2025-26 Friday Night Guest Lecture Series

These days, the topic of intellectual disability seems frequently to function as a conversation stopper, and yet studying its history can teach us much we need to know about the seductive appeal of fascisms both past and present. The Question of Unworthy Life resituates the hundredthousandfold Nazi coercive “eugenic” sterilizations and “euthanasia” murders of people with cognitive impairments and psychiatric diagnoses in a longer history of lethal malice toward the vulnerable that was erotically charged already since the 1890s and inseparable from the promise of libidinal pleasures that facilitated the Nazi ascent to political power. On the basis of a wealth of rare archival evidence, Dagmar Herzog, PhD, revisits this grim history, exploring also the ambivalent enmeshment of those professionals in medicine, religious charity, and pedagogy principally responsible for provision of supports. But she recovers as well singularly courageous counter-voices at every step and, taking the story into the 2020s, chronicles the uneven, protracted battles to establish a revolutionary new image of the human and novel practices of education and care.

Educational Events

The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany's Twentieth Century

Dagmar Herzog, PhD, resituates the hundredthousandfold Nazi coercive “eugenic” sterilizations and “euthanasia” murders of people with cognitive impairments and psychiatric diagnoses in a longer history of lethal malice toward the vulnerable. 

Obsessional neurotic analysands are notoriously good at neutralizing a psychoanalytic treatment. They annul the role of the analyst, avoid the dimension of the Other’s desire (or lack), deny the relevance of parapraxes, and use free association as a means of defense. Given then that the obsessional, for Lacan, is never where they say they are, that their intellectual engagement with a treatment often occurs at the expense of their participation at the level of being, then what is it that makes change possible? This paper responds to this question with a vignette drawn from a lengthy piece of clinical work with an analysand who suffered from a series of urinary symptoms. A turning-point in the work came when the analysand, started speaking, free associatively, about a fictional scene in a novel (a scene of an illicit sexual encounter). This (mis-remembered) scene suddenly jarred a repressed sexual memory, which in turn posed for them a question of desire they did not know they had. Three Freudian and Lacan conceptualizations help illuminate the vignette: Freud’s account of beating fantasies; ‘aphanisis’ (or, the fading of the subject); and the idea of urinary flow as object a.

“A Fantasy I Didn’t Know I Had”: Sexual Fantasy as Turning-point in a Psychoanalytic Treatment

Three Freudian and Lacan conceptualizations help illuminate a clinical vignette presented by Dr. Hook. 

, serves as a consultant at this residential group relations conference. 

In a divided world, this tension can leave us feeling disconnected, anxious, or unsure of where we stand in our organizations, institutions, families, and workplaces.

Many of us grapple with stepping into leadership roles, sometimes holding back or not using our voice just when the system most needs our engagement.

Breathe. These challenges arise from the emotional dynamics of groups; the shared tensions that emerge whenever people join together to work, lead, and depend on one another.

This five-day conference offers a rare opportunity to explore these dynamics in real time. Participants can examine how authority is delegated, created, and exercised in systems to advance or hinder the work at hand. You can also explore how roles are taken up or resisted, and how dependence and autonomy shape leadership and followership alike."

Conferences

Authority in Systems - A Part and Apart: The Tension Between Dependence and Autonomy

Pricing varies, see registration page for details. 

Donna Elmendorf, PhD, serves as associate director and Megan Kolano, PsyD, ABPP, serves as a consultant at this residential group relations conference. 

, presents the virtual grand rounds "Daily Social Interactions and Suicide Risk: A Close Look at Momentary Dynamics and Their Implications for Assessment and Treatment" for the Jacobs School of Medicine at the University at Buffalo. 

Katie Lewis, PhD

Daily Social Interactions and Suicide Risk: A Close Look at Momentary Dynamics and Their Implications for Assessment and Treatment

Katie Lewis, PhD, presents a virtual grand rounds for the Jacobs School of Medicine at the University at Buffalo

2026 American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) National Meeting

 in San Francisco, CA, from January 27-February 1.

Film Workshop: Learning to Speak: A Documentary Film and Discussion About Creativity and Recovery


Presenter: Michele Beck, MFA (New York, NY)

This session features the screening of Learning to Speak, a 50-minute autobiographical documentary by artist, psychoanalyst, and filmmaker MicheleBeck, who, as a young adult, survived a suicide attempt and spent three and a half years in an open psychiatric hospital. The film explores the filmmaker’s return to the hospital decades later, following the death of her father, as she seeks to make sense of her early adult experiences and understand the therapeutic elements of that environment. Blending personal narrative, archival materials, and interviews with former patients, the film offers a deeply human and clinically relevant exploration of healing, memory, creativity, and the power of the therapeutic community.

Discussion Group 33: Treatment Resistance: Application of Psychoanalytic Ideas to Psychiatric Dilemmas 

Co-chairs: Eric M. Plakun, MD; Elizabeth F. Weinberg, MD

This discussion group addresses the application of psychoanalytic concepts to “treatment resistance,” defined as treatment nonresponse, focusing on work with high-risk patients. The session is targeted towards clinicians and clinical researchers. This small group activity supports improved competence through demonstrating specific approaches to working with highly complex, high-risk patients. The utility of psychoanalytic ideas in improving outcomes will be demonstrated, with discussion of how such concepts can improve management of high-risk behaviors and support the treatment alliance.

Discussion Group 45: Treating the Suicidal Patient 

Presenter: Martin E. Teising, Prof. Dr. Phil.

This session is intended for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists who are interested in understanding the complexity of work with suicidal patients. The format will be a case presentation of an intensive treatment of a suicidal patient, which is then discussed by experienced clinicians to gain a better understanding of the destructive and curative factors involved in such treatments. Attendees' participation in the discussion is encouraged as a way to further one’s thinking about self-attack, suicidal desperation, and life-sustaining interventions.

Clinical Conference for Residents, Psychology and Social Work Trainees, and Students, Presented by APsA Fellows: Eriksonian Integrity vs. Despair Struggles in an Obsessive Patient with Moral Rigidity and Somatic Symptoms 

This case conference will discuss the psychotherapy of a man facing profound emotional suffering in the wake of retirement, chronic medical illnesses, and unresolved early conflicts. Struggles with integrity vs. despair are complicated by obsessive tendencies, somatic symptoms, and core narcissistic vulnerability. Establishing authentic therapeutic engagement was hindered by false-self adaptations marked by compulsive and excessive agreeableness and moral rigidity. A prolonged hiatus unexpectedly served as a catalyst for growth by inviting reflection, autonomy, and deeper internalization. Developmental thinking of Erikson, Winnicott and Kohut are used to elucidate the treatment process.

Austen Riggs Center Clinicians Presenting at 2026 APsA National Meeting 

Daniel Knauss, PsyD, ABPP; and Jane Tillman, PhD, ABPP, present at the 2026 American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) National Meeting in San Francisco, CA, from January 27-February 1.

This presentation will use a decolonial lens to review current thinking in psychoanalytic case formulation that addresses a) intrapsychic functioning (Davanloo’s feeling-anxiety-defense model), b) interpersonal dynamics (Luborsky’s wish-response of other-response of self), c) personality structure (Kernberg’s level of personality organization), and d) structural forces (Raque and Meisels’ structurally informed case formulation). Drawing on an integration of Freudian, relational, and decolonial perspectives, the presentation will explore evidence-informed and theory grounded principles for attending to the intrapsychic, interpersonal, and sociocultural dimensions of clinical experience. Specifically, a decolonial approach to case formulation informs how the clinician draws upon specific tools and interventions to attend to a) intrapsychic functioning (defense work), b) the patient’s contribution to relationships (transference work), c) the therapist’s contribution to the therapeutic relationship (rupture-repair work), and d) how each of these are grounded in wider relational and sociocultural realities (“social” work). Put differently, such an approach to case formulation not only clarifies to what extent clinical phenomena is “due to personal/interpersonal” factors versus “sociocultural” factors (to the extent these can be separated), but also helps clinicians distinguish between experiences of trauma and sociocultural marginalization that require accompaniment, and the defensive, avoidant uses of such experiences which require confrontation. In sum, such an approach supports clinicians in being socioculturally responsive to patients’ needs without losing sight of intrapsychic and interpersonal contributions to their struggles.

A Decolonial Approach to Case Formulation: Pragmatic Applications for Therapeutic and Political Action

This presentation uses a decolonial lens to integrate intrapsychic, interpersonal, and sociocultural frameworks in psychoanalytic case formulation. It helps clinicians remain socioculturally responsive while distinguishing trauma that requires accompaniment from defensive processes that require confrontation.

The Austen Riggs Center Online IOP for College Students and Emerging Adults is now open in Vermont! This Open House invites you to learn about our program, which goes beyond mere crisis stabilization to help participants deepen self-understanding within supportive relationships and take fuller charge of their lives.

Special Events

An image of a virtual meeting or conversation.

Virtual Meeting

Online IOP Virtual Open House: How We Promote Self-Direction in College Students and Young Adults

Join us virtually to learn more about our Online IOP for emerging adults located in MA & VT. 

Psychic pain – often described as unbearable, overwhelming emotional suffering – has been increasingly recognized as a core contributor to suicide risk, yet its clinical contours and empirical significance have only recently begun to be clarified. This talk will review the concept of psychic pain within the broader landscape of suicidology, psychoanalysis, and clinical science and highlight emerging findings that illuminate its structure, correlates, and role in the unfolding of suicidal crises. Across both clinical and nonclinical populations, recent work has demonstrated that psychic pain is not a diffuse or monolithic experience but reflects distinct dimensions of affective overwhelm and perceived loss of emotional control. These facets of psychic pain show robust links with well-established suicide-related vulnerabilities, including trauma exposure, greater severity of psychopathology, diminished psychological resilience, and pathological personality traits. Together, these associations underscore psychic pain as a meaningful marker of heightened vulnerability rather than a nonspecific emotional state. In this presentation, the presenter will review findings from recent studies which show that psychic pain is not only associated with chronic risk but also exerts a powerful moment-to-moment influence on both affective and interpersonal experiences. Taken together, these converging findings position psychic pain as a dynamic, clinically actionable construct that may help identify both who is at risk and when risk is likely to emerge. Implications for assessment and intervention will be discussed, with attention to how recognizing and targeting psychic pain may support more precise and timely suicide prevention efforts.

Where the Mind Suffers: Understanding Psychic Pain and Suicidal Crisis

This talk will review the concept of psychic pain within the broader landscape of suicidology, psychoanalysis, and clinical science and highlight emerging findings that illuminate its structure, correlates, and role in the unfolding of suicidal crises.

This presentation begins with a summary of the theory of overwhelm, a way of conceptualizing working with intensity and excitation that is not about guarding the self (not about emotional regulation, not about protecting the ego from the drives) but which explores what becomes possible when one reaches the limit of what is bearable in oneself, when one follows the exigency of the unconscious. For the clinician, working with overwhelm is both a challenge and an art form: it requires us, as therapists, to make ourselves permeable to our patients in ways that make us exquisitely vulnerable and to take true risks the results of which cannot be guaranteed ahead of time.

To illustrate the difficulty, but also the extraordinary possibilities of such work, work that rends the self to allow something new to emerge, Avgi Saketopoulou, PsyD, will discuss the analysis of a Jewish patient whose encounter with the Palestinian genocide raised considerable anxieties and revived questions of identity, trauma, and intergenerational transmission. The clinical work–and the presentation–raise questions of ethics, of rethinking questions of intergenerational transmission and the debts it incurs, and the relation of the political to the psychic.

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

Avgi Saketopoulou, PsyD, talks about clinicians working with overwhelm as both a challenge and an art form: it requires therapists, to make themselves permeable to patients in ways that make therapists exquisitely vulnerable.

Learning to Speak - a film by Michele Beck

Registration opens: Monday, February 23rd, 2026

, joins filmmaker Michele Beck for a virtual screening her film 

as part of the 2025-2026 Explorations in Mind Courses offered by the 

Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (BPSI)

"Learning To Speak" Documentary Screening

Ed Shapiro, MD, joins filmmaker Michele Beck for a virtual screening her film 

2025-26 Friday Night Guest Lecture Series - Yasmin Roberts Memorial Lecture

Racism, and otherness, continues to be contentious for psychoanalysts to consider as a psychic phenomenon. Unlike aggression and sexuality, racism is held in silence and resistance, inhibiting exploration of this aspect of mind. By closely examining how and where the analyst/psychotherapist locates themselves racially and working through our resistance and countertransference to this type of exploration, this paper invites us to include these aspects of mind for our analytic use. This paper expands on how we become raced by exploring the transgenerational transmission of racial trauma, and its intra-psychic, structuralizing components. Using examples from the creative arts and clinical vignettes to demonstrate how being raced, as a universal phenomenon, is embodied and symbolized in mind, opens a therapeutic aperture for clinicians who may benefit from a psychoanalytic, intrapsychic perspective on this aspect of our shared humanity.

Becoming Raced-Psychic Consequences of Transgenerational Racial Trauma

Dionne R. Powell, MD, expands on how we become raced by exploring the transgenerational transmission of racial trauma, and its intra-psychic, structuralizing components.

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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Authority in Systems - A Part and Apart: The Tension Between Dependence and Autonomy

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