NPSI May 2026 Special Event: “Premonition: Hope and Dread in the Analytic Hour” presented by Judy K. Eekhoff, PhD, FIPA, BCPsa

We are pleased to offer this special 3-hour program—an extended learning experience designed to go beyond the scope of our monthly scientific meetings and allow for a deeper, more immersive engagement with a central concept in contemporary psychoanalytic thinking. Tailored for psychoanalysts, candidates, and psychotherapists, this presentation brings theory vividly to life through its application to both psychotherapy and psychoanalytic practice. Participants will have the opportunity to refine their clinical listening and expand their capacity to work with the subtle, often elusive dimensions of the analytic field. Focusing on the process of meaning-making in the analytic hour, the program explores how premonitions and intuitions—felt before they can be thought—serve as vital precursors to emotional understanding and symbolization. As forms of unconscious communication, they deepen internal and external object relations and give rise to the emotional links of Love, Hate, and Knowledge. When early trauma disrupts the development of this premonitory capacity, primitive somatic defenses may interfere with symbolization, leading to a constricted, concrete experience and a diminished imaginative life. Without access to these early forms of knowing, patients may struggle to trust their own experience and retreat from relational engagement. By working with the emergent experience of hope and dread within the analytic field, clinician and patient can begin to restore emotional capacity and reanimate lost potentials. A detailed clinical example will anchor these ideas in practice, offering participants a compelling view of how this approach can transform both psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.