, will present at the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology 45th Annual Spring Conference in New York City.  

Trauma, Memory, and Possibility: Opposing Institutional Oppression


Dr. Marilyn Charles is chair and moderator with presenters: Aditi Gupta (Adelphi University); Niyamat Narang (University of Edinburgh); Ana Sofía Hernández (Independent Researcher); Maryam Baniasadi (University of Essex)


Dr. Hannah Schmitt presents with Ari Brostoff, Robert Cavooris, JJ Mull, Lily Scherlis, Chloe Murtagh. 


Dr. Marilyn Charles hosts a meet-the-author event in relation to her latest book, 

The Establishment and the Mystic: Transgenerational Trauma, Resistance, and Radical Hope


Dr. Marilyn Charles is chair and moderator with presenters: Morteza Modares Gharavi (Pratt Institute & William Alanson White Institute); Bindu Methikalam (Chestnut Hill College)

Conferences

Drs. Marilyn Charles & Hannah Schmitt Present at Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology Annual Conference

Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP, and Hannah Schmitt, PsyD, will present at the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology 45th Annual Spring Conference in New York City. 

If you or someone you know is a post-residency psychiatrist or postdoctoral psychologist, please join us for a virtual open house to learn more about our unique and exceptional Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program and Fellowship Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program and Fellowship. 

During this virtual event, you will have an opportunity to:

Hear from and ask questions to Director of Training 

Learn about core aspects of the Fellowship training and what the day-to-day life of a Fellow at Riggs looks like

Interact with some of our current Riggs Fellows

Our psychoanalytic training program is fully accredited by the Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education (ACPEinc) and is an approved institute of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA).

You may also learn more about the program on our Fellowship page: 

Special Events

Austen Riggs Fellowship

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

Join us for a virtual open house to learn more about our unique and exceptional Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program and Fellowship Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program and Fellowship.

The deployment of racialized fear as a political strategy has a profound impact on the individuals and communities who are targeted as objects of fear. In our current climate the use of fear as a tool of racialization is an important site for practitioners to consider in their work not solely with clients who are targets, but also when considering the work of clinical practice. 

This presentation will consider the framework of fear and racialization as conceived in the historic work of Frantz Fanon through the work of Afro Futurists who offer language and framing for holding sites of possibility in the Black imaginary in the midst of oppressive conditions of the present. While Blackness is an origin site of this discussion of fear, understanding the application of these concepts may be of significant utility in our current climate to individuals, practices, and spaces who may be targeted as objects of fear. 

This presentation will center the significance of understanding what fear can do to people, while identifying the necessity of holding autonomous sites of possibility for both the client, practitioner, and communities in which people reside.

Educational Events

Race, Fear, and the American Way

Dr. Moore considers the framework of fear and racialization as conceived in the historic work of Frantz Fanon through the work of Afro Futurists who offer language and framing for holding sites of possibility in the Black imaginary in the midst of oppressive conditions of the present.

CME/CEUs AVAILABLE: 16 hours CME/CEUs are available for physicians, psychologists, nurses, and social workers.

During moments of uncertainty, how do we draw upon and make use of our living, embodied experience? What happens when we open the channels to our emotions and anxieties and register what they are telling us before we can consider what to do about it? For the poet John Keats, this way of working—what he called negative capability—was 

the capacity to remain ‘in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’

 How do we recognize and work with the anxiety that arises when the future feels unclear?

In many parts of the world, we are witnessing a moment in which individuals have exercised acts of leadership on behalf of their communities in the face of authoritarianism and overlapping organizational crises. These acts demonstrate that leadership can arise from any position, whether or not one holds formal authority. However, these acts may often carry real risks and varying degrees of danger. Turning toward one’s own emotional experience can become a powerful and often vulnerable expression of citizenship—helping us discern when and when not to act amid moments of social uncertainty.

Registering one's internal experience offers valuable insights into being part of any group, whether it be work, family, or society. Every member of a group has a unique window into the group’s dynamics. Recognizing and naming that experience can help the group reflect, reorient, and reengage its capacity to work on its task. This kind of attention to experience is itself an act of leadership—one that can emerge from anyone.

This workshop is designed to strengthen participants’ ability to exercise leadership in a broad range of work roles through finding one's negative capability and taking up a consultative stance. Participants learn to recognize the value of their inner experience - thoughts, feelings, associations, fantasies, daydreams, pre-occupations - and to articulate them to further the group’s purpose and task, be it in a work, community, or family context.

Leading from Experience: Finding Your Negative Capability

$550.00 ($450 for Austen Riggs, CSGSS, and AKRI members)

This workshop is designed to strengthen participants’ ability to exercise leadership in a broad range of work roles through finding one's negative capability and taking up a consultative stance.

The Freud Foundation US, Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna, and the Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center

In-person (at the Austen Riggs Center) and virtual attendance options. Click the register link for more information. 

The final roundtable examines how digital technologies are reshaping psychic life within the context of place and its disembodied absence. What becomes of presence, intimacy, and therapeutic containment in virtual space? Panelists will consider how teletherapy, online rituals, and screen-mediated relationships challenge and extend traditional psychoanalytic concepts, including transitional space, the container-contained, and the skin ego.

This session offers a space for reflection on disembodiment, connection, and the symbolic potential of virtual environments—inviting new ways of thinking about psychic life in the digital age.

Rooted & Displaced: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Meaning of Place. An International Roundtable Series

", a collaboration between the Sigmund Freud Museum, the Freud Foundation US and the Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center.

Dislocated Presences: Technology, the Psyche, and the Meaning of Virtual Space

This roundtable (with in-person and virtual attendance options) examines how digital technologies are reshaping psychic life within the context of place and its disembodied absence.

This session highlights the need to address the current inequitable access to psychological assessment services by acknowledging and embracing different levels of assessment versus a more traditional comprehensive assessment approach, and the potential role of various health care providers other than psychologists. While comprehensive assessments are highly valued, they are costly, often not adequately covered by insurance, and not readily available for many individuals, especially those from minoritized groups. In addition, one must be highly qualified to complete such an assessment; thus, supply is short. The current alternatives of a lengthy waitlist or simply bypassing an assessment are unacceptable and in direct opposition to social justice values. Instead, applying a population health model including a multidisciplinary approach that systematically and thoughtfully offers universal screenings and targeted assessments rather than primarily comprehensive ones along with overall promotion of health and emotional well-being is the way forward. This multi-tiered approach utilizes preventative tools and early detection and intervention applied to more or even all people that can be completed by a range of mental health and health trained individuals. Although not new, a population health approach has yet to be widely applied to psychological assessment. The different levels will be described including purpose, scope, type of providers considered, and resources necessary as well as advantages and limitations.

Psychological Assessment and Access: A Multidisciplinary Population Health Approach

Dr. Hadas Pade presents about inequitable access to psychological assessments and advocates for a multi-tiered, population health approach using broader providers and earlier, more accessible screenings.

Riggs will exhibit and clinical staff members 

2026 American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting

 Room 301 (LL), Moscone Convention Center


Psychodynamic Psychopharmacology: Using Practical Psychodynamics to Understand and Address Pharmacologic Treatment-Resistance


 Although psychiatry now relies more on evidence-based and better-tolerated treatments, outcomes have not significantly improved, in part because biologically reductionistic systems often neglect the powerful psychosocial factors that influence prescribing and contribute to treatment resistance. Psychodynamic psychopharmacology addresses this gap by integrating psychodynamic principles into medication management, teaching clinicians how to prescribe in ways that enhance outcomes, address resistance, and support patients’ development and wellbeing.

 Practical Psychodynamic Skills for Treating the Difficult Patient: Psychotherapy, Pharmacotherapy, and the Treatment System


 Psychoanalysis and a psychodynamic perspective remain highly relevant in modern psychiatry, especially for patients labeled “difficult” or treatment-resistant, as neuroscience and genomic research support a biopsychosocial rather than purely biomedical model. By integrating psychodynamic concepts—such as the therapeutic alliance, transference and countertransference, unconscious meanings of medication, and system enactments—clinicians can better address treatment resistance and improve outcomes through coordinated biomedical, relational, and social interventions.

 Bridging Traditions: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Psychodynamic Therapy for Process-Oriented Care


Summary: While Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and psychodynamic psychotherapy originate from distinct traditions - behaviorism and psychoanalysis - they share notable common ground: a focus on process over content, acknowledgment of resistance, and a goal of transforming patients’ relationships with their internal experiences. This session will explore how psychodynamic concepts like transference and the depressive position can deepen ACT work, and how ACT’s emphasis on psychological flexibility, values-based living, and present-moment awareness can inform psychodynamic interventions. Our expert panel - drawing from ACT training, psychoanalytic psychiatry, integrative psychotherapy, and creative modalities - will provide attendees with a conceptual framework, clinical vignettes, and experiential exercises illustrating the potential of an integrative approach. We will encourage audience participation throughout, culminating in take-home tools to enhance therapeutic effectiveness across modalities. 

APA Psychotherapy Caucus and the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry 3rd Annual Meet and Greet Mixer


 Rooftop 25 (25 Lusk Street, San Francisco, CA)

 Room 207/215 (CU), Moscone Convention Center


 Behind the Mask: When Trauma Looks Like Depression, Anxiety, ADHD or Psychosis


 Rachel Yehuda, PhD; Lauren Alyse Lepow, MD, PhD; Emily Elizabeth Haas, MD; 

 When recommended psychiatric treatments yield limited, paradoxical, or inconsistent results, incorporating developmental and relational trauma into case formulation can clarify patterns of symptoms, attachment, and treatment response that diagnosis alone cannot explain. A trauma-informed, psychodynamically aware approach—attending to meaning, alliance, and the prescribing relationship—helps guide assessment, medication decisions, and emerging treatments, especially in complex or treatment-resistant cases.

 Psychiatric Chronification: When the Patient’s Use of Medications Does Not Promote Mental Health


 When patients are deeply attached to medications that may be ineffective or countertherapeutic, psychiatrists face the dilemma of continuing treatment and risking collusion or deprescribing and risking rupture of the alliance. A psychodynamically informed approach—using alliance, psychoeducation, and exploration of ambivalence—can help address covert medication misuse and foster a healthier, more effective relationship to treatment.

Plus, come see the Austen Riggs Center at booth #1930 in the exhibit hall

The Austen Riggs Center booth at the APA Annual Meeting.

Austen Riggs at the APA

Riggs Clinicians to Present at 2026 American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting

Riggs will exhibit and clinical staff members Marina Bayeva, MD, PhD; Samar Habl, MD; David Mintz, MD; and Erin Seery, MD, will present at the 2026 American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA.

From the mid-1940s until the 1960s and beyond, class, race, and maternal function were linked in metaphors of temperature in pediatric psychological studies of Bad Mothers. Newly codified diagnoses of aloof “refrigerator mothers” and overstimulating “hot mothers” were inseparable from midcentury conceptions of stimulation, mediation, domesticity, and race, including Marshall McLuhan’s theory of hot and cool media, as well as maternal absence and (over)presence, echoes of which continue in the present in terms like “helicopter parent.” Whereas autism and autistic states have been extensively elaborated in their relationship to digital media, this talk attends to attributed maternal causes of “emotionally disturbed,” queer, and neurodivergent children. The talk thus elaborates a media theory of mothering and parental “fitness.”

Matrix, Environment, Atmosphere: How Mother Became a Medium

Whereas autism and autistic states have been extensively elaborated in their relationship to digital media, this talk by Dr. Hannah Zeavin attends to attributed maternal causes of “emotionally disturbed,” queer, and neurodivergent children.

Keynote of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Rapaport-Klein Study Group

hosted by the Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy of the Austen Riggs Center

, George Makari, MD, considered how different psychological models – behaviorist, cognitive, phenomenological – accounted for xenophobia, and in the end, considered psychoanalytic theories of projection to most clearly define the most intractable form of this problem. With ethnonationalism and militarism on the rise around the world, Dr. Makari wanted to explore the social conditions that fostered such projected hatred. For that, he turned to Einstein and Freud’s 1932 exchange, “Why War?”. In Freud’s brief letter, he proposed a model for collectives, in which the problem of self-defense and the risk of social disintegration were central. How, we might ask, does this model apply to our present?

Xenophobia, War, and the Problem of Social Disorder: Keynote of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Rapaport-Klein Study Group

Dr. Markri will speak about how different psychological models, especially psychoanalytic theories of projection, help explain xenophobia and its persistence. Drawing on Freud and Einstein’s exchange “Why War?”, he will explore how social conditions and collective fears contribute to rising ethnonationalism and projected hatred today.

Psychosis Care and Connection conference image

Psychosis Care and Connection is an immersive gathering that brings together clinicians, advocates, researchers, and people with lived experience to explore compassionate, person-centered approaches to psychosis care. Hosted by the Austen Riggs Center, Ellenhorn, and Gould Farm, the event creates space for meaningful dialogue about innovative treatment models, recovery-oriented practices, and the importance of community in supporting people living with psychosis.

Through presentations, conversations, and experiential activities, participants will engage with emerging ideas across residential and community-based settings while building relationships with others committed to transforming systems of care. Set in the Berkshires, the retreat-style environment encourages reflection, connection, and collaboration among those working to advance more humane and effective approaches to psychosis treatment.

Psychosis Care and Connection 2026:  A Retreat on Humanistic Approaches

A roundtable retreat with the aim of fostering dialogue, sharing approaches to working with psychosis, and nurturing community.

Research in the last four decades has shown a strong correlation between childhood adversity (e.g., sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional neglect) and psychosis, which recasts chronic psychosis as a trauma-related/stress/related disorder requiring psychotherapy as well as medication. This presentation will describe how psychotic symptoms can be understood as meaningful expressions of a psychotic person’s past history and current state of mind, manifestations of a person’s subjective world that provide invaluable guides to a person's emotional ailments. The talk will show how transference in psychotherapy can be understood as an inevitable consequence of the Bayesian predictive processing model of brain function and how delusions and other psychological defenses emerge as a natural consequence of the neuroscientific conception of the mind as a self-organizing system.

Michael Garrett, MD

Links Between Childhood Trauma, Psychosis, the Bayesian Predictive Processing Model of Brain Function, Transference, and the Mind Conceived as a Self-Organizing System

Dr. Michael Garrett's presentation will describe how psychotic symptoms can be understood as meaningful expressions of a psychotic person’s past history and current state of mind, manifestations of a person’s subjective world that provide invaluable guides to a person's emotional ailments.

Engaging suicidal clients in treatment and recovery is intense and challenging. Clients may state: “I just want to die”, “Nothing is going to help”, or “If you discharge me, I’m going to kill myself”. Therapists can sometimes feel helpless, hopeless and trapped in the responsibility of holding their client’s life in their hands. In this presentation, Dr. Gregory will share principles and techniques grounded in Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy theory, research, and extensive front-line experience to shed light on complex cases and common therapeutic dilemmas, offering a path forward for both therapists and clients.

Resolving Therapeutic Dilemmas in Suicidal Clients Using Principles of Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy

Dr. Robert J. Gregory, will share principles and techniques grounded in Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy theory, research, and extensive front-line experience to shed light on complex cases and common therapeutic dilemmas, offering a path forward for both therapists and clients.

Clients come to therapy with entrenched ideas about illness, health, and disability. How they conceptualize disability impacts all aspects of therapy, including goals, acceptable interventions, and the therapeutic relationship. These conceptualizations, called Models of Disability in the literature, are one aspect of Disability Affirmative Therapy. The models are Moral, Medical, Social and Biopsychosocial models. Most clients have some combination of each model and its positive and negative connotations. This presentation covers the four models of disability and gives examples of how clients talk within their model, and how that affects their responses to microaggressions. The relationship of models to mental health will be discussed.

How We Conceptualize Disability and Why it Matters Clinically

Dr. Rhoda Olkin covers the four models of disability and gives examples of how clients talk within their model, and how that affects their responses to microaggressions.

This presentation introduces the concept of intersession processes—patients’ thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and internalized experiences of therapy and therapist between sessions—and examines their relevance from a contemporary psychodynamic perspective. Drawing on psychodynamic theory and empirical research, the talk will discuss how intersession processes may illuminate clinically meaningful fluctuations in suicidal ideation, including both protective and risk-related dynamics in outpatient treatment. Particular attention will be given to recent findings showing how both between-person and within-person variation in intersession experience can deepen our understanding of suicidal processes beyond symptom severity alone. It will further consider how the study of intersession life may open new avenues for clinically sensitive routine monitoring, smartphone-based assessment, and personalized interventions, while also inviting a critical discussion of the conceptual and methodological limitations of integrating intersession-focused assessment into care.

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

Dr. Mareike Ernst introduces the concept of intersession processes—patients’ thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and internalized experiences of therapy and therapist between sessions—and examines their relevance from a contemporary psychodynamic perspective.

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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Dislocated Presences: Technology, the Psyche, and the Meaning of Virtual Space

Past Presentations

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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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