The Riggs Difference: Where Understanding Leads to Recovery
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Celebrating Growth: The 2025 Riggs Fellows Graduation
Each year, the Austen Riggs Center honors a new class of Fellows completing the rigorous four-year Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program and Fellowship. This summer, we celebrated the graduation of psychologist madi lee river and psychiatrists Charles Blomquist and Vivian Chan, three clinicians whose journeys reflect not only personal transformation but also the enduring spirit of Riggs: a commitment to deep listening, honest reflection, and the courage to work with complexity.
As Edward Shapiro, MD, Medical Director/CEO at Riggs, reflected in his graduation address:
“You are trained here not just to ‘do therapy,’ but to become therapists—to take in powerful projections, intense transference reactions, unbearable affect—and to use yourselves as a tool to make meaning of it. That’s destabilizing. It challenges your sense of who you are and how you know. And yet, it’s how growth happens—for patients, and for clinicians.”
madi lee river, PsyD: Finding a Professional Home
For madi, the journey to Riggs began early. “I was interested in psychoanalysis from middle school, ”they recalled. “When I heard about Riggs from one of my mentors, I knew this was exactly where I wanted to be.”
Coming to Riggs, they found not just training, but a sense of belonging. “In my graduation speech, I said it felt like coming home, even though I’d never had a home quite like this before. I’d always been the ‘weird one’ interested in psychoanalysis, but here I didn’t have to defend that. I found a community where the language of thinking and conceptualizing patients resonated deeply.”
The experience wasn’t always easy, but madi described the support they felt from colleagues: “People were very nice, deliberate, and welcoming. And I really appreciated that. It was particularly helpful because the clinical work could sometimes feel like a ‘trial by fire.’”
Over time, they grew not just as a clinician but as a person: “Patients used to tell me I was cold, a robot, emotionless. Now they tell me I’m relentlessly myself—emotionally present in a way I couldn’t have been before. That’s what this Fellowship gave me.”
Charles Blomquist, MD: Learning to Listen Deeply
Charles entered the Fellowship from Berkshire Medical Center, drawn by mentors who had trained at Riggs. “What made me want to come was that the Fellows seemed to understand patients in a way nobody else did. Their way of thinking was transformative.”
Still, he admitted the start was intimidating. “There are a lot of smart people here. My background was more in medications and biological psychiatry, so it took time to adjust. But what surprised me most was how warm and welcoming everyone was. I found support in unexpected places—people I call my ‘work family.’”
For Charles, the Fellowship reshaped both his practice and his humanity: “I’m not the same person I was when I came in. This kind of work forces you to grow in ways you don’t always choose—but it makes you a better psychiatrist and a better human being.”
He also discovered the unique power of family work at Riggs: “Getting to co-lead family therapy with a social work partner was some of the most powerful work I’ve ever done. You give patients their parents back, and families their children back. That’s not something psychiatrists usually get to do.”
Vivian Chan, DO, MS: Bridging Inside and Outside
Vivian’s path to Riggs began with reading Of Two Minds during residency. “It was the first time I’d seen a hospital described where patients were asked to face one another and think about their behavior in community. I thought, ‘This is a fascinating place.’”
Coming from Mount Sinai Morningside West Hospital System and its Center for Intensive Treatment of Personality Disorders, she was already steeped in psychodynamic traditions, but Riggs deepened her practice. “What stood out was how much the clinical and educational spaces are intertwined here. You’re also constantly moving between thinking about individual patients and thinking about the community as a whole.”
Her key lesson: the importance of bridging Riggs’ intensive work with the outside world. “There’s something unique about the intimacy here. But it can’t exist in a vacuum. The essential task is learning how to take that deeper self-understanding out into life beyond Riggs—something Fellows and patients both grapple with.”
Vivian also emphasized the unparalleled focus on group process. “If you’re interested in learning not just individual psychoanalysis but group psychoanalysis, there’s no other place like Riggs.”
Lessons in Growth: Shapiro’s Reflections
Shapiro’s address placed the Fellows’ growth within a larger arc of Riggs history. He reminded us that development requires imperfection:
“If parents didn’t fail their children, they would never grow up. Growth comes not from perfection, but from the struggle to metabolize imperfection—our own and others’.”
He also emphasized the reciprocal nature of training: “These Fellows haven’t just learned how to do psychotherapy. They’ve taught us, too. Along the way, they’ve shaped this place.”
Why the Riggs Fellowship?
The Austen Riggs Center Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program and Fellowship, is one of the most intensive and unique psychoanalytic training programs in the country. Fellows receive:
- Clinical supervision and weekly didactic seminars by a distinguished faculty.
- Immersion in individual psychotherapy, family work, and a therapeutic community—often working with some of the most complex and treatment-resistant patients.
- Financial support for up to two years (300 hours) of personal analysis
- A culture of examined living—where clinicians are asked to reflect on their own responses, not just their patients’.
- A strong cohort model—fostering professional collaboration and lifelong friendships.
As madi noted, “This place isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s demanding—timewise, emotionally. But if you’re dedicated to this way of working, there’s nothing like it.”
Charles echoed this: “If you want to learn to work with the most challenging, complex patients, this is the place to do it. There’s no other training like it.”
And Vivian added: “If you’re curious about group process and want to understand how people learn about themselves in community, this is the best place you can go.”
Now the Fellows step into the next chapters of their careers–Vivian has joined the staff at Riggs and madi and Charles are pursuing private practices.