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

Conferences

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.

Join our Director of Admissions and Director of Psychological Testing 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

 — Director of Admissions and Associate Medical Director

 — Associate Director of Admissions and Director of Psychological Testing

Dr. Habl and Dr. Ridenour are 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

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 and Director of Psychological Testing 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

—Director of Admissions and Associate Medical Director

—Associate Director of Admissions and Director of Psychological Testing 

Both Dr. Habl and Dr. Ridenour bring 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.

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.”

Educational Events

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.

This roundtable discussion is designed for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, candidates and trainees, and interdisciplinary scholars of psychoanalysis. The roundtable examines declining engagement with psychoanalytic institutes, including financial barriers, training experiences, the changing and/or unclear mission of psychoanalytic organizations/institutes, generational differences, and institute culture. Panelists from different institutes, career stages, and theoretical orientations will discuss how institutional participation supports clinical development, professional identity, and community, as well as the factors that discourage involvement. Attention will be given to issues of diversity, belonging, clinician burnout, and the relevance of institutional life to current practice. The discussion will include both local institutes and national organizations and will identify practical approaches to strengthen participation and improve institutional relevance. 

RECORDING INFORMATION: This symposium will be recorded. All registrants will receive access to the recording link on Tuesday, July 14 after the CME/CE period.

Reimagining Engagement in Psychoanalytic Institutions 

Pricing varies, 2.0 CE/CME credits available

Dr. Jane Tillman moderates a roundtable examining declining engagement with psychoanalytic institutes, including financial barriers, training experiences, the changing and/or unclear mission of psychoanalytic organizations/institutes, generational differences, and institute culture. 

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.

The ethical codes for mental health professionals are guided by internationally recognized standards centered around core principles: respect for others, competence, integrity, and responsibility to society. Central to these standards is our integrity as a human being, a professional, and a member of society, based on principles of fairness, justice, and respect for difference. These codes also recognize the value of community service; ways in which our training demands a certain level of social responsibility. We are called upon to know our field well enough to make choices that have integrity, and to engage in ongoing trainings that support our own development within a changing world. And yet, countering these standards is the anxious insecurity that threatens to make us lose our minds rather than build them, and to turn to rules that, in the absence of our reflective capacity, can become dangerously mindless. We see this, for example, in the turn towards using diagnoses, not to organize our understanding, but as reified entities that demand specific treatments that may harm more than they help. In that turn, we lose touch with the most basic principle guiding our ethics: to do no harm. The price of objectifying persons rather than assisting them in enlarging their own subjective capacities is highlighted in this era of AI. In such an era, we need to locate our ethics within a foundation that does not betray us – or those we work with – by masquerading behind a veneer of ‘truth’ that has no authentic, ethical, human core. Using clinical illustrations, I discuss the values of authenticity and respect for difference as crucial grounding points for ethical clinical practice.

Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP

Authenticity: An Ethical Core for Clinical Practice

Dr. Marilyn Charles explores the ethical foundations of mental health practice, emphasizing authenticity, integrity, and respect for difference in an increasingly AI-driven world. Using clinical illustrations, it highlights the importance of reflective, human-centered care grounded in the principle of doing no harm.

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.

2026-27 Friday Night Guest Lecture Series

Over the past few decades psychoanalysis has steadily been theorizing about trauma transmissions affecting multiple generations. Unmourned and unconscious these histories remain open wounds passing from one generation to the next in search of recognition and repair. Attachment has a primal role in our psyches, and trauma can cause massive disruption and disorganization of the parent-child bonding system. This paper addresses trauma and its transmission trans-generationally through the lens of contemporary attachment research/theory, neuroscience linking it all with psychoanalytic relational trauma theory. Understanding the complexity of these unconscious transmissions from the first to the second and later generations becomes crucial in a world where trauma sadly has become ubiquitous. Two clinical cases will be discussed reflecting how to work clinically with these transmissions and how to think about witnessing as a psychoanalytic therapeutic tool. The paper will additionally speak to the current moment we are living through of mass social trauma, including the violence and helplessness we are surrounded by.

Between Silence and Words, Trauma’s Haunting Legacy

Dr. Salberg explores how unresolved trauma is passed across generations, disrupting attachment and shaping emotional life through unconscious relational wounds. Integrating psychoanalysis, attachment theory, and neuroscience, she examines clinical approaches to healing transgenerational and collective trauma.

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.

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.

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

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