Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center

In the fall of 2007, the Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) Psychology Department and the Erikson Institute formed an affiliation for the purpose of increasing training opportunities for CHA Pre-Doctoral Psychology Interns. The aim of the program is to augment the Interns’ learning in a number of areas, including complex severe psychopathology; integrated, comprehensive, dynamic treatment; psychodynamic psychotherapy; and attention to context and systemic issues. These objectives are accomplished through twice-yearly two-day visits of the Interns to Riggs and weekly psychotherapy supervision with a senior Riggs therapist.

The collaboration between the Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center and the Center for the Study of Groups and Social Systems reflects a shared commitment to understanding the emotional and relational dynamics of groups, organizations, and leadership. Through initiatives such as the annual Leading from Experience workshop, the partnership brings psychoanalytic and systems-based perspectives to questions of authority, role, conflict, adaptation, and institutional life. The collaboration aligns closely with the Erikson Institute’s translational mission by extending lessons derived from therapeutic community treatment at Riggs into broader conversations about groups and social systems, making complex experiential knowledge about leadership, community, and human behavior accessible across clinical, organizational, and educational settings.

The Rapaport-Klein Study Group is a gathering of the students of David Rapaport, director of research at Riggs in its early history, and George Klein, psychoanalytic theoretician, researcher, and incoming research director at Riggs before his untimely death. The group meets annually at the Center to present psychoanalytically oriented research in progress. Given that this group is comprised of accomplished analyst-researchers, the projects presented represent the leading edge of psychodynamic research.

The collaboration among the Freud Foundation US, the Sigmund Freud Museum, and the Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center reflects a shared commitment to advancing interdisciplinary dialogue at the intersection of psychoanalysis, history, culture, and contemporary clinical practice. Through joint initiatives such as the exhibit Organized Escape and an ongoing series of international roundtables, including discussions on displacement, memory, identity, and the meaning of place, the partnership has created a transatlantic forum for examining how psychic life is shaped by social, historical, and institutional contexts. For the Erikson Institute, the collaboration embodies its role as the intellectual and translational arm of the Center, bringing Riggs’ distinctive psychoanalytic and therapeutic community perspectives into conversation with international scholars, clinicians, artists, historians, and the broader public.

The Riggs-Yale partnership has a long and rich history that began under the leadership of former Austen Riggs Medical Director Dr. Robert Knight. The Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute was first launched with classes in New Haven and Stockbridge and with faculty including Erik Erikson and other Riggs staff members holding Yale appointments. Linda C. Mayes, MD, director of the Yale Child Study Center, is a member of the Distinguished Faculty in the Erikson Institute, and a member of the council of scholars. Beginning in the summer of 2012, the Yale Child Study Center, the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, and the Erikson Institute have joined together to host an annual conference bringing the two institutions into conversation around shared clinical and research interests. In 2025, the Erikson Institute partnered with the Yale Child Study Center to launch the Psychodynamic Research Mentorship Program (PRMP), an international multidisciplinary psychoanalytic research education program.

Evangeline Starr Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law.

James N. Lambert ’39 Professor of Anthropology, Williams College

University Professor at New York University, author of In a Different Voice, and most recently, Why Does Patriarchy Persist? (with Naomi Snider).

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University, prior to which he spent 35 years on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School, where he headed the Institute of Law and Psychiatry and directed mental health services for the Massachusetts prison system.

Starr Director Emeritus of the Research and Academic Program at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Professor of History at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He is also the president of the Freud Foundation, US.

Chair; Senior Vice President at Urban Institute; Senior Equity Fellow at OMB; Associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School; Lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School

Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology; Chair, Yale Child Study Center; Distinguished Visiting Professor of Psychology, Sewanee: The University of the South.

Charles Howard Candler Professor of Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Studies. Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory, Training/Supervising Analyst in the Emory University Psychoanalytic Institute.

Professor and Chair of Philosophy Department, Brown University

Senior Lecturer in Humanities, Yale University, Professor Emerita in Humanities, University of Maryland (UMBC).