivity via individual participation in the ideological tropes of power. Enactment is our psychoanalytic way of referring to unconscious participation in relatedness. In interpellation, one person is “hailed” by another in a way that inducts the person so addressed, without the awareness of either party, into a relational pattern that includes both. The author argues that we can see the same process in dissociative enactment. Clinical process is illuminated by the recognition of the continuity of the social and the individual that is modeled by the relation of these two dissociative processes. New meaning–the formulation of unformulated experience–comes about unbidden, sometimes slipping the traces of ideology. Paraphrasing an aphorism from Lacan: We think where we are not.
1.5 CEs are available for attending this presentation.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Donnel Stern, PhD, is Training and Supervising Analyst, and Faculty at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City; and Adjunct Clinical Professor and Clinical Consultant, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is founder and editor of the Psychoanalysis in a New Key book series from Routledge, which has 90 titles in print. He is former Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He has published five books, the most recent of which has just appeared, On Coming into Possession of Oneself: Transformations of the Interpersonal Field. He has also co-edited four books about the theory and practice of interpersonal psychoanalysis. Dr. Stern is in private practice in New York City.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Deborah Fraser, PhD, is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute, where she is a member of the teaching faculty. She also serves on several key committees, including the Council of Fellows, the Training and Progression Committee, and the Nominations and Elections Committee. In addition to her work at the Institute, she maintains a full-time private practice in New York City.

Loss, Resilience and Survival: The Art of Storytelling with Ed Gavagan
2025-03-06 13:30 - 15:00
The Artist Study Group of The Psychotherapy Service for People in the Arts

presents
Loss, Resilience and Survival: the Art of Storytelling
with Ed Gavagan
and Discussant Eric Dammann
THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2025 from 1:30-3:00PM/Eastern
Attend in person or online as follows:
In person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, between CPW & Columbus Avenues
Online via Zoom at:
https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/8180152948?pwd=[REDACTED]
Please be sure to RSVP to attend: fvdillon@gmail.com

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION

Art has the power to inspire, evoke emotions, and leave a lasting impact on people’s lives. But how do artists create works that make us feel and think deeply? Our presenter, Ed Gavagan, uses storytelling to capture moments in time that create a narrative that speaks to the human experience and our shared humanity. He will share his process of surviving childhood and adult trauma, and talk about the role that storytelling has played in his recovery. As psychoanalysts, we bear witness through listening deeply to extraordinary stories.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Ed Gavagan is owner of Praxis, a design/build firm that has built homes and furniture nationally and internationally including the MOTH headquarters in New York City. In addition to his participation in the documentary film Procession, he has shared his stories with live audiences, on the Moth Radio Hour, on A&E’s Biography Channel, and in TED talks. His most recent show, Loud Memory, was performed off Broadway at Theatre 154 and will be performed in Ireland in the summer of 2025. For more information, visit: https://themoth.org and processionfilm.com

ABOUT OUR DISCUSSANT
Eric Dammann, PhD, is Co-Director of the Artist Study Group at WAWI. He has a psychotherapy and executive coaching private practice in Manhattan and serves on the Board of Sounds of Saving, a non-profit agency that uses music to address mental health and suicide prevention.

Join us for this special presentation!
Frances V. Dillon, MSW, and Eric Dammann, PhD, are Co-Directors, the Artist Study Group

Supporting the Front Line: Helping Parents and Teachers Improve the Self-esteem of Children with Social and Academic Challenges
2025-03-26 19:30 - 21:00
A SPECIAL IN-PERSON EVENING AT THE INSTITUTE
MARSHA H. LEVY-WARREN, PhD, Moderator/Presenter
and
CLARICE J. KESTENBAUM, MD
AVA SIEGLER, PhD
NECHAMA SORSCHER
present
Supporting the Front Line: Helping Parents and Teachers Improve the Self-esteem of Children with Social and Academic Challenges
Wednesday Evening, March 26th, from 7:30-9:00pm
The William Alanson White Institute is located at 20 West 74th Street, between Central Park West & Columbus Avenues, on New York City’s Upper West Side.
1.5 CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS ARE AVAILABLE. Instructions about how to obtain CEs are sent out to registrants via email, prior to the event, so be careful to register with your correct email address. If you miss that letter (for late sign-ups), you may request CE instructions after the event.
This presentation has been arranged in conjunction with the Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program.

ABOUT THIS EVENING
Dr. Nechama Sorscher has brought together a panel of experts in child development and psychology and will lead the discussion. Together they will examine the pointed needs of today’s children and adolescents, given the prevailing social and academic challenges they face. How best to help our kids develop confidence and positive self esteem? Topics of assessment, school intervention, and parent guidance and therapy will be discussed.

COSTS
Professionals $30
Candidates and Students $15

ABOUT OUR PANEL

CLARICE J. KESTENBAUM, MD, is Professor Emerita of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University Irving Medical Center. The former Director of Residency Training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia, Dr. Kestenbaum is the recipient of an endowed professorship in education and training. She is past president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), and of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry (AAPDP). Dr. Kestenbaum is also the co-founder of CARING at Columbia, an organization that helps at-risk underserved children through the arts and literature. The recipient of numerous awards for her leadership and service, Dr. Kestenbaum has a broad range of expertise and focuses on child development, psychopathology and children at risk for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Dr. Kestenbaum continues to teach and supervise medical students, general psychiatry residents, and second-year residents in outpatient psychotherapy. She is a consultant to the Center of Prevention and Evaluation (COPE) at New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). Dr. Kestenbaum is a graduate of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in both general and child and adolescent psychoanalysis.

MARSHA H. LEVY-WARREN, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who writes, teaches, lectures, and consults both nationally and internationally. She is the author of The Adolescent Journey (Jason Aronson, 1996; reissued by Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), and of numerous articles on clinical and developmental theory, adolescence, and various aspects of culture. Dr. Levy-Warren is past president of The Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS), a component society of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), and a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst in both the CFS and the IPA. She is also an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology and a Clinical Consultant in New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Dr. Levy-Warren has a clinical practice with adolescents and adults, and a consulting practice with parents on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

AVA SIEGLER, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, who received her PhD from New York University. She has post-graduate training in adult, adolescent, child, couples, and family work. In addition to professional papers, she has written three award-winning books for parents. Dr. Siegler worked as a forensic consultant for the New York State Supreme Court for over fifteen years, and continues to serve as a Parent Coordinator for high-conflict parents. In 1991, after serving as Dean of Training at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health for over ten years, she developed and directed the Institute for Child, Adolescent & Family studies which provided specialty training for over 150 child and adolescent clinicians. Dr. Siegler currently supervises and maintains a private practice in Chelsea, Manhattan.

NECHAMA SORSCHER, PhD, has been in private practice in New York City since 1993. With over 20 years of individual and group counseling experience, her extensive expertise includes performing comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations and teaching and supervising doctoral candidates. She received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University in 1992, and further completed her postgraduate psychoanalytic training in the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New York University in 2016. Dr. Sorscher continues to engage in ongoing supervision with Dr. Clarice Kestenbaum, (who is one of our speakers this evening), a leading specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. As of late, Dr. Sorscher is a published author, with her first full book Assessment and Intervention with Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Neurocognitive Challenges: A Psychodynamic Perspective, out now, and with a second book coming out in 2025 entitled, Your Neurodiverse Child: Howto Help Kids with Learning, Attention, and Neurocognitive Challenges Thrive.

Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program In Person Open House
2025-04-02 19:30 - 21:00
The Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program
IN PERSON OPEN HOUSE
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025
7:30-9:00pm
From Playing to Playing With: the Evolution of the Imaginative Play of a Young Boy
A Clinical Case Presentation by Camilla Xiao Yu, MS, LMHC, LPC
with Supervisor Tomás Casado-Frankel, LMFT
Join us at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street (between Central Park West & Columbus Avenues)
Light refreshments will follow the presentation.
ABOUT THE PRESENTATION
Play can offer rich insights into a child’s internal world and is a great treatment modality to facilitate change and growth. In this case presentation, Ms. Yu will share her experiences as a therapist working with a young boy for the first time. Through trial and error, she navigates the patient’s curious developing psyche as well as her own unresolved issues. She will focus on exploring the evolving features of the patient’s imaginative play, and its usefulness in ameliorating reported symptoms. The relational dynamic and counter-transferential impacts are explored and tentatively conceptualized.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER AND THE SUPERVISOR
Camilla Xiao Yu, (she/they), MS LMHC LPC, is a bilingual (English/Mandarin) psychotherapist and consultant, and third-year candidate in the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training program at the William Alanson White Institute. She is a Gestalt therapist trained in developmental somatic work and Reichian principles and is also a certified Imago Relational Therapist and Brainspotting practitioner. Her expertise lies in addressing relational, intergenerational, and cross-cultural trauma in the Asian and Asian immigrant communities. Beyond psychotherapy, Ms. Yu is a certified Reiki master and studies Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Tomás Casado-Frankel, LMFT, is faculty and supervisor in the Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program at the William Alanson White Institute. He is a graduate of that program as well as the Institute’s Psychoanalytic Program. He is also a graduate of the Couple & Family Therapy program at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid, Spain, and holds a postgraduate diploma in Conflict & Dispute Resolution Studies from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. He is the co-author of Early Relational Trauma and the Development of the Self (Routledge, 2022), and is in private practice in New York City.

Everyday Alchemy: Transmutations of Art and Insight with Leslie Schultz
2025-04-03 13:30 - 15:00
The Artist Study Group of The Psychotherapy Service for People in the Arts

presents
Everyday Alchemy: Transmutations of Art and Insight

with Leslie Schultz, MFA, Poet
and Discussant Sarah Stemp, PhD

Thursday, April 3rd, 2025 from 1:30-3:00pm/Eastern

Attend in person or online as follows:
In person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, between CPW & Columbus Avenues
Online via Zoom at:
https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/8180152948?pwd=[REDACTED]
Please be sure to RSVP to attend: fvdillon@gmail.com

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
Leslie Schultz feels there are many ways of being an artist just as there are “self-states.” She will explore with us how art-making has greatly enhanced her own sense of well-being on many levels — physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual — from early childhood on. “Art is a fertile part of life. We encounter it and are affected — sometimes soothed or shaken and often changed — and then often we are moved to try our hand.”
Ms. Schultz will highlight the three stages of her intimate practice of poetry, photography and quilting: encountering and absorbing the art of others; being moved to make art herself, and sharing that work with others in some informal or professional way. Discussant Dr. Sarah Stemp, will elaborate on the alchemical shift in art-making, the experience of psychotherapy for the patient and the capacity of the analyst to create with the patient.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Leslie Schultz, (Northfield, Minnesota: www.winonamedia.net), has published six collections of poetry. Her most recent is Geranium Lake: Poems on Art and Art-Making (Kelsay Books). Her poetry has appeared widely in such journals as Poet Lore, Mezzo Cammin, Midwest Quarterly, Able Muse, Naugatuck River Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, MockingHeart Review, and Blue Unicorn. Twice nominated for Pushcart prizes, she serves as a judge for the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. In addition to poems, she publishes photographs, essays, and fiction.
Sarah Stemp, PhD, is a psychologist and supervising analyst at the William Alanson White Institute where she teaches the class on the ending phase of psychoanalysis. She has also been studying and writing poetry for many years, and has published a collection called Wellspring.

Join us for this special presentation!
Frances V. Dillon, MSW, and Eric Dammann, PhD, are Co-Directors, the Artist Study Group

Dominique Scarfone, MD, The Sexual Drive for Power. The Passion for Ever More.
2025-04-04 19:30 - 21:30
The Colloquium Series of 2024-2025
Psychoanalytic Synthesis and Innovation in Times of Upheaval
presented by the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute
DOMINIQUE SCARFONE, MD
THE SEXUAL DRIVE FOR POWER. THE PASSION FOR EVER MORE.
with Orshi Hunyady, PhD, Moderator
FRIDAY, APRIL 4th, 7:30-9:30PM
NOTE THAT THIS EVENT IS NOW BEING PRESENTED ONLINE ONLY. It will not be held in-person as originally announced.
Links for online entry will be sent out prior to the event.

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
In this paper, the author explores what part is played by the human drives in the contemporary crises that assail humankind: global warming, inequality, racism, rape and feminicide epidemics, opioid crisis, war and other forms of violence. Psychoanalysts usually refer to two classes of drives: erotic and aggressive. But in the face of the inextricable mixture of sex and violence, one begins to wonder if we are not dealing with two sides of a single drive which we could call “a sexual drive for power” in which the sexual drive meets exacerbated narcissism. The Freudian roots of this sexual drive for power are explored and the notion is examined in relation with both individual and societal issues. The mechanism of allostasis is invoked as a possible central feature, a link between the many aspects of the topics explored.
1.5 CEs are available for attending this presentation. In order to receive yours, you must follow instructions on the link & information letter sent to your registration email address prior to the event.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dominique Scarfone, MD, is the 2024 Sigourney Award recipient, honorary professor at the Université de Montréal, member emeritus of the Montreal Psychoanalytic Society (French branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society,) and honorary member of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society. He was an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis for several years, recently retired from practice, and continues teaching, writing, and presenting. He has published extensively, authoring various books and contributing numerous book chapters, as well as original papers in journals internationally. His most recent book is The Reality of the Message. Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche (New York: The Unconscious in Translation, 2023).

ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Orshi Hunyady, PhD, is a Training Psychoanalyst and faculty at the William Alanson White Institute and is an Associate Editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Dr. Hunyady studies and writes about topics that highlight the link between psychoanalysis and social-societal phenomena. She has a full-time practice in New York City.

Inquiry as the Unique Aspect of Interpersonal Technique
2025-04-23 09:00 - 10:30
A new limited series offered online for clinicians at all levels
Inquiry as the Unique Aspect of Interpersonal Technique
with Ira Moses, PhD, ABPsa
Offered online on four Wednesday mornings:
April 23 & 30 and May 7 & 14 from 9:00-10:30am/Eastern
Inquiry holds a unique position in Interpersonal psychoanalytic technique. This short program demonstrates through clinical vignettes how inquiry can be incorporated into psychodynamic work with patients. It is appropriate for therapists of all levels of experience and is presented online.

ABOUT THE SERIES
Inquiry holds a unique position in psychoanalytic technique. Classical analysts dismissed it as a parameter beyond the accepted practices of interpretation and free association. More recently, inquiry appears to conflict with intersubjective relational approaches that privilege inter-objectivity and unconscious communication. However, this seminar will demonstrate that inquiry can be integrated with both schools of thought when viewed as a complex phenomenon with considerable variability. We will utilize participants’ case material to explore ways to demonstrate how inquiry can serve to elicit the patient’s expressive speech toward the aim of articulating experiences that were previously repressed, dissociated, or unformulated.
Topics discussed in this series will include:
How inquiry may be integrated in forming an alliance and developing a history
The grey area of inquiry vs intrusiveness
Relationship of inquiry and free association
Inquiry across cultures
Countertransference aspects of inquiry
Inquiry as a check on the analyst’s inferences and subjective assumptions

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Ira Moses, PhD, ABPsa, is a Training and Supervising Analyst, and is the former Director of Training and the former Director of Clinical Services at the William Alanson White Institute. He is on the faculty of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute and is Visiting Faculty of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center; former Board Member and Faculty of the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance, and is on the faculty of the Russian Intensive Psychodynamic Program. Dr. Moses is a Member of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), and a former member of the Board of Directors of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He has published articles on the Misuse of Empathy; Anonymity and Self Disclosure; and The Analyst’s Resistance to Asking Questions.

SERIES COST:
$350 for the series of four online Wednesday morning classes from 9:00-10:30am/Eastern
6 CEs are offered

IMPORTANT NOTES:
Registrants will receive their entry link to classes upon completing registration and payment.
Entry links will also be sent out by email 1-3 days prior to the series’ first class – so enter your email address carefully! We are not responsible for links that don’t reach registrants whose email addresses are entered incorrectly. If you cannot find your link by the business day prior to the event, email: e.rodman@wawhite.org
Instructions about how to obtain available CEs are sent out to registrants in the entry link email, prior to the event. You must follow those instructions in order to receive the available CEs for this course.

For more information about this series, contact: Karen G. Gennaro, MD, MBA at karenggennaro@aol.com and be sure to type “Inquiry Course” in the subject line of your email.

CINEMANALYSIS with Anthony Drazan, MFA
2025-05-01 13:30 - 15:00
The Artist Study Group of The Psychotherapy Service for People in the Arts

presents
CINEMANALYSIS with Anthony Drazan, MFA
Thursday, May 1st, 2025 from 1:30 to 3:00pm/Eastern
Attend in person or online as follows:
In person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, between CPW & Columbus Avenues
Online via Zoom at:
https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/8180152948?pwd=[REDACTED]
Please be sure to RSVP to attend: fvdillon@gmail.com

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION

Tony Drazan will explore his experience as a filmmaker and filmgoer, and how those converge with his work as an analyst in training and an analysand. As an NYU graduate film student, he was first introduced to the post-war cinema of the Italian neorealists and that of the genre-bending cinema of the French New Wave. Classical Hollywood narratives were “increasingly subordinated to time.” Encouraging the viewer to imbue images with associations, memories, interpretations, and tapping into other, less readily apparent aspects of themselves, introspective cinema offered them experiences “in the how, not the what.”
His first encounter with “the transcendental style” of film was seeing Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring. He was genuinely moved by the story’s simplicity, and the way it was told. It was “my experience watching, my encounter with the film itself that had the most profound and lasting impact. It was meditative cinema, the vase in the film’s final movement.”
As a Study Group, we will consider Drazan’s questions: What makes this style of film, the time-image, transcendental, spiritual, slow cinema so compelling? What is the nature of its alchemy, how does it manifest in psychoanalytic work, why are we so moved?

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Tony Drazan received his MFA in Filmmaking from NYU in 1986. He has worked for over 35 years writing, directing, and producing movies, tv, and original content. His many credits include award-winning movies Zebrahead and Hurlyburly. He is a second year candidate in the Licensure Qualifying Program in Psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute.

Join us for this informal, moving and reflective conversation!

Frances V. Dillon, MSW and Eric Dammann, Ph.D Co Directors, Artist Study Group

Gregory S. Rizzolo, PhD, The Significance of the Interpretant in the Field of Speech
2025-05-09 19:30
The Colloquium Series of 2024-2025
Psychoanalytic Synthesis and Innovation in Times of Upheaval
presented by the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute
GREGORY S. RIZZOLO, PhD
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INTERPRETANT IN THE FIELD OF SPEECH
FRIDAY, MAY 9th, 7:30-9:30PM
with Michael Rothman, PhD, Moderator
Seating for this and all Colloquium events are on a first come, first serve basis.

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
In his classic paper, The function and the field of language and speech in psychoanalysis (1953), Lacan wrote that psychoanalysis had abandoned its original interest in speech. This concern, which has animated the Lacanian tradition for nearly 75 years, has found more recent expression in an empirically-oriented sector of American psychoanalysis. Litowitz (2011) argues that the turn to infant observation in America has led to an emphasis on visual-behavioral evidence over aural-oral data. The Lacanian tradition links the retreat from language with the rise of countertransference as a vehicle of insight in the Anglo-American schools. The danger, as Fink (2010) emphasizes, is that we might fall into “me-centered attention” instead of listening to language. There is, however, another way to think about countertransference, one that suggests an alternative approach to speech, grounded neither in Lacan, nor in Saussure, but in Charles Peirce’s theory of signs. The author argues that when we use the countertransference, we are engaging a dynamic interpretant, often an indexical icon, to register the force and effect of a communication. Far from abandoning speech, we find ourselves immersed in the work of signification. The author illustrates this approach through my reading of the recent case of Eliot (Busch, 2014).
1.5 CEs are available for attending this presentation.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Gregory S. Rizzolo, PhD, is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA) and a faculty member at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. His work has appeared in Psychoanalytic Psychology, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, and The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA), among others. In 2017, he received the JAPA Prize for the best paper of the year in the journal. He is the author of The Critique of Regression (Routledge, 2019).

ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Michael Rothman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. A graduate of the Psychoanalytic Training Program at the William Alanson White Institute, he also completed a specialization in Couples and Family Therapy at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Dr. Rothman serves as co-Editor of the Book Review for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where he teaches psychoanalytic theory and is a clinical supervisor.

How is Madness Embodied in Psychoanalysis?
2025-05-17 12:00 - 14:00
THE 2024-2025 EMBODIMENT SERIES
Claire Bien, MEd, Daniel Posner, MD, Louis Sass, PhD, Vincent Stephen, PsyD
with Moderators Doris Brothers, PhD and Jon Sletvold, PsyD
How is Madness Embodied in Psychoanalysis?
SATURDAY, MAY 17th
Online from 12 Noon – 2:00PM/Eastern
This series is presented in collaboration with The Wilhelm Reich Center for the Study of Embodiment.

ABOUT THIS EVENT
Although Freud doubted that psychotic patients could benefit from psychoanalysis, he acknowledged that “suitable changes” in his method might “succeed in overcoming this contra indication.” From a variety of perspectives, the four speakers in this conversation explore how a focus on the embodiment of madness represents a change in method that has brought about remarkable advances in the field.

COSTS
Professionals $50
Candidates and Students $30

CE CREDIT INFORMATON
2 CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS ARE AVAILABLE. Instructions about how to obtain available CEs are sent out to registrants in the entry link email, prior to the event. If you miss that letter (for late sign-ups), you should request CE instructions after the event.
For general CE Credit information, click here
NOTE TO ALL REGISTRANTS FOR ONLINE EVENTS: We send out entry links for Zoom events 1-3 days prior to the scheduled event date. If you do not see a link-letter in your Inbox, check your Trash and Spam folders. If you have not received your link-letter by the business day prior to the event, email: e.rodman@wawhite.org
We will do whatever we can to get your link to you, however the Institute is not responsible for your email provider’s security settings. There are no refunds for paid events if a link was sent to you.

THE SPEAKERS
Claire Bien, MEd, is a research associate at the Yale University Program for Recovery and Community Health; mental health advocate and educator; and author of a memoir, Hearing Voices, Living Fully: Living with the Voices in My Head. She is a board member and immediate past president of the U.S. chapter of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS-US); as well as a board member of the Hearing Voices Network (HVN)-USA. Claire speaks widely about her experiences with psychosis and her understandings of the nature and processes of her recovery, which was greatly helped by early exposure to psychoanalytically informed, psychodynamic therapy. Her paper, “My Body, My Psyche, My Self: An Empath’s Reflections on Being and Becoming in the World,” will be published in 2025 as part of a special issue on Madness of the journal Psychoanalytic Inquiry, edited by Daniel Posner, MD.

Daniel S. Posner, MD, is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai where he teaches and supervises psychiatry residents in psychodynamic therapy. His writing explores a range of topics through the multiple lenses of psychoanalysis, enactive phenomenology, epistemic justice and infancy research. Dr. Posner has published work in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Psychoanalysis, Self and Context and Psychoanalytic Inquiry, where he is an associate editor. He is also the co-host with Daniel Goldin of “The Conversation”– the podcast of Psychoanalytic Inquiry.

Louis Sass, PhD, is Distinguished Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University, where he is also affiliated with the Comparative Literature Program and Center for Cognitive Science. Dr. Sass has published on phenomenological psychopathology, psychoanalysis, and the thought of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Lacan, and Foucault. He is the author of Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought and of The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber, and the Schizophrenic Mind. A longtime fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities, he has been a visiting professor in France, Belgium, Spain, England, Colombia, and Mexico. Dr. Sass has received various awards; a revised edition of Madness and Modernism (Oxford University Press) was awarded the British Medical Association First Prize as best book in psychiatry for 2018.
Vincent Stephen, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist working as a therapist and supervisor at the University Hospital in Tromsø, North Norway. He specializes in psychotherapy for people struggling with complex trauma, dissociation, and serious relational difficulties. Dr. Stephen is a candidate at the Norwegian Character Analytical Institute in Olso, a training institution for embodied psychoanalysis. He is interested in the therapeutic use of countertransference and has written on language, embodiment, suicide and authenticity. He is also a multi-disciplinary artist and musician, who has written and performed in various works, including several collaborations with dancer Mirte Bogaert.

ABOUT THE MODERATORS/CO-DIRECTORS OF THE WILHELM REICH CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EMBODIMENT
Doris Brothers, PhD, is a co-founder and faculty member of the Training and Research in Intersubjective Self Psychology Foundation (TRISP). She was co-editor with Roger Frie of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context from 2015-2019 and is an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry. She serves on the council of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IAPSP). Doris has published many journal articles and book chapters as well as four books. Her latest book, written with Jon Sletvold is entitled A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: TALKING BODIES. Her earlier books are: Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty: Trauma-Centered Psychoanalysis (2008), Falling Backwards: An Exploration of Trust and Self-Experience (1995), and with Richard Ulman, The Shattered Self: A Psychoanalytic Study of Trauma (1988). She has presented her work internationally and leads supervision/study groups with Jon Sletvold. She sees patients in private practice in New York and Oslo.

Jon Sletvold, PsyD, is founding board director and faculty member of the Norwegian Character Analytic Institute.He has written articles and book chapters on embodiment in psychoanalytic theory, practice, and training. He is the editor of four books and the author of The Embodied Analyst: From Freud and Reich to Relationality, which won the Gradiva Award in 2015. In 2019 he wrote From Muscular Armor to Bodies in Dialogue with Per Harbitz. His latest book, written with Doris Brothers is A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: TALKING BODIES. Dr. Sletvold has presented his work internationally and co-leads online supervision/study groups on embodiment in Europe, North America and China with Doris Brothers. He practices in Oslo and New York.

ABOUT THE WILHELM REICH CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EMBODIMENT
Inspired by the pioneering work of Wilhelm Reich and encouraged by the recent surge of interest in embodiment among clinicians, co-Directors Drs. Doris Brothers and Jon Sletvold have founded the Center. With it, they are introducing an online forum for dialogues about the ways in which embodiment affects the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.
A wide range of approaches to embodiment have emerged in the last two decades that have led them to believe that a “turn toward embodiment” is underway. In the interest of furthering this turn they are offering a format that differs from the usual at psychoanalytic meetings. Rather than featuring a paper presenting a specific theorist or clinician followed by discussions, they intend that each event will center around a specific topic. Speakers from around the world, each of whom employs a different perspective on embodiment, will be invited to participate in a roundtable conversation of the topic. Afterward, online participants will be encouraged to join the conversation.
Learn more about The Wilhelm Reich Center for the Study of Embodiment

IRREVERENCE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
2025-05-31 08:30 - 17:15 | Fordham University School of Law, 150 West 62nd Street, New York, NY, 10023, United States
IRREVERENCE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
SATURDAY & SUNDAY MAY 31 & JUNE 1 2025
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, and Moderator 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.

——-
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.
For Licensed Mental Health Counselors:
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 mental health counselors #MHC-0025.
For Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists:
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.
For Licensed Creative Arts Therapists:
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 creative arts therapists. #CAT-0011.

Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program Open House on Wednesday, June 4th
2025-06-04 19:30 - 21:00
The Child & Adolescent​ Psychotherapy Training Program

IN PERSON OPEN HOUSE

Wednesday, June 4, 2025 from 7:30-9:00pm
at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street

LEARN ABOUT OUR UNIQUE PROGRAM FROM PEOPLE IN THE PROGRAM
Join us for a lively discussion about the training experience in the Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program at the William Alanson White Institute.
A panel of current candidates and recent graduates will share their training experiences and talk about the ways in which it has enhanced their work and self-confidence. All will be available to answer your questions about the training.

Join us! Light refreshments will be served.

Faculty and Candidates will include:
Jennifer Kane, LMSW, is a graduate of the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program and is currently a third-year Candidate in the WAWI Psychoanalytic Training Program.
Liz Manus, LCSW, graduated in 2024 from the Child & Adolescent Training Program. She received her LCSW earlier this year and is currently transitioning into private practice.
Amy Pacifici, LCSW-R, has been in private practice in NYC for over fifteen years, specializing in work with children and adults who have acute trauma histories and with people with disabilities. A graduate of the Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program, she is now a Clinical Supervisor and Faculty Instructor in the CAPT Program and she serves as an adjunct professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service.
Stephanie Vanden Bos, LCSW, completed psychoanalytic training at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP), where she is a supervisor and a training analyst. Since 2002, working primarily with individual adults, young adults and couples in private practice, she saw a significant increase in referrals for teenagers and children during the pandemic, and sought more advanced training. She enrolled in the the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Treatment Program (CAPTP) at WAWI in September 2023.

The Rhythm of Life: Drumming and its Place in Human and Personal History
2025-06-05 13:30 - 15:00
The Artist Study Group of The Psychotherapy Service for People in the Arts

presents
The Rhythm of Life: Drumming and its Place in Human and Personal History
with Eric Dammann, PhD, and James Polsky, JD, LP
Thursday, June 5th, 2025 from 1:30-3:00pm/Eastern

Attend in person or online as follows:
In person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, between CPW & Columbus Avenues
Online via Zoom at:
https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/8180152948?pwd=[REDACTED]
Please be sure to RSVP to attend: fvdillon@gmail.com

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
As humans, we are deeply and innately connected to rhythm. Drs. Eric Dammann and James Polsky will explore the role of percussion through human history and its impact on their lives personally. They will share videos of their improvisational and embodied experience, drumming in collaboration with fellow jazz and rock band members. The conversation will include a comparison of different styles of drumming – what is being expressed and what psychological needs are being met.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Eric Dammann, PhD, is Co-Director of the Artist Study Group at the William Alanson White Institute. He has a psychotherapy and executive coaching private practice in Manhattan and serves on the Board of Sounds of Saving, a non-profit agency that uses music to address mental health and suicide prevention.

James Polsky, JD, LP, is a graduate of the Institute’s Psychoanalytic Program and is a psychoanalyst in private practice. James founded the Jazz Standard club in New York City the 1990’s, and is also the founder of Jazz Generation, a non-profit organization that supports multiple weekly live jazz performances around the city. He is also a jazz drummer and plays in gigs around town with many wonderful musicians.

Join us for this very special event!

Frances V. Dillon, MSW and Eric Dammann, Ph.D Co Directors, Artist Study Group

LGBTQ Study Group - Pride Month
2025-06-11 20:30 - 22:00
Happy Pride to us all.
We will not have a speaker for this month. Rather, everyone is invited to a group chat to tell how they have managed these past months, what their fears and hopes have been and are for the future.
The meeting will not be held the first Wednesday, but rather the second, June 11, 2025, 8.30 – 10.00 pm. Come join us.
Best,
Willa France

on Zoom only, RSVP below
https://wawi.wufoo.com/forms/s1v361i7149pvzz/

Please note:
– Registrants will receive the Zoom link to attend this meeting via email from
The William Alanson White Institute with subject line:
“LGBTQ Study Group 2024-2025”.
– LGBTQ Study Group events are not recorded.
– We are not able to provide CE credits at this time.

For inquiries regarding The LGBTQ Study Group please contact the chair,
Willa N. France: poetadmiral@earthlink.net

Hysterical Girl with Filmmaker/Documentarian Renee Silverman
2025-09-11 13:30 - 15:00
The Artist Study Group of The Psychotherapy Service for People in the Arts

presents
HYSTERICAL GIRL, a discussion and examination of Kate Novack’s film with Filmmaker Renee Silverman
and Discussant Ernesto Mujica, PhD
Thursday, September 11th, 2025
1:30-3:00pm/Eastern
Attend in person or online as follows:
In person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, between CPW & Columbus Avenues
Online via Zoom at:
https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/8180152948?pwd=[REDACTED]
Please be sure to RSVP to attend: fvdillon@gmail.com

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
Sigmund Freud produced only one major case history of a female patient, Dora, a teenage sexual assault victim. In her 2020 film short, Hysterical Girl, director Kate Novack uses a compelling lens to imagine Dora as a female patient today. It is this depiction that filmmaker/documentarian Renee Silverman presents in this examination and discussion, at a time when we are witnessing a long wave of sexual harassment, gender-based violence and sex trafficking.
Woven throughout the film is archival material – a cacophony of paintings, photographs, film clips, news reels and advertisements that underscore the depth and breadth of a society that conspires to silence and shame survivors of sexual abuse. By reframing the narrative, the film serves as a powerful indictment of not just this aspect of Freudian theory but of civilization itself. What emerges is a visceral portrait of the ways in which Freud’s theory of hysteria survives within our culture, more than a hundred years later, still silencing and shaming survivors of sexual abuse regardless of age or gender.
After screening the short film with the group, filmmaker Renee Silverman and Dr. Ernesto Mujica will facilitate a discussion about the formalistic elements of the film and the visual representation of the social and oppressive factors that surround sexual violence today.

The group is also invited to attend the Sexual Abuse Study Group meeting for a second discussion of the film and the case of Dora, which will be held online on Thursday, September 18th, 1:30-3pm EST.
To view the film Hysterical Girl in advance, go to:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000007026836/hysterical-girl.html

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Renee Silverman, Filmmaker/Documentarian, is an award-winning American producer for German public television. Her recent credits include Wim Wenders: Desperado, winner of the 2020 Rose d’Or at Cannes, and It Must Schwing: The Blue Note Story. She was archival producer on the Oscar nominated documentary RBG, as well as HBO’s United Skates. With Peter Miller, she directed and produced the award-winning docs Sosua: Make A Better World and Refugee Kids. She is currently in production with Peter Miller on a new documentary, Halloween Parade: A Tale of Two Villages, with executive producer, Sebastian Zimmermann (aka Seymour Licht).

ABOUT THE DISCUSSANT
Ernesto Mujica, PhD, is Director of the Sexual Abuse Study Group and Service at WAWI, where he also serves as an Associate Editor of its journal, Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Dr. Mujica is also Supervisor of psychotherapy there and at the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology of Teachers College, Columbia University. He integrates his clinical work in the areas of childhood and adult trauma, as well as sociocultural factors in mental health with his strong interest in the Arts. His previous talks within the WAWI Artists Study Group have included discussions of artists El Anatsui (Ghana & Nigeria), Kent Monkman (First Nations-Cree, Canada), Yayoi Kusama (Japan) and the Museo del Prado’s exhibit titled “Reversos.”

Understanding the Embodiment of Narrative in the Therapeutic Exchange
2025-09-27 12:00 - 14:00
THE EMBODIMENT SERIES of 2025-2026
First Embodiment event of the New Season

Understanding the Embodiment of Narrative in the Therapeutic Exchange
Jack Foehl, PhD, Mark Freeman, PhD, Daniel Goldin, MFT, PsyD and Lynn Preston, MA, MS, LP
with
Moderators Doris Brothers, PhD and Jon Sletvold, PsyD
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27th
Online from 12 Noon – 2:00PM/Eastern
This series is presented in collaboration with The Wilhelm Reich Center for the Study of Embodiment

ABOUT THIS EVENT
Can the narratives that organize psychoanalytic exchanges be conducted without words? The answer according to the presenters in this conversation is a resounding “yes!” They offer different perspectives on how both verbal and nonverbal communication in psychoanalysis takes narrative form.
Together they demonstrate the crucial importance of understanding the embodiment of narratives in therapeutic relationships.

COSTS
Professionals $50
Candidates and Students $30

CE CREDIT INFORMATON
2 CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS ARE AVAILABLE. Instructions about how to obtain available CEs are sent out to registrants in the entry link email, prior to the event. If you miss that letter (for late sign-ups), please request CE instructions after the event.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT ENTRY LINKS FOR ONLINE EVENTS
NOTE TO ALL REGISTRANTS FOR ONLINE EVENTS: Entry links for Zoom events are sent in two ways: (1) the entry link is sent on the Registration payment receipt delivered to your email INBOX; and (2) links are sent out to Registrants 1-3 days prior to the scheduled event date. If you register just prior to the event’s start, you will only receive the link on the payment receipt.
For those who do not see a link letter in their Inbox, check Trash and Spam files. If you do not find your link-letter by the business day prior to the event, you may email: e.rodman@wawhite.org
We will do whatever we can to get your link to you, however the Institute is not responsible for your email provider’s security settings. There are no refunds for paid events if a link was sent to you.
For general CE Credit information, click here

THE SPEAKERS
Jack Foehl, PhD
is Past President of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society & Institute, where he is Training and Supervising Analyst and is Supervisor and faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. He is Clinical Associate Professor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and is Lecturer at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Foehl is Joint Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and is a past editorial board member of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. His recent publications include, Playing with Winnicott: Squiggling Through Therapeutic Consultations and The Slap: Playing with Reality in Discussing Trauma in 2022, and Lived Depth: A Phenomenology of Psychoanalytic Process and Identity in 2020. He integrates Merleau-Ponty’s work on the lived body into a framework for teaching and experiencing psychoanalytic process.

Mark Freeman, PhD
Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the College of the Holy Cross, is currently Research Professor in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development as well as Senior Fellow at the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston College. Author of numerous works, including Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative; Hindsight: The Promise and Peril of Looking Backward; The Priority of the Other: Thinking and Living Beyond the Self; Do I Look at You with Love? Reimagining the Story of Dementia, and most recently, Toward the Psychological Humanities: A Modest Manifesto for the Future of Psychology. He also serves as Editor for the Oxford University Press series, Explorations in Narrative Psychology.
Dr. Freeman says about his presentation for this event: For many of us, recent history has brought in tow a barrage of disturbing, mystifying, and at times positively horrifying events and experiences. All of these are “metabolized” in some way. But how? More specifically, how might we begin to tell the story of the ways in which the state of the world has entered into our own embodied being? In addressing these questions, I will discuss the movement from past to present as well as from present to past. How can we begin to understand how a given event–the morning after the election of Donald Trump, say, is carried into the future? And how can we begin to understand how a given experience in the present–for instance a bout of despairing malaise–may have originated? In short: How does one determine what sorts of stories are to be told, and what sorts of clues can the body provide?

Daniel Goldin, MFT, PsyD
serves as editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry. He has written numerous articles for Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Psychoanalysis: Self and context and Psychoanalytic Inquiry. His book Toward a Pragmatic Psychoanalysis: Bringing Nature, Nurture and Culture Together again will be published by Routledge this year. He and Daniel Posner create and host the popular podcast “The Conversation,” which confronts important issues of the day in a psychoanalytic vein.
For Dr. Goldin’s presentation, he says: I will be describing two kinds of empathy, one which is immediate and obviously embodied, which I call perception empathy, and another which expands from the first to wrap an intimate story around a patient’s situation, which I am calling extended empathy. Empathy so conceived provides a long tether. The stories we put together with our patients sometimes reach into infancy, sometimes into contemporary culture and politics, but they inevitably return to the body, to the feelings that started the excursion. Stories describe how we feel and change how we feel at the same time. It will be a pleasure to think together about this ordinary (but also extraordinary) aspect of our work.

Lynn Preston, MA, MS, LP
is a New York City-based relational psychoanalyst and supervisor. She is the founding director of the Community Empowerment Project and Help for Helpers, an online covid-inspired international support group for therapists. She has written on the subjects of implicit experience and the use of the analyst’s subjectivity. She has a special interest in applying self-psychological principles to groups and communities.

ABOUT THE MODERATORS/CO-DIRECTORS OF THE WILHELM REICH CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EMBODIMENT
Doris Brothers, PhD, is a co-founder and faculty member of the Training and Research in Intersubjective Self Psychology Foundation (TRISP). She was co-editor with Roger Frie of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context from 2015-2019 and is an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry. She serves on the council of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IAPSP). Doris has published many journal articles and book chapters as well as four books. Her latest book, written with Jon Sletvold is entitled A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: TALKING BODIES. Her earlier books are: Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty: Trauma-Centered Psychoanalysis (2008), Falling Backwards: An Exploration of Trust and Self-Experience (1995), and with Richard Ulman, The Shattered Self: A Psychoanalytic Study of Trauma (1988). She has presented her work internationally and leads supervision/study groups with Jon Sletvold. She sees patients in private practice in New York and Oslo.

Jon Sletvold, PsyD, is founding board director and faculty member of the Norwegian Character Analytic Institute.He has written articles and book chapters on embodiment in psychoanalytic theory, practice, and training. He is the editor of four books and the author of The Embodied Analyst: From Freud and Reich to Relationality, which won the Gradiva Award in 2015. In 2019 he wrote From Muscular Armor to Bodies in Dialogue with Per Harbitz. His latest book, written with Doris Brothers is A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: TALKING BODIES. Dr. Sletvold has presented his work internationally and co-leads online supervision/study groups on embodiment in Europe, North America and China with Doris Brothers. He practices in Oslo and New York.

ABOUT THE WILHELM REICH CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EMBODIMENT
Inspired by the pioneering work of Wilhelm Reich and encouraged by the recent surge of interest in embodiment among clinicians, co-Directors Drs. Doris Brothers and Jon Sletvold have founded the Center. With it, they are introducing an online forum for dialogues about the ways in which embodiment affects the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.
A wide range of approaches to embodiment have emerged in the last two decades that have led them to believe that a “turn toward embodiment” is underway. In the interest of furthering this turn they are offering a format that differs from the usual at psychoanalytic meetings. Rather than featuring a paper presenting a specific theorist or clinician followed by discussions, they intend that each event will center around a specific topic. Speakers from around the world, each of whom employs a different perspective on embodiment, will be invited to participate in a roundtable conversation of the topic. Afterward, online participants will be encouraged to join the conversation.
Learn more about The Wilhelm Reich Center for the Study of Embodiment

LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR THIS EVENT:
1. By the end of this presentation attendees will be able to evaluate the
advantages of using body-based language rather than concept-based
language for psychoanalysis.
2. By the end of this presentation attendees will be able to discuss
communication that takes place in the silences between the words.

LGBTQ Study Group - NICOLAS EVZONAS, PhD
2025-10-01 20:30 - 22:00
NICOLAS EVZONAS, PhD
Refracted Time, Gender, and the Analyst’s Trans Becomings
Wednesday, October 1 2025
8:30 – 10:00 PM (EST)
Description: This presentation articulates the psychoanalytic concept of shattered temporality with gender. According to Freud, the process of subject formation is the outcome of multiple post-hoc elucidations of one’s own experience in the framework of an intrapsychic logic. By contrast, Jean Laplanche emphasizes the intersubjective dimension of afterwardsness, which finds its ultimate raison d’être in the transference, where the analysand discovers new meanings of his or her experience at different and deferred times thanks to the analyst’s meaningful interpretations, thus promoting a novel subjectivizing process. Based on the Laplanchian framework and interdisciplinary thinking, the author moves away from the traditional psychoanalytic conception of gender as a solipsistic construction and fixed identity. He instead argues that gender constitutes an intersubjective process and a “narrative identity” (Ricoeur) that is endlessly rewritten under the sway of afterwardsness and in constant relation to the other(s) (i.e., family, peers, society, culture). Accordingly, he proposes to establish transness as the epistemological paradigm of psychoanalytic temporality and becomingness. The speaker further understands the violent reactions of certain analysts towards trans analysands as a revival of the analyst’s own traumatic narrative of gender, infantile sexuality, and primary terrors of formlessness. Finally, he illustrates how the working-through of the analyst’s countertransference agitations is likely to transform not only the analysand but also the analyst, who undergoes multiple transitions, detransitions, and retransitions within the inter-psychic, inter-temporal, and inter-processual space of the analytic treatment.

Nicolas Evzonas (PhD in Literature and PhD in Psychopathology and Psychoanalysis) is a Greek Cypriot Paris-based therapist in private practice. He is a candidate to the French Psychoanalytical Association (APF, IPA) and Associate Professor with tenure in Clinical Psychology at the University of Paris. Nicolas has written numerous papers on clinical and applied psychoanalysis published in Greek, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan peer-reviewed journals, as well as essays on films, theatre, and literature. He is the author of the French book Devenirs trans de l’analyste [Trans Becomings of the Analyst], which is currently being translated in four European languages. He is also co-editor of the Psychoanalytic Inquiry issue on “Sexualities, Gender, Class, and Race: A Psychoanalytic View from France” (2020) and editor of a double special issue of The Psychoanalytic Review on “Trans* Becomings and Countertransference” (2021 & 2022). His latest projects are a guest-edited French-based issue for Studies in Gender and Sexuality (2023) on perversion and a forthcoming edited volume on Trauma and Sexuality (2026), which gathers together psychoanalytic clinicians and scholars from all over the world.

on Zoom only, RSVP below
https://wawi.wufoo.com/forms/s1v361i7149pvzz/

For inquiries regarding The LGBTQ Study Group please contact
Esin Egit, PhD LP at e.egit@wawhite.org

EBONI BOOTH, Theatre, Writing and Lived Experience
2025-10-03 19:30 - 21:30
IN DIALOGUE: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE HUMANITIES
The 2025-2026 Colloquium Series
presented by the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute
OPENING EVENING: a Special Presentation
THEATRE, WRITING AND LIVED EXPERIENCE
EBONI BOOTH, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actor
with Hosts & Moderators, Roger Frie, PhD, PsyD, and Nancy Freeman-Carroll, PsyD, Co-Presidents of the Psychoanalytic Society
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3rd, 2025, 7:30-9:30pm/Eastern
Held in person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, New York City and via live stream online
1.5 CEs are available for attending. In order to receive your credit for attending, follow the instructions that are sent prior to the event.

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER
Eboni Booth is a Pulitzer-prize winning playwright and actor in New York City. Her plays include Primary Trust (Roundabout Theatre) and Paris (Atlantic Theater). As an actor, she has appeared in theatre and film productions. Booth is a graduate of Juilliard’s playwriting program, resident playwright at New Dramatists, and the recipient of a Steinberg Playwright Award, a Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, and a John Gassner award.

ABOUT THIS SERIES
From its very beginnings, psychoanalysis has existed at the intersection of science and the humanities. In the face of increasing pressures from evidence-based practice and medicalization, what can psychoanalysis learn from the humanities? Collectively, our speakers represent the leading edge in humanities and the arts and bring a diverse array of perspectives to bear. These talks promise to illustrate the manifest and often overlooked links between psychoanalysis and the humanities and provide a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary learning and dialogue.
All speakers will present their talks in person. We encourage everyone who can, to attend in person and continue the tradition of meeting together at the Institute. For those who are unable to join in person, we offer a real-time stream, to reach beyond New York to a broader audience.

This series is presented at no charge to its audience. Please consider making a donation to the Psychoanalytic Society when registering.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Overall objectives of this colloquium series:

Describe the many interactions between the humanities and psychoanalysis.

Explain how psychoanalytic practice can benefit from the insights of the humanities.

Objectives for this presentation:

Describe how theater understands the experience of individuals and their interaction.

Explain how theatre explores the internal life of the lonely person and the implications for psychoanalytic practice.

Halloween: Liminal Visions
2025-10-09 01:30 - 15:00
The Artist Study Group of The Psychotherapy Service for People in the Arts
with The Sexual Abuse Study Group

presents
Halloween: Liminal Visions
with Julie Marcuse, PhD
Thursday, October 9, 2025
1:30-3:00pm/Eastern

Attend in person or online as follows:
In person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, between CPW & Columbus Avenues
Online via Zoom at:

https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/8180152948?pwd=[REDACTED]

Please be sure to RSVP to attend: fvdillon@gmail.com

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
The book, Halloween: Liminal Visions is about a personal journey. Dr. Julie Marcuse records what she sees in “objective” reality through a lens of “radical subjectivity.”
Marcuse has used the documentation and interpretation of the manifest content of Halloween, with its emphasis on chaos, ambiguity, dread and death to master her feelings in response to living through the decline and death of her husband Donald.
Some of the photographs are surprising, fun and beautiful, while many are extremely disturbing. They attempt to link different domains of experience through color photographs with minimal manipulation. This book, her 3rd, is a testament to love, loss and her own capacity for survival, and it was intended to be a final gift to her husband. He died shortly before its completion.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Julie Marcuse, PhD, is a psychologist, trauma specialist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She is a graduate of the William Alanson White Institute where she continues to teach and supervise. She headed the Sexual Abuse Service there for 11 years, learning about witnessing, dissociation, vicarious traumatization and multi-disciplinary approaches to healing. She is passionate about the arts, from poetry to painting to music. She uses a platform called Blurb to self-publish her work.

Please join us for this presentation aligned with the commitment of the Artist Study Group to showcase the power of creating art to mitigate and master trauma.

Frances V. Dillon, MSW and Eric Dammann, PhD, are Co-Directors, Artist Study Group

ELIZABETH LUNBECK, Artificial Intelligence and its Implications: The ChatGPT Therapist and the Inner Analyst
2025-10-24 19:30 - 21:00
IN DIALOGUE: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE HUMANITIES
The 2025-2026 Colloquium Series
presented by the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS: The ChatGPT Therapist and the Inner Analyst
ELIZABETH LUNBECK, Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University
with Hosts & Moderators, Roger Frie, PhD, PsyD, and Nancy Freeman-Carroll, PsyD, Co-Presidents of the Psychoanalytic Society
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24th, 2025
7:30-9:00pm/Eastern
Held in person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, New York City and via live stream online
1.5 CEs are available for attending. In order to receive your credit for attending, follow the instructions that are sent prior to the event.

ABOUT THIS EVENT
The AI therapist is rapidly becoming a dominant figure in the psychotherapeutic landscape, embraced by the public and even more intriguingly by some clinicians—if not as a licensed therapist, then as a companion, a tool with which to better understand patients, or a therapeutic ally. Professor Lunbeck suggests that the appeal of ChatGPT “therapists” is to be found, in part, in their resolution of a longstanding problem for the field: the analyst’s personality, which has long prompted attempts to standardize and mechanize practitioners in the interest of reliability, replicability, and the demands of science. She suggests that Generative AI is the latest in a long series of innovations that not only achieves these goals but also does so in an improvisational and idiosyncratic register. Although observers routinely situate these new clinicians in therapy world’s CBT wing, they come just as much from the heart of the psychoanalytic enterprise.

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER
Elizabeth Lunbeck is a historian of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and psychology, and is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University where she teaches popular courses on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. She is the author of The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America; with Bennett Simon; Family Romance, Family Secrets; The Americanization of Narcissism; and four additional co-edited volumes. Lunbeck is an academic program graduate of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, a co-chair of APsA’s University Forum, and board member of PsiAN. She is currently writing a book on the analyst’s self from Freud to AI.

ABOUT THIS SERIES
From its very beginnings, psychoanalysis has existed at the intersection of science and the humanities. In the face of increasing pressures from evidence-based practice and medicalization, what can psychoanalysis learn from the humanities? Collectively, our speakers represent the leading edge in humanities and the arts and bring a diverse array of perspectives to bear. These talks promise to illustrate the manifest and often overlooked links between psychoanalysis and the humanities and provide a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary learning and dialogue.
All speakers will present their talks in person. We encourage everyone who can, to attend in person and continue the tradition of meeting together at the Institute. For those who are unable to join in person, we offer a real-time stream, to reach beyond New York to a broader audience.
This series is presented at no charge to its audience. Please consider making a donation to The Psychoanalytic Society when registering.

Learning Objectives
Overall objectives of this colloquium series:

Describe the many interactions between the humanities and psychoanalysis.

Explain how psychoanalytic practice can benefit from the insights of the humanities.

Objectives this presentation:

Discuss the implications of AI for psychoanalysis.

Explain how AI works and how it may be used.

This series is presented at no charge to its audience. Please consider making a donation to The Psychoanalytic Society when registering.

Dr. Benjamin Bernstein presents "What the Hell was That" - On Non-Directive Play Therapy with Adolescents
2025-10-30 11:45 - 13:00
The Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program
Presents a Colloquium
Benjamin Bernstein, PhD
“What the Hell Was That?”: On Non-Directive Play Therapy with Adolescents
Thursday, October 30, 2025
11:45 am to 1:00 pm
Offered in person at the Institute and online at
https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/99698610096?pwd=[REDACTED]

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
Dr. Bernstein explores the therapeutic power and complexity of non-directive play therapy with adolescents. Drawing from vivid clinical vignettes and psychoanalytic theory, he examines how activities that may appear unproductive — such as games, humor, or even sleep — can become profound vehicles for emotional regulation and relational growth when held within a responsive therapeutic frame. Through concepts such as Winnicott’s holding environment, Bion’s containment, and contemporary relational ideas about enactment and therapist subjectivity, his talk highlights how play helps both adolescent and therapist to tolerate uncertainty, engage symbolically, and rediscover spontaneity in the therapeutic process.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Benjamin Bernstein, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Fairfield County, Connecticut, as well as the adolescent psychologist at Silver Hill Hospital and founder of Redwood Psychology Group, which specializes in depth-oriented therapy for adolescents, families, and parents. His work integrates psychoanalytic and relational approaches with a focus on play, mentalization, and the therapist’s use of self. Dr. Bernstein writes and teaches on adolescent development, therapeutic play, family therapy and the psychology of sports fandom. His work has been published by the American Psychological Association and his writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, Axios and Psychology Today.

LGBTQ Study Group w/ Sam Guzzardi, LCSW
2025-11-05 20:30 - 22:00
Toward a Horizon of Potential:
Longing, Phobia, and Queerness in Psychoanalysis and Beyond
with Sam Guzzardi, LCSW

Wednesday, November 5 2025
8:30 – 10:00 PM (EST)
Description: In this presentation Sam Guzzardi will share an abridged version of his paper “Toward a Horizon of Potential: Longing, Phobia, and Queerness in Psychoanalysis and Beyond,” which was awarded the Tiresias Prize of the International Psychoanalytical Association. The paper takes a close look at a brief encounter with a prospective patient who insists on knowing whether the prospective analyst is a “biological gay man” despite being told the analyst identifies as a “queer person.” It wonders about how the notion of queerness may elicit forms of regulatory anxiety and regulatory violence. Borrowing from the work of Jill Gentile, the feminine and the vaginal are taken up as organizing/disorganizing paradigms in both methodology and content; the paper also interrogates the rhetorical move of deploying the logics of biology in the prospective patient’s inquiry. Ultimately, the author leans on the notion of queer potentiality developed by José Esteban Muñoz to dream forward another, more generative version of the interaction.

Sam Guzzardi, LCSW is a New York City-based psychoanalyst trained at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, IPSS. His written work on gender and sexuality in psychoanalysis has won numerous awards, including the Ralph Roughton Award of the American Psychoanalytic Association and, most recently, the 2025 Tiresias Award of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He is on the faculty of the National Institute of the Psychotherapies (NIP) and IPSS, and is an Associate Editor at Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context and at Psychoanalytic Inquiry. His clinical work focuses on questions of gender, trauma, development, sexuality, and loss.

Please note:
*Attendance is free, but registration is required.
**LGBTQ Study Group meetings are held on Zoom and they are not recorded.

For inquiries regarding The LGBTQ Study Group please contact
Esin Egit, PhD, LP at e.egit@wawhite.org

Alice Jones, MD, Cadence of Vanishing
2025-11-06 13:30 - 15:00
The Artist Study Group of The Psychotherapy Service for People in the Arts
PRESENTS
Cadence of Vanishing
with ALICE JONES, MD
Thursday, November 6, 2025
1:30-3pm/Eastern

Attend in person or online as follows:
In person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, between CPW & Columbus Avenues
Online via Zoom at:

https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/8180152948?pwd=[REDACTED]

Please be sure to RSVP to attend: fvdillon@gmail.com

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
Psychoanalyst and poet, Dr. Alice Jones will read from her memoir, Cadence of Vanishing, weaving together love, loss, and the profound work of witnessing human trauma. With clinical precision and a poet’s heart, Jones explores the delicate choreography between presence and absence that defines human connection.
The memoir follows Jones through four transformative years as she accompanies patients through their deepest wounds while navigating her own encounters with mortality. Jones captures the cadence of vanishing that marks every life — how we arrive, love, and leave. She reveals how deep listening becomes its own form of love, and how even in loss, we discover what endures.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Alice Jones is a physician, psychoanalyst, open water swimmer, and the author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Verse, and Best American Poetry. She has been awarded fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the NEA, as well as other literary prizes.
Thomas Ogden, author of What Alive Means: Psychoanalytic Explorations, says about her:
“Alice Jones’s Cadence of Vanishing is a meditative memoir in the form of diary entries in which many of the passages have the delicate feel of poetry. This is a penetrating exploration of the inner life of a poet through perceptive observations of the ordinary, reminiscent of Lydia Davis. It is an experience to be savored”.

Please join us for this engaging presentation!
Frances V. Dillon, MSW and Eric Dammann, PhD, are Co-Directors, Artist Study Group

ELLIOT JURIST, Learning From Memoir
2025-11-14 19:30 - 21:00
IN DIALOGUE: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE HUMANITIES
The 2025-2026 Colloquium Series
presented by the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute
LEARNING FROM MEMOIR
ELLIOT JURIST, Professor of Psychology and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center and City College of New York
with Hosts & Moderators, Roger Frie, PhD, PsyD, and Nancy Freeman-Carroll, PsyD, Co-Presidents of the Psychoanalytic Society
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14th, 2025, 7:30-9:00pm/Eastern
Held in person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, New York City and via live stream online
1.5 CEs are available for attending. In order to receive your credit for attending, follow the instructions that are sent prior to the event.

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
Memoirs are an unexplored and fruitful way to understand how patients experience therapy, and in particular, psychoanalysis. Drawing from diverse sources, Dr. Jurist argues that some memoirists see therapy as transformative; others regard it equivocally or even negatively. He also reflects on how beliefs about therapy have changed from the post-war era to the present. The memoirists whom he addresses are Lucy Freeman, Rachel Reiland, Alison Bechdel, Melissa Febos, Hua Hsu, Stephanie Foo, and Joan Peters.

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER
Elliot Jurist, PhD, PhD, is Professor of Psychology and Philosophy at the Graduate Center and The City College of New York, CUNY. From 2004-2013, he served as the Director of the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at CUNY. From 2008-2018, he was the Editor of Psychoanalytic Psychology, the journal of Division 39 of the APA. He is also the editor of a book series, Psychoanalysis and Psychological Science, from Guilford Publications, and author of a book in the series, Minding Emotions: Cultivating Mentalization in Psychotherapy, from the same publisher (the book has been translated into Italian, Chinese and Spanish, and was named best theoretical book in 2019 by the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis). He is the author of Beyond Hegel and Nietzsche: Philosophy, Culture and Agency (MIT Press, 2000) and co-author with Peter Fonagy, George Gergely and Mary Target of Affect Regulation, Mentalization and the Development of the Self (Other Press, 2002), the latter of which has been translated into five languages and won two book prizes. He is also the co-editor of Mind to Mind: Infant Research, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis (Other Press, 2008). His research interests concern mentalization and the role of emotions and emotion regulation in psychotherapy. In 2014, he received the Scholarship Award from Division 39 of the APA, and in 2024, he was given the Leadership award from the same organization. Recently, he is co-author with Norka Malberg, Jordan Bate and Mark Dangerfield of Working with Parents Across the Lifespan: A Mentalization-Informed Approach (APA Publications, 2023). Along with his wife and two children, he lives with two ancient, insubordinate dachshunds, one of whom smiles.

ABOUT THIS SERIES
From its very beginnings, psychoanalysis has existed at the intersection of science and the humanities. In the face of increasing pressures from evidence-based practice and medicalization, what can psychoanalysis learn from the humanities? Collectively, our speakers represent the leading edge in humanities and the arts and bring a diverse array of perspectives to bear. These talks promise to illustrate the manifest and often overlooked links between psychoanalysis and the humanities and provide a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary learning and dialogue.
All speakers will present their talks in person. We encourage everyone who can, to attend in person and continue the tradition of meeting together at the Institute. For those who are unable to join in person, we offer a real-time stream, to reach beyond New York to a broader audience.

This series is presented at no charge to its audience. Please consider making a donation to The Psychoanalytic Society when registering.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Overall objectives of this colloquium series:

Describe the many interactions between the humanities and psychoanalysis.
Explain how psychoanalytic practice can benefit from the insights of the humanities.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES THIS PRESENTATION:

Describe the role of memoir for understanding human experience.
Explain how memoir relates to self-reflection and psychoanalytic learning.

American Photographer Steve Giovinco presents Capturing Unguarded Moments
2025-12-04 13:30 - 15:00
The Artist Study Group of the Psychotherapy Service for People in the Arts
PRESENTS
CAPTURING UNGUARDED MOMENTS
with STEVE GIOVINCO, MFA
and TOM HENNES, Discussant

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4th 2025
1:30-3pm/Eastern

Attend in person or online as follows:
In person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, between CPW & Columbus Avenues
Online via Zoom at:

https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/8180152948?pwd=[REDACTED]

Please be sure to RSVP to attend: fvdillon@gmail.com

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
American photographer Steve Giovinco will present images from two photographic projects: the endlessly mysterious nature of couples’ interactions from his series, On the Edge of Somewhere; and evidence of epic but subtle changes in extremely remote areas around arctic Greenland captured in his long-exposure nighttime photographs. His use of long exposure photography in near-total darkness makes it impossible to see through the camera’s viewfinder, and instead Giovinco “feels” the image, in tuitively framing it in the dark. His experience of the process can be meditative, revelatory and… terrifying.
Informed by his unconscious as well as a sense of history, culture, and the environment, Giovinco’s work captures the immensity of human and natural spaces, and feelings of loss and transition. Curious about interpersonal and environmental change, his visual representations allow the viewer a deep, unfolding, and emotional experience.
Giovinco’s inspirations are far reaching: the paintings of Frederick Church and the Hudson River School; the photographs of Eugène Atget, Brassai; the films of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, the Scandinavian and German cinema, movies his father would bring home as a child; Roman ruins and large, abandoned industrial structures.
Indeed, in 1992 his need and vision led him to create an additional tool: a hand-held, large-format (8×8″) camera. Steve Giovinco’s works are exhibited in fine arts museums around the world, and are included in numerous private and public collections.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Steve Giovinco is a New York based photographer. His work is in numerous public and private collections around the world including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the California Museum of Photography. Exhibitions of his work include the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag; Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia; Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati; Winnipeg Art Gallery; White Columns, New York; Sadler’s Wells, London; Gyeongnam Art Museum, Korea. He was commissioned by one of the first blockchain art platforms, Monegraph. Giovinco earned his MFA in photography from Yale University. As a Fulbright Fellow Alternate, he received a Yaddo artist residency and numerous grants.
ABOUT OUR DISCUSSANT
Tom Hennes is founder of Thinc Design and is a member of the Institute’s Board of Trustees. Believing in the implicit power of exhibition as a medium to engage society in important ways, he has pursued an ever-deepening involvement with projects embedded in social and environmental justice. Hennes has written extensively on the multi-faceted role of museums and has taught at leading academic and design institutions including the Rhode Island School of Design, the Pratt Institute in Boisbuchet, France, New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and the University of Pretoria, among many others.

Join us for what promises to be an evocative presentation and discussion, with this very special guest.
RSVP to: fvdillon@gmail.com
Frances V. Dillon, MSW and Eric Dammann, PhD, Co-Directors of the Artist Study Group

How Does the Embodiment of Memory Affect Therapeutic Relationships?
2025-12-06 12:00 - 14:00
THE EMBODIMENT SERIES of 2025-2026
How Does the Embodiment of Memory Affect Therapeutic Relationships?
Françoise Davoine, PhD, Heather Ferguson, LCSW, Vincent Stephen, PsyD, Nancy Winters, MD,FIPA
with
Moderators Doris Brothers, PhD and Jon Sletvold, PsyD
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6th, 2025
Online from 12Noon – 2:00PM/Eastern
This series is presented in collaboration with The Wilhelm Reich Center for the Study of Embodiment

ABOUT THIS EVENT
“Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences.”
Since Freud and Breuer pronounced this in 1895, memory is still believed to play a crucial role in the bodily as well as psychological suffering of our patients. We now understand that memory is not only verbal (declarative) but is also nonverbal (implicit). Our speakers will share how they use body-based memory in every therapeutic encounter.
Comments by the speakers about their planned talks:
Françoise Davoine, PhD:

Two sentences that I will use in my conversation:
“My delusion happens at the crossroad of my little story and the Great History.” — told by a patient.
“The Body keeps the Score,” Bessel Van der Kolk’s title, as it embodies the premature knowledge of a catastrophic stoppage of time.

Heather Ferguson, LCSW:

As Pierre Janet discovered, traumatic memories are split off from conscious awareness and stored as sensory perceptions, behavioral reenactments, and symptoms. In my work with one patient, the nonverbal iterations of traumatic memory and their sensorimotor traces infiltrated our therapeutic space, guiding our attention to her body’s long-thwarted impulses.

Vincent Stephen, PsyD:

I will focus on dissociated memories that express themselves as movements and sensations in the therapeutic context, and on embodied identification in the therapeutic relationship.

Nancy Winters, MD, FIPA:

In 1926 Freud observed: “There is much more continuity between intrauterine life and earliest infancy than the impressive caesura of the act of birth allows us to believe.” I extend this notion to the emergence of the primitive or infantile in later bodily phenomena. In several brief vignettes I discuss how embodied experience — in both patient and therapist (via somatic reverie) — can be recognized as registrations of early “remembered,” yet unsymbolized and unmetabolized, experience.

COSTS
Professionals $50
Candidates and Students $30

CE CREDIT INFORMATON
2 CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS ARE AVAILABLE. Instructions about how to obtain available CEs are sent out to registrants in the entry link email, prior to the event. If you miss that letter (for late sign-ups), please request CE instructions after the event.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT ENTRY LINKS FOR ONLINE EVENTS:
Zoom entry links for this series are sent in two ways: (1) on the Registration payment receipt delivered directly to your email INBOX; and (2) manually sent out to Registrants 1-3 days prior to the scheduled event date. If you register immediately before the event’s start, you will receive the link only on the automatic payment receipt.
If you do not see a link letter in your Inbox, you should check Trash and Spam files. The Institute is not responsible for your email provider’s security settings. There are no refunds for paid events if a link was sent to you.
For general CE Credit information, click here

ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS
Françoise Davoine, PhD, has completed studies in classical literature. She has a PhD in sociology and is a professor a Sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, where, for 40 years, she has lead a weekly seminar with Jean Max Gaudillière entitled “Madness and the Social Link.” She has been a psychoanalyst in a public psychiatric hospital and outdoor consultation, as well as in private practice in Paris for 30 years. Dr. Davoine was a member of Lacan’s “Ecole Freudienne” until Lacan’s death in 1981. She is a member of ISPS founded in 1954 by Gaetano Benedetti, and is an Erikson Scholar in the Erikson Institute at Austen Riggs Center. Her books include History beyond Trauma (Other Press with Max Gaudillière); and, several published by Routledge: Mother Folly, Fighting Melancholy: Don Quixote’s teaching: A Word to the Wise (on Don Quixote’s second book); Jean Max Gaudillière’s Seminars (2 volumes); Pandemics, Wars, Traumas and Literature; Shandean Psychoanalysis: Madness and traumas in Tristram Shandy and Wittgenstein’s Folly.
Heather Ferguson, LCSW, is a faculty member and supervisor at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, and the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. As a certified hypnotherapist and practitioner of EMDR, she incorporates embodied techniques into her psychoanalytic practice. She writes and lectures about eating disorder treatment, the role of intergenerational transmission of trauma, and the use of embodied techniques to deepen psychotherapeutic engagement. She has chapters in“Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Echoes of Trauma in Psychoanalysis” (edited by Harris, Kalb, and Klebanoff) and “Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Perspectives from Analyst-Artists” (edited by Hagman). She maintains a private practice in New York City.
Vincent Stephen, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist working as a therapist and supervisor at the University Hospital in Tromsø, North Norway. He specializes in psychotherapy for people struggling with complex trauma, dissociation, and serious relational difficulties. He is a candidate at the Norwegian Character Analytical Institute in Olso, a training institution for embodied psychoanalysis. Dr. Stephen is interested in the therapeutic use of countertransference and has written on language, embodiment, suicide and authenticity. He is also a multi-disciplinary artist and musician and has written and performed in various works, including several collaborations with dancer Mirte Bogaert.
Nancy C. Winters, MD, FIPA, is a training and supervising analyst of the Oregon Psychoanalytic Institute, the Northwestern Psychoanalysis Society and Institute, and is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Oregon Health and Science University. She serves on editorial boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (IJP) and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly. She is also co-editor and chapter author of the 2022 Gradiva award-winning Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (2021); Autoimmunity and its Expression in the Analytic Situation: Contemporary Reflections on Our Inherent Self-Destructiveness (IJP, 2022), and A Home to the Lie: The Contemporary Perversion of Truth (in press, American Journal of Psychoanalysis). Dr. Winters has a full-time psychoanalytic practice in Portland, OR.

ABOUT THE MODERATORS/CO-DIRECTORS OF THE WILHELM REICH CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EMBODIMENT
Doris Brothers, PhD, is a co-founder and faculty member of the Training and Research in Intersubjective Self Psychology Foundation (TRISP). She was co-editor with Roger Frie of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context from 2015-2019 and is an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry. She serves on the council of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IAPSP). Doris has published many journal articles and book chapters as well as four books. Her latest book, written with Jon Sletvold is entitled A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: TALKING BODIES. Her earlier books are: Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty: Trauma-Centered Psychoanalysis (2008), Falling Backwards: An Exploration of Trust and Self-Experience (1995), and with Richard Ulman, The Shattered Self: A Psychoanalytic Study of Trauma (1988). She has presented her work internationally and leads supervision/study groups with Jon Sletvold. She sees patients in private practice in New York and Oslo.

Jon Sletvold, PsyD, is founding board director and faculty member of the Norwegian Character Analytic Institute.He has written articles and book chapters on embodiment in psychoanalytic theory, practice, and training. He is the editor of four books and the author of The Embodied Analyst: From Freud and Reich to Relationality, which won the Gradiva Award in 2015. In 2019 he wrote From Muscular Armor to Bodies in Dialogue with Per Harbitz. His latest book, written with Doris Brothers is A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: TALKING BODIES. Dr. Sletvold has presented his work internationally and co-leads online supervision/study groups on embodiment in Europe, North America and China with Doris Brothers. He practices in Oslo and New York.

ABOUT THE WILHELM REICH CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EMBODIMENT
Inspired by the pioneering work of Wilhelm Reich and encouraged by the recent surge of interest in embodiment among clinicians, co-Directors Drs. Doris Brothers and Jon Sletvold have founded the Center. With it, they are introducing an online forum for dialogues about the ways in which embodiment affects the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.
A wide range of approaches to embodiment have emerged in the last two decades that have led them to believe that a “turn toward embodiment” is underway. In the interest of furthering this turn they are offering a format that differs from the usual at psychoanalytic meetings. Rather than featuring a paper presenting a specific theorist or clinician followed by discussions, they intend that each event will center around a specific topic. Speakers from around the world, each of whom employs a different perspective on embodiment, will be invited to participate in a roundtable conversation of the topic. Afterward, online participants will be encouraged to join the conversation.
Learn more about The Wilhelm Reich Center for the Study of Embodiment

LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR THIS EVENT:
1. By the end of this presentation attendees will be able to evaluate the
advantages of using body-based language rather than concept-based
language for psychoanalysis.
2. By the end of this presentation attendees will be able to discuss
communication that takes place in the silences between the words.

Trauma and Healing through Symbolization with Betsy Hegeman
2026-01-08 13:30 - 15:00
The Artist Study Group of the Psychotherapy Service for People in the Arts
PRESENTS
Trauma and Healing through Symbolization
with Betsy Hegeman, PhD
THURSDAY, JANUARY 8th 2026
1:30-3pm/Eastern
Attend in person or online as follows:
In person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, between CPW & Columbus Avenues
Online via Zoom at:
https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/8180152948?pwd=[REDACTED]
Please be sure to RSVP to attend: fvdillon@gmail.com

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
Does art help us move from dissociated pain, shock, horror or numbness to more grounded, connected states? Can it help us get to a part of the conscious self where traumatic experience can be processed differently than just dissociation?
Betsy Hegeman will describe clinical examples exploring these questions, where the experience of making art helps patients move from their dissociated state to one of connection. As a group, we will then consider how cultural traumatic or existential events, like global warming, are denied, and how we might work to instead incorporate cultural experiences of connection.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Betsy Hegeman, PhD, is a faculty member and a Training and Supervising Analyst at WAWI, where she co-taught a class on trauma with Richard Gartner and Sharon Kofman. She is also a faculty member at NYU Postdoc and is professor emerita of anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice where she has taught for over fifty years. Dr. Hegeman has done field work in Puerto Rico and Colombia, focusing on migration, class structure, gender and poverty. She lives in Massachusetts with her daughter and grandson.

Please join us for this moving presentation and discussion.

Frances V. Dillon, MSW and Eric Dammann, PhD, Co-Directors of the Artist Study Group

From Room to Zoom and Beyond: Navigating Screen Relations-Based Psychoanalytic Care and Emerging Clinical Contexts
2026-01-10 10:00 - 13:00
From Room to Zoom and Beyond: Navigating Screen Relations-Based Psychoanalytic Care and Emerging Clinical Contexts
with Todd Essig, PhD
An Online Workshop for WAWI Graduates, Faculty and Candidates
presented by the WAWI Curriculum Committee
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10th, 2026
10:00am-1:00pm/Eastern

3 CE credits are available for attending this workshop

ABOUT THIS WORKSHOP
The recent IPA Code revisions affirm what many discovered through pandemic necessity: deep analytic work can happen on screens and speakers. But “can happen” is not the same as “happens in the same way.” Many now see that screen relations are similar enough to in-person work to sustain analysis, yet different enough to require us to rethink aspects of our clinical stance and theoretical framework.
This workshop will explore those similarities and differences, both psychologically and clinically: How do screen relations affect presence, attention, and the analytic frame? What happens to transference, countertransference, and reverie when we meet on screen? And, most centrally, how do we make the most of what’s unique about this context rather than in attending differences?
Throughout, we’ll strive to think together. Your questions, concerns, and clinical experiences are essential to this exploration. As broader context for our discussion, we’ll also consider how the rapid emergence of AI relationships is already reshaping the technological landscape in which screen-based care now takes place.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Todd Essig, PhD, is a psychologist and psychoanalyst known for pioneering in the creative uses of mental health technologies. In addition to his full time NYC-based clinical practice, he publishes, lectures, and consults internationally on forming best practices in the use of technology to serve human purposes. His primary academic affiliations are Faculty and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City and Adjunct Clinical Professor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis.
Dr. Essig is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) where he served on the Task Force on Distance Training and on the Task Force on Training in Contemporary Times where he co-authored task force reports. As a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), he co-chaired the COVID-19 Response team. Recently, in the current center of his non-clinical professional life, he founded and is Co-Chair of APsA’s Council on Artificial Intelligence. He teaches and lectures at institutes and societies in the US and in Japan, Canada and England.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE INFORMATION
By completing this class:
1. Attendees will be able to name the process by which online sessions operate similarly to in-person sessions
2. Attendees will be able to list 2 of the 3 ways online sessions afford different experiences than in-person sessions
3. Attendees will be able to name the three interactive contexts operating in the AI Age

References:
Essig, T., & Russell, G. I. (2021). A report from the field: Providing psychoanalytic care during the pandemic. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 18(2), 157-177.
Lemma, A. (2025). What we don’t talk about enough when we talk about teleanalysis: A response to “The phenomenology of teleanalysis” by Dr N. Zapien. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 106(2), 363-374.
Zapien, N. (2025). The phenomenology of teleanalysis: A research study of the experiences of analysts and candidates in training analyses in the US during 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 106(2), 340-36

The Untold Stories of Itsy Bitsy: An Artistic Expression of Understanding Attachment Theory and How I Apply it to Clinical Work by Jill Leibowitz
2026-01-22 11:45 - 13:00
The Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program
Presents a Colloquium
JILL LEIBOWITZ, PSYD,
“THE UNTOLD STORIES OF ITSY BITSY: AN ARTISTIC EXPRESSION OF UNDERSTANDING ATTACHMENT THEORY AND HOW I APPLY IT TO CLINICAL WORK”
Thursday, January 22nd, 2026
11:45 am to 1:00 pm
Offered in person at the Institute and online at:
https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/99698610096?pwd=[REDACTED]

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
In describing this presentation, Dr. Leibowitz says, “I believe that open and playful communication between children and their grown-ups is a key component to fostering healthy development. Feeling a need to share this understanding with more of the adults in kids’ lives than I could reach in my private practice, I wrote and published two children’s books that model reflection, mentalization, and open emotion communication. My goal was to help children and their grown-ups talk and reflect together about tough emotional moments and to normalize the full range of emotions we all experience — ideas that reflect, from my perspective, the important takeaways from Attachment Theory.
Thus, through these books, I am attempting to communicate my understanding of Attachment Theory and how I apply it to the everyday clinical and parent-guidance work I do. In this presentation, I will read one of the books, share my process of engaging playfully to create the books, and talk about the Attachment Theory-related concepts that I hope the books illustrate.”

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Jill Leibowitz, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist with over 25 years of experience working with children, adolescents, adults, and families in her New York City private practice. She specializes in play therapy, psychotherapy, parenting support, and parent-child work, and she is a member of the Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Home Visiting Program. In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. Leibowitz teaches and supervises graduate and post-graduate students at several New York universities and institutes. She is the author of The Untold Stories of Itsy Bitsy, a children’s book series, and has contributed to blogs, podcasts, and academic journals on topics related to children’s emotional development, play and emotional literacy.

Learning Objectives:

To gain an appreciation for the central role of playful engagement in our clinical work and in development more generally.

To apply reflective, open communication practices to everyday, real-life scenarios that occur between children and their grown-ups.

To learn about one individual’s process of children’s book publishing and marketing.

BILL T. JONES, On the Continuity of Falling Apart and Rebuilding
2026-01-30 19:30 - 21:00
IN DIALOGUE: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE HUMANITIES
The 2025-2026 Colloquium Series
presented by the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute
A Special In-Person and Live-Streamed Event at New York Live Arts*
On the Continuity of Falling Apart and Rebuilding
BILL T. JONES, Award-winning Artistic Director, Choreographer, Dancer, Author, and Co-Founder of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and of New York Live Arts
with Hosts & Moderators, Roger Frie, PhD, PsyD, and Nancy Freeman-Carroll, PsyD, Co-Presidents of the Psychoanalytic Society
FRIDAY, JANUARY 30th, 2026 from 7:30-9:00pm/Eastern
* This event will be held in person at New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street, New York City. The venue will provide the link to its live stream.
You must register to attend. Please note that registration and charges for this event are being handled through the venue.

ABOUT OUR PRESENTER
Bill T. Jones is an artistic director and leading dancer, choreographer, director, and writer. He is co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in Manhattan and Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, an organization that strives to create a robust framework in support of the nation’s dance and movement-based artists through new approaches to producing, presenting and educating. Jones has choreographed for major performing arts ensembles and on Broadway and for other theatrical venues. The recipient of numerous awards including two Tony Awards, an Obie, a MacArthur “Genius” Award and Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, as well as a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, and of the National Medal of Arts, among a long list of others.

ABOUT THIS SERIES
From its very beginnings, psychoanalysis has existed at the intersection of science and the humanities. In the face of increasing pressures from evidence-based practice and medicalization, what can psychoanalysis learn from the humanities? Collectively, our speakers represent the leading edge in humanities and the arts and bring a diverse array of perspectives to bear. These talks promise to illustrate the manifest and often overlooked links between psychoanalysis and the humanities and provide a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary learning and dialogue.
All speakers will present their talks in person. We encourage everyone who can, to attend in person and continue the tradition of meeting together at the Institute. For those who are unable to join in person, we offer a real-time stream for most of the dates, to reach beyond New York to a broader audience.

Note that CEs are not available for this event.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Overall objectives of this colloquium series:

Describe the many interactions between the humanities and psychoanalysis.

Explain how psychoanalytic practice can benefit from the insights of the humanities.

Objectives for this presentation:

Describe how choreography of movements conveys meaning and autobiography.

Explain how mind and body inform dance and psychoanalytic treatment.
