Clinical suicide risk assessment is often conducted using standardized assessment measures that fail to integrate contemporary theories and empirical findings, especially those pertaining the importance of analyzing the timing and contextual factors affecting suicide risk. This presentation will support a more nuanced understanding of patient-centered, ecologically valid methods of assessing risk for suicide in clinical populations, enabling attendees to develop greater precision and sensitivity in their risk assessment and intervention approaches.

Educational Events

Katie Lewis, PhD, is the director of research at the Austen Riggs Center.

Katie Lewis, PhD

Transforming Suicide Risk Assessment

Dr. Katie Lewis aim to help attendees develop greater precision and sensitivity in their risk assessment and intervention approaches.

2024-25 Friday Night Guest Lecture Series

Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists are currently showing considerable interest in, and concern over, the relevance of different forms of racism to psychological suffering and to the development of the field of psychoanalysis itself. This presentation aims to address gaps in current practice and clinical knowledge by reviewing recent approaches to the question of psychoanalysis and race. Stephens will foreground her own approach, using a combination of psychoanalytic theories of large group identity formation (Volkan), epidermalization (Fanon), and multiple self-states (Bromberg) to offer insights and knowledge for improving both psychoanalytic theory and practice. The presentation ends with a discussion of how a meaningful engagement with black feminist theory, the field that first theorized the intersectionality (Crenshaw) of our personal and social identities, would be useful for the development of psychoanalyst’s and psychotherapist’s ability to navigate complex issues around racial, cultural and ethnic identities in clinical settings.

Dr. Michelle Stevens will be presenting the December 2024 Erikson Institute Friday Night Guest Lecture.

Dr. Stevens presents "Relating Racially: Shifting Between We, They, and I Sense of Self" on December 6, 2024. Register for free CE/CME credit.

Dr. Michelle Stephens

Relating Racially: Shifting Between We, They, and I Senses of Self

Dr. Michelle Stephens addresses gaps in current practice and clinical knowledge by reviewing recent approaches to the question of psychoanalysis and race.

Part of the 2024 Virtual Roundtable Series,
Minding the Gaps: Addressing Mental Health Through the Life Cycle

Willard Ashley, MDiv, DMIN, DH, REv, SCP, NCPsyA, CGP; Nancy McWilliams, PhD; Robert Waldinger, MD

Erik Erikson outlined specific tasks associated with developmental stages across the life cycle. In Erikson’s model generativity, stagnation, ego integrity, and despair are all potential aspects of development in the second half of life. Aging brings a crisis and an opportunity to revisit and psychically rework all of Erikson’s eight stages. In this panel, three experts will examine the mental health challenges in the second half of life including: loneliness and the importance of relationships, loss of physical and cognitive capacities and adaptations to these changes, and spiritual concerns related to meaning, purpose, and approaching the end of life. A crisis may emerge when physical and cognitive health declines, when stigma increases isolation, and when persistent economic and healthcare disparities threaten the social safety net. Our three panelists will discuss these issues and ways to address mental health in later life.

Jane G. Tillman, PhD, ABPP, is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Director of the Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy at the Austen Riggs Center.

Jane G. Tillman, PhD, ABPP

Roundtable #6: Addressing the Mental Health Crisis in the Second Half of Life - Moderated by Jane G. Tillman, PhD, ABPP

Roundtable #6 in the 2024 Virtual Roundtable Series, 

Minding the Gaps: Addressing Mental Health Through the Life Cycle.

Dr. Theodore Fallon will present ongoing work illuminating a developmental perspective on working with adult patients in talk therapy. This perspective focuses on three different stages in child development:

Developing a core sense of self which in “normative” chronology takes place during the first 18 months of life;

The psychic equivalent mode of thinking predominates and the child lives in dyadic relationships in the present moment which has been identified “normatively” between the ages of 3 and 7 years of life, and;

After a watershed developmental moment, reflective thinking, object constancy, theory of mind, empathy, triadic and community relationships predominate in the child’s mind. The child “normatively” has the capacity to reach these psychological capacities by seven years of age.

At each of these three stages of development, growth promoting interactions, that is, good parenting, occur in one of three frames depending on the development of the child. In each of these three frames, the parent and the child predominantly follow one of three general sets of rules of engagement that fit the stage of development.

In ongoing clinical work, as well as extensive observations of residents’ interactions with patients, and recent public events over the last ten years, Dr. Fallon has observed that each adult thinks, behaves and interacts with others using predominantly one of these three sets of rules of engagement. In the context of a talk therapy, growth promoting interactions seem to occur when the therapist follows the rules of engagement that match the patient’s. Teaching residents to identify and engage in the rules of engagement that are growth promoting for each particular adult patient has enhanced the residents’ capacity for effective talk therapy.

Considering Child Development in Adult Clinical Work

Dr. Theodore Fallon will present ongoing work illuminating a developmental perspective on working with adult patients in talk therapy. This perspective focuses on three different stages in child development.

What does it mean to be both a social critic and a practicing psychotherapist? In view of the social and political crises we face, this is surely one of our profession’s most pressing challenges. This talk will draw on the early work of Erich Fromm, one of the twentieth century’s best known public intellectuals and least understood psychoanalysts. Fromm escaped Nazi Germany and was one of very few psychoanalysts to speak publicly about the dangers of fascism. As Director of Social Psychology and Psychoanalysis at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, he developed a view of the human psyche as fundamentally social and political in nature. Shortly before the United States declared war on Nazi Germany, Fromm published Escape From Freedom, which sought to explain why so many Germans enthusiastically supported Hitler. What has remained virtually unknown is that when Fromm’s was openly arguing against fascism, he was simultaneously engaged in a campaign to save family members and colleagues who remained behind in Nazi Germany. Drawing on unpublished Holocaust correspondence, this talk will show how the traumas and tragedies in Fromm’s family shaped his public stance against racism and destructiveness. For Fromm, the personal was always political, and time was short. In an era when psychoanalysts sought to keep the individual psyche strictly separate from social and political concerns, Fromm was ostracized for his progressive stance. Given the growth of fascism today, what can we learn from Fromm’s sense of urgency? How might Fromm’s ethical stance apply to our current situation and to our work as practitioners?

Dr. Roger Frie presents the January 2025 Erikson Institute Friday Night Guest Lecture.

Dr. Frie presents "Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm's Fight Against Fascism and Racism" on January 24, 2025.

Dr. Roger Frie

Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm’s Fight Against Fascism and Racism

Dr. Roger Frie asks: What does it mean to be both a social critic and a practicing psychotherapist? In this talk he draws on the early work of Erich Fromm to answer this and other questions. 

, serves as a panelist, alongside Joe Feldman, MBA, and Brian Hufford, Esq, in this virtual event moderated by Bevin Campbell, PsyD.

"The purpose of this panel is to empower clinicians with the knowledge and resources needed to support patients in obtaining appropriate reimbursement for treatment. Drawing on their diverse professional backgrounds, panelists will identify common barriers to care, demystify the systemic factors underlying these barriers, and provide practical resources – tools, templates, step-by-step instructions – to address them."

Empowering Clinicians: Practical Tools to Support Mental Health Treatment 

Dr. Kate Gallagher serves as a panelist on the first in a series of virtual events co-sponsored by PsiAN and the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology.

In this presentation Dr. Mucci will present the three levels of interpersonal traumatizations with all the consequences at the level of attachment styles, interpersonal neurobiology, and affect regulation and personability dynamics up to the point of developing complex PTSD and personality disorders.

A first distinction will be made between trauma deriving from early deprivation, maltreatment, abuse and trauma due to natural catastrophes. Only the first kind of traumatization deriving from interpersonal trauma and abuse create the dissociative structure which is at the roots of the most severe psychopathology, namely severe personality disorders with severe difficulties in affect regulation, in dynamics of attachment and in mind-body and brain integration. From this structure the most severe psychopathology derives, with possible suicidality, self-harming, eating disorders and severe addictions.

Dr. Clara Mucci will present the April 2025 Erikson Institute Friday Night Guest Lecture.

Dr. Mucci presents "Interpersonal Trauma and the Developmental Roots of Personality Disorders" at the April 25, 2025, Erikson Institute virtual Friday Night Guest Lecture.

Dr. Clara Mucci

Interpersonal Trauma and the Developmental Roots of Personality Disorders

Dr. Clara Mucci presents the three levels of interpersonal traumatizations with all the consequences at the level of attachment styles, interpersonal neurobiology, and affect regulation and personability dynamics up to the point of developing complex PTSD and personality disorders.

This presentation will address the recent shift towards was has been termed an “ontological” approach to psychoanalysis (Ogden 2019), in which experiencing and becoming oneself more fully are seen as the goals of treatment, with the generation of knowledge taking a back seat. Through a close reading of Bion and Winnicott it will argue against the dichotomization of knowing and being that is often implicit in this framework. Rather than privileging one over the other, it will propose that both Bion and Winnicott view knowing is inextricably bound up with being, given the object psychoanalysis is attempting to know and to reach. This has consequences for how we work, and helps protect against the idealization of experiencing and other trends than can arise within the “ontological” analysis literature. A case example will be used to illustrate.

The Place From Which We Know: a Response to the “Ontological” Turn in Psychoanalysis

Dr. Hannah Wallerstein address the recent shift towards was has been termed an “ontological” approach to psychoanalysis (Ogden 2019), in which experiencing and becoming oneself more fully are seen as the goals of treatment, with the generation of knowledge taking a back seat.

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.

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.

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