The Riggs Difference: Where Understanding Leads to Recovery
For more than 40 years, the Austen Riggs Center has hosted leading scholars from diverse disciplines through its Erikson Institute Scholar-in-Residence Program. These scholars engage with us to share their expertise, deepen their research, and enrich the ongoing clinical and academic work at Riggs.
Introducing Our January 2026 Scholar-in-Residence
For the months of January – April we are honored to welcome:
- Thomas A. Kohut, PhD - Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Professor of History, Emeritus at Williams College
As Kohut explains: “My current research lies at the intersection of family history and historical scholarship, exploring the relationship between my work and the unspoken history of my own family. Rather than approaching this history directly through the experiences of my father and other relatives, I examine it at one remove through the life of Josef Löwenherz, head of the Jewish Kultusgemeinde in Vienna. Forced to work with Adolf Eichmann and the SS to organize Jewish life, oversee emigration, and ultimately facilitate the deportation of Austria’s Jewish community to the death camps, Löwenherz faced impossible choices. By attempting to understand his situation and responses, I seek insight into the experiences of less exponierte Austrian Jews during the Third Reich, including my own family, while also exploring the destructive psychological effects of racial persecution and, more personally, the guilt, shame, and humiliation I sensed lay behind my father’s silence about his experiences before and especially after the Anschluss in March 1938.”
About the Scholar-in-Residence Program at Austen Riggs
The Erikson Scholar Program creates and maintains an exchange of ideas between academicians and clinicians to explore interactions between the internal and external worlds. This interdisciplinary program enriches our understanding of each, which often has application to larger societal problems.