About Our Events — National Institute for the Psychotherapies

With Cheryl Feigenson, PhD

October 7 - November 25, 1pm-3pm

This course focuses on incorporating the body into psychoanalytic work; how the body can be an access route to the unconscious and how somatic modalities can effectuate change. The course will include theory, and the scientific underpinnings of somatic approaches. The practical application of somatic modalities will be emphasized. Working with the body via telehealth will also be addressed.

Each session will include a didactic presentation of somatic theory and techniques, skills training, and discussion of case material drawn from the practices of the instructor and students. Active learning will be facilitated by demonstrations of techniques and opportunities for in-class practice. Readings will include writings by Schore, Bromberg, Ogden, and others.

This course can be taken as a stand-alone course, or as a required part of NIP’s Certificate Program in Psychotherapy Integration. The course will be taught at NIP in eight seminar-style classes, each lasting one hour and fifty minutes. Class meetings are held on Mondays, October 7, 14, 21, 28, Nov 4, 11, 18, 25, from 1:00 to 2:50pm.

The Psychology of Christian Nationalism

With Pamela Cooper White, MDiv, PhD, LCPC and Lisa Cataldo, MDiv, PhD, LP

October 19, 10am-1pm

French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva once wrote, “How could one tolerate a foreigner if one did not know one was a stranger to oneself?” Xenophobia, or fear of the other, has blossomed in the U.S. into a radical divisiveness, in which the right-wing fear-mongering of narcissistic, charismatic leaders have dangerously heightened hate-motivated speech, acts of violence, and legal attacks against persons of color, Jews, women, and LGBTQ persons. Further divisiveness is prominently intended in the Heritage Foundation's’ "Project 2025." What are the conscious and unconscious motivations behind Christian nationalists and others who joined right-wing extremist movements in the U.S.? And how – if ever – is it possible to talk across the divide? Beginning with Freud’s “Group Psychology” as well as implications from Self Psychology and relational multiple-self theory, this program will include an introductory lecture, and ample time for small group and plenary discussion and exploration.

Trauma and Reparation

With Bessel van der Kolk, MD and Judith Lewis Herman, MD

October 24, 2024, 7pm-8:30pm

Giants in the field of trauma, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and Dr. Judith Lewis Herman will engage in a discussion of Dr. Herman’s most recent book, Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice. Based on the personal interviews and published accounts in her book, Dr. Herman shares views of what might be a just resolution of the crimes survivors had suffered. Above all, survivors wished for the truth to be known and the perpetrators exposed. Beyond this, their focus was on restoring their relationships, particularly with the “moral community” from which they had been isolated. Bringing decades of experience in research, assessment, and treatment of trauma, Dr. van der Kolk and Dr. Herman will present their historical understandings of the psychological harm of those affected by gender-based violence, including the betrayal of bystanders, and propose ways to prevent future harm and restore justice.

Incorporating Maternal Subjectivity in
Psychoanalytic Practice

Panelists: Helena Vissing, Sam Guzzardi, Sebastian Thrul, Brooke Laufer, Nina Sander,
Inga Blom, Ozlem Bekar, Aniella Perold, Aurelie Athan

Moderator: Tracy Sidesinger

Hosts: Rachel Altstein and Karen Perlman
Editors-in-Chief, Psychoanalytic Perspectives

November 16, 2024, 12pm-1:30pm

This panel of authors, contributors to the recent special issue of Psychoanalytic Perspectives, will discuss maternal subjectivity and its implications for clinical practice. Matrescence, the developmental rite of passage for mothers themselves, refocuses theory to include mothers not only as objects in the minds of developing and adult children, but also subjects with their own shifting experience, knowledge, psychopathology, and need. When maternal experience is banished to the shadows, there can be extreme consequences for children.

Furthermore, maternal subjectivity has implications for how we conceive the body of the mother, the natural world, and the matrix of identity with other care providers such as grandmothers. In this panel discussion, we will focus particularly on the maternal body as a troubling topic: a site not only enigmatic but also real.

From matrescent biomarkers to symbolic qualities across genders, we will consider how the maternal troubles psychoanalysis and ensure that maternal experience not be left out of the consulting room.

From Finality to Futurity: Reconsidering Analytic Endings

With Kenneth Frank, PhD

December 7, 2024, 10am-1pm

In a 2010 paper that remains relevant to this day, Martin Bergmann revisited his influential critique of the termination paradigm in psychoanalysis (1997), which he aptly named "The Achilles Heel" of the field. This lecture offers a groundbreaking update that may transform your approach to analytic endings, especially, and more broadly your work. The newer model transitions from traditional, regressively oriented methods, to emphasizing futurity. We will critique conventional termination methods through a review of relevant theory and research, highlighting their failure to keep pace with advances from ego psychology, psychoanalytic developmental psychology, and relational psychoanalysis—captured in the significant "ontological" trend recently identified by Thomas Ogden. While crediting Edward Glover for his pioneering 1955 emphasis on the importance of endings, rooted in the dominant Freudian theory of his time, we also recognize that his formulations have become anachronistic—yet continue to subtly influence contemporary analytic endings. An alternative, cutting-edge approach is presented, advocating for a forward-looking perspective that balances individualized and theoretical considerations, and integrates past insights with patients' futures, within contemporary psychoanalytic thought. Now, the analyst serves as a catalyst for further patient change, rather than simply an object of loss.

Matrix, Environment, Atmosphere:
How Mother Became a Medium

With Hannah Zeavin, PhD

January 25, 2025, 10am-1pm

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.”

EMDR Basic Training Course 2025

With Judy Cabeceiras, LMFT

April 24 - 26, 2025, 8:30am-6pm
June 12-14, 2025, 8:30am-6pm

What is EMDR Therapy? Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) is a comprehensive psychotherapy that accelerates the treatment of a wide range of pathologies and self-esteem issues related to disturbing events and present life conditions. This interactional, standardized approach has been empirically tested in over 20 randomized controlled studies with trauma patients and hundreds of published case reports evaluating a considerable range of presenting complaints including, depression, anxiety, phobias, excessive grief, somatic conditions and addictions and compulsive disorders. EMDR Therapy is guided by the Adaptive Information Processing model which hypothesizes that unprocessed memories appear to set the basis for a wide range of dysfunction. A number of neurophysiological studies have documented the rapid post-treatment EMDR therapy effects.

How is the training set up? Trainees will learn via lecture, video, demonstrations, Q & A sessions, role play demonstrations, small group exercises and supervised practice sessions. Each participant will experience EMDR as both clinician and client through two training modules. The Basic EMDR Training is Approved by the EMDR International Association (www.emdria.org) and uses an innovative format designed to lead the participants in a sequential learning experience emphasizing conceptual clarity, procedural details, and skill development using lecture, discussions drawn from actual EMDR therapy sessions, video clips of EMDR sessions and supervised practicum. This training also provides the additional, required 10 hours of basic training consultation, to provide you with support as you integrate EMDR therapy into your clinical practice.

This training offers you the opportunity to learn how to provide EMDR therapy to your clients online or in person by practicing it’s implementation using both formats.

Recognition and Disturbances of Recognition

With Beatrice Beebe, PhD

February 22, 2025, 10am-1pm

Nonverbal modes of entering distress moments provide an organizing principle both of optimal infant development and of therapeutic action in adult treatment. This video lecture will illustrate maternal patterns of responding to infant distress moments in infants classified as secure and disorganized attachment at one year. It will also illustrate nonverbal processes of the therapist entering distress moments in an adult treatment.

Disturbance in Maternal Recognition of Infant Distress in the 4-Month Origins of Disorganized Attachment

The nature of maternal responsiveness is essential to the organization of the infant’s experience. Using film microanalysis, our research on the four-month origins of disorganized, as compared to secure, infant attachment at one year has revealed profound maternal difficulties in “entering” and empathizing with infant distress, forms of “denial” of infant distress. These infants cannot develop an expectation of feeling “sensed,” recognized or “known,” by their mothers, particularly when distressed. Mothers of future disorganized infants often have unresolved loss or abuse, fears about intimate relating, and fears of being retraumatized by infant distress, most likely out of awareness. Infant disorganized attachment at one year predicts young adult psychopathology, most notably dissociation. In contrast, modes of “entering” infant distress moments, such as brief facial or vocal expressions of sadness, joining the cry rhythm or joining the dampened state, or participating in subtle finger “dialogues,” are salient in the origins of secure attachment. These modes of entering infant distress make it more possible for the infant to sense that someone is on her wave-length, that her distressed state is recognized.

Restorative Justice: A Practice of Community Healing

With Meeta Gandhi, LCSW-R

February 27, 2025, 7pm-9pm

In the fall of 2024, NIP had the great fortune to participate in a conversation between Bessel van der Kolk and Judith Lewis Herman, in which Dr. Herman argued, “If trauma is truly a social problem, and indeed it is, then recovery cannot be simply a private, individual matter." In her book, Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice, Judy referenced Restorative Justice as a form of community repair. With a specialization in a social justice orientation to trauma, resilience, and restorative practices, Meeta Gandhi, will describe the historical context and importance of the tenets of a Restorative Justice practice, as well as the clinical concepts central to a variety of practice applications. Her presentation will feature lecture, discussion and video excerpts.

The Rise of Traumatizing Narcissists

With Daniel Shaw, LCSW

March 29, 2025, 10am-1pm

The world is witnessing a surge of nationalist cults led by authoritarian demagogues who combine sociopathy with narcissism—malignant narcissists. Daniel Shaw developed the theory of traumatic narcissism from his experience with cult leaders and followers. After working with patients who described relationships similar to cult dynamics, Shaw profiled the traumatizing narcissist and how they use undue influence to subjugate and exploit others.

Shaw explores the traumatizing narcissist's "delusion of omnipotence" and outlines eight controlling behaviors they use to construct systems of subjugation. Anticipating his third book on the topic, Shaw's presentation will clarify for clinicians how to identify traumatizing narcissists and address challenges when working with their subjugated victims.

As more patients report abuse by unregulated figures—coaches, wellness gurus, psychics, healers, and facilitators of psychedelic journeys—the need for clinicians and patients to understand who the traumatizing narcissist is, what they do, and why they do it has never been greater.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education credits for psychologists. The National Institute for the Psychotherapies maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0018.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #Psyan-0004.

National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0059.
*Please note: not all events that provide CEs are eligible for LMHCs.
Please read the details for each event's CE eligibility