hand moving scrabble tiles on a world map to spell "hope"

MaMHCA - MA LMHC continuing education credit approved

Hope in Hard Times: Building Community is a hybrid conference designed for mental health clinicians and allied professionals seeking to think together about the ethical, clinical, and institutional challenges of practicing in a time marked by social fragmentation, political instability, and collective trauma. Drawing on psychoanalytic perspectives and interdisciplinary dialogue, the conference explores how transgenerational trauma, structural violence, and bureaucratic systems shape both individual psychic life and professional roles—while also attending to sources of resistance, responsibility, and hope.

The conference opens with a framing panel on "Transgenerational Trauma, Resistance, and Radical Hope," featuring brief presentations by Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP; Morteza Modarres Gharavi, PhD, LP, PsyA; and Bindu Methikalam, PhD. This session situates contemporary clinical and institutional dilemmas within broader historical, cultural, and political contexts, establishing a shared foundation for the conference.

Subsequent sessions invite participants to engage with two central questions: how clinicians and institutions can remain ethically grounded in the face of dehumanizing bureaucratic pressures, and how professionals can speak and listen across differences of identity, power, vulnerability, and role. Throughout the conference, brief didactic presentations are paired with facilitated large-group discussions to support reflection, dialogue, and application to clinical and professional practice.

The conference concludes by turning explicitly toward action and connection, examining how psychoanalytic ideas and values can inform social engagement in clinical, educational, and civic arenas. Participants will be invited to identify shared concerns and areas of interest and to make collegial connections intended to support ongoing work beyond the conference itself. Rather than managing ongoing groups, the conference serves as a clearing-house for connection, emphasizing community-building, professional resilience, and ethical responsibility in difficult times.

Morteza Modarres Gharavi PhD, LP, PsyA

Conferences

2026 Fall Conference–Hope in Hard Times: Building Community

 $250; limited to 50 people at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA

This hybrid conference is designed for mental health clinicians and allied professionals seeking to think together about the ethical, clinical, and institutional challenges of practicing in a time marked by social fragmentation, political instability, and collective trauma. 

Join our Director of Admissions for a live, open Q&A on our treatment model, clinical fit criteria, and the referral process. Multiple dates available—registration required.

Sessions are scheduled from 5:00-5:50 p.m. (Eastern) on multiple dates throughout the year to accommodate clinicians' availability. Registration is required — select a date and register in advance to receive your Zoom link.

These sessions are designed specifically for clinicians and referral partners who want a clearer picture of what Austen Riggs offers, which patients tend to be the best fit, and how the admissions and evaluation process works.

If you're working with someone whose treatment has plateaued, become cyclical, or hasn't held across multiple levels of care, this is a practical opportunity to explore whether a Riggs referral makes clinical sense.

You're welcome to bring case-informed questions in general terms. Our presenters will provide an overview of the model and open the floor for discussion.

The structure and philosophy of our open therapeutic community

How our model differs from locked or highly structured programs

The clinical presentations for which Riggs-level care is most indicated

How we approach safety, responsibility, and relational treatment

The admissions, evaluation, and consultation process for referring clinicians

What length of stay and treatment trajectory looks like for patients at Riggs

How we collaborate with referring providers

Dr. Ridenour is available to address clinical questions about treatment approach, appropriate referrals, and the admissions process — both during sessions and through direct consultation.

Special Events

Austen Riggs Center

Online Information Series for Referring Clinicians

Are you a post-residency psychiatrist or postdoctoral psychologist interested in advanced psychoanalytic training?

Join us for a virtual open house to learn more about the Austen Riggs Center Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program and Fellowship and what makes training at Riggs distinctive.

During this interactive event, you’ll have the opportunity to:

Meet and ask questions of Director of Training 

Learn more about the clinical work, supervision, educational opportunities, and psychoanalytic training that shape the Fellowship

Ask questions about the program, application process, and life as a Fellow at Austen Riggs

Austen Riggs Fellowship

Everything You Wanted to Know (And More!) About the Austen Riggs Fellowship for Psychiatrists and Psychologists – A Virtual Open House

Learn more about our immersive psychoanalytic training for psychiatrists and psychologists who want to work deeply with complex patients in an open therapeutic community, integrating individual psychotherapy, systems thinking, family and group process, supervision, and personal/professional formation.

Austen Riggs Center on Main Street in Stockbridge, MA

If you or someone you love has been through multiple treatments without lasting relief, our admissions team is here to answer your questions—live, free, and on your terms.

Sessions are offered from 5:00-5:50 p.m. (Eastern) on multiple dates throughout the year. Registration is required, but there's no cost to attend. Select a date that works for you and register in advance—a Zoom link will be sent to you directly.

Choosing a residential psychiatric treatment program is a meaningful and often complex decision. These free online sessions are designed for individuals and families who are trying to figure out if residential treatment is the right choice. Our Director of Admissions will walk you through how Austen Riggs works, who it tends to help most, and what the process of getting evaluated looks like.

There's no pressure and no commitment. Just an opportunity to learn more and ask what's on your mind.

What makes Austen Riggs different from other psychiatric programs

The kinds of situations where Riggs-level care tends to make a difference

How we think about safety in an open, non-restrictive setting

What the admissions and evaluation process actually involves and what daily life as a patient looks like

Dr. Ridenour brings deep experience helping individuals and families determine whether Riggs is the right fit—and what to expect if it is.

Patients walking around the open setting campus of the Austen Riggs Center on Main Street in Stockbridge, MA.

Voluntary Residential Treatment in an Open Setting

Online Information Series for Prospective Patients & Families

Join us for a free, live online information session about the Austen Riggs Center—our open therapeutic community, our approach to intensive psychiatric treatment, and how the admissions process works.

2026-27 Friday Night Guest Lecture Series

Love throws off our psychic equilibrium. Even the best romantic relationship disturbs the ability to sustain one’s everyday existence as one did before. It is precisely this disturbance that makes love appealing and that draws us to it repeatedly. The disturbance of love provides a unique insight into the functioning of what Freud calls the death drive. When falling in love, we unconsciously opt for a psychic disturbance that involves elevating a singular object to a sublime status and giving it sway over the entire field of objects. My argument is that this is what occurs in the death drive: Through an act that sabotages our self-interest, we create a sublime object that orients our desire as a result of its sublimity. Love is the most revelatory manifestation of the death drive, a manifestation that shows what we gain psychically from the loss that this drive enacts on us.

Educational Events

Love with the Death Drive

Dr. McGowan examines how love disrupts psychic equilibrium and reveals the workings of Freud’s death drive. He argues that falling in love involves surrendering self-interest to elevate another into a sublime object that reshapes desire and gives meaning through loss.

If you are a clinician, college counseling professional, parent, family member, or emerging adult wondering whether a higher level of care may be needed, we invite you to join us for a live online information session about the Austen Riggs Online Intensive Outpatient Program. These sessions offer a practical opportunity to ask questions about how the program works, whom it may be appropriate for, and how to begin the admissions process. 

Sessions are offered from 6:00-6:50 p.m. (Eastern) on multiple dates throughout the year. Registration is required, but there's no cost to attend. Select a date that works for you and register in advance—a Zoom link will be sent to you directly.

Choosing or recommending an intensive outpatient program can raise a lot of questions. Is IOP the right level of care? How is an online program structured? What kinds of young adults tend to benefit? How does Riggs think about treatment, symptoms, relationships, and lasting change? These free online sessions are designed to help referrers, prospective patients, and families better understand the Austen Riggs Online IOP and whether it may be a good fit. Dr. Spencer Biel, Director of Online IOP, will provide an overview of the program, explain the admissions process, and answer general questions from attendees. For referrers, this is a chance to explore whether the Riggs IOP may be appropriate for a patient whose outpatient treatment is not enough, whose progress has plateaued, or who is stepping down from a higher level of care. For prospective patients and families, this is an opportunity to learn more about the program in a low-pressure setting before deciding whether to take the next step.

Each session will include an overview of:

How the program supports college students and emerging adults

What makes the Riggs psychodynamic team approach different

How the program helps patients understand emotions, relationship patterns, coping, and resilience

Eligibility requirements for patients in Massachusetts and Vermont

When IOP may be appropriate—and when another level of care may be needed

How admissions, consultation, and referral work

How Riggs can collaborate with families, referring clinicians, school counseling centers, and other treatment providers

The Riggs Online IOP is designed for college students and emerging adults, ages 18-30, who are physically located in Massachusetts or Vermont and are struggling with the academic, work, social, emotional, and relational challenges of young adulthood.

Dr. Biel brings deep experience helping individuals and families determine whether the online IOP from Riggs is the right fit—and what to expect if it is.

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions via UnSplash

Online Information Series About Our Online IOP

Join our Online IOP Director for a live, open Q&A about our online IOP for MA & VT college students and emerging adults (18-30).

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is one of the most misunderstood and stigmatized diagnoses in the world of mental health. This talk presents a contemporary psychoanalytic overview of BPD's diagnosis and treatment, rejecting the stereotypical "outside-in" portrait of a wild and hard-to-manage patient for an "inside-out" view rooted in the patient's subjective experience. BPD is framed, at its core, as a condition of pathological diffusion occurring chronically and across multiple domains, from the cognitive and emotional to the relational and cultural. Drawing pluralistically from objective relational, relational, and attachment theory and research, the presentation seeks to show how borderline phenomena is a part of the human condition that is relevant to everyone, and how it becomes a disorder when the development of selfhood is severely disrupted beginning early in life. Specific treatment considerations for the BPD population are considered, highlighting the importance of individualized care while acknowledging major contributions from two manualized psychodynamic treatments, Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) and Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT). Future directions for understanding BPD are also addressed, as we take up issues of reducing stigma and better integration of psychoanalytic ideas with the more mainstream perspectives from the cognitive-behavioral paradigm.

A Disorder of Diffusion: Contemporary Perspectives on Borderline Personality Disorder

Dr. Kriss explores borderline personality disorder (BPD) through a contemporary psychoanalytic lens, challenging stigma by focusing on the patient’s lived experience and developmental history. He also highlights key treatment approaches, including Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) and Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT).

In this lecture, Dr. Neal Vorus discusses an area of convergence between Hans Loewald’s processive model of therapeutic action and a more recent perspective advanced by Italian Field Theorists (especially Antonino Ferro and Giuseppe Civitarese). In particular, he compares Loewald’s (1960, 1975) view of analytic change as occurring through a process of overcoming a differential within the “force field” of the transference to Ferro’s (2009) depiction of a “constantly expanding oneiric holographic field.” While originating from different traditions, both perspectives reflect the crucial influence of philosophical perspectives aimed at deconstructing the subject-object split in western metaphysics (Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, respectively). Relatedly, both perspectives advance what might be termed a “general field model,” wherein the centrality of interpretation is both retained and transformed to reflect a dialogic, processive model of analytic change (see Vorus, 2025). In this model, the elaborative function of therapeutic interaction is emphasized above approaches aimed at divining and naming unconscious contents. Dr. Vorus will end his presentation by presenting several clinical vignettes and discussing implications for psychoanalytic technique.

Interpretation and the Elaborative Function

In this lecture, Dr. Neal Vorus explores connections between Hans Loewald’s model of therapeutic change and contemporary Italian Field Theory, highlighting a relational, process-oriented view of psychoanalysis. Through theory and clinical examples, the talk examines how therapeutic interaction fosters analytic change beyond traditional interpretation-focused approaches.

Explore a wide range of psychotherapy conferences, lectures, workshops, and educational events with Riggs clinicians, as well as online CE/CME courses. 

Therapy Conferences & Educational Events | Austen Riggs Center

For answers to any questions about events, conferences, or CME courses, please feel free to contact us.

In addition to wide ranges of published articles, interviews, and other materials featuring the work of Riggs clinicians, our Resource Center houses video excerpts and select full presentations from past academic conferences and educational events.

Educational conference given by the Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center.

The Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy of the Austen Riggs Center provides extensive psychoanalytic education and clinical training for professionals in all stages of their careers.

Educational Conference for Mental Health Professionals

An important part of the Erikson Institute's educational mission is providing online continuing education and continuing medical education courses with an emphasis on psychodynamic psychotherapy. Certificates and CE/CME credits are availabile for those with an MD, PhD, or PsyD, and for social workers.

Austen Riggs offers free CE/CME courses for mental health professionals.

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2026 Fall Conference–Hope in Hard Times: Building Community

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For answers to any questions about events, conferences, or CME courses, please feel free to contact us.

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