Supporting our members, offering outstanding psychoanalytic training to mental health professionals, and educating the general public about psychoanalysis since 1999.

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Photo by Caron Harrang

Scientific Meetings:

NPSI Scientific Meetings provide a dynamic and engaging forum for exploring contemporary psychoanalysis. While emphasizing British object relations theory—including the work of Winnicott, Bion, and post-Bionian developments—these meetings also feature a broad range of psychoanalytic perspectives that are relevant to contemporary clinical practice. Each month during the academic year, a psychoanalyst—either from NPSI or invited from another IPA Component Society—presents an original paper, with occasional special presentations added to the schedule. Sessions are recorded and made available for purchase through NPSI’s video library, extending access to members and the broader professional community. Meetings are moderated by one of the Continuing Education Committee co-chairs: Caron Harrang, Drew Tillotson, or Nancy Winters.

Designed to foster thoughtful exchange and deeper understanding of psychoanalytic processes, these online meetings provide ample time for discussion of the presenter’s material. Open to NPSI members and all interested mental health professionals worldwide, NPSI Scientific Meetings offer an excellent opportunity to engage with leading-edge psychoanalytic ideas and to connect with colleagues across both local and international psychoanalytic communities.

Upcoming Scientific Meetings

    • 06/17/2026
    • 7:00 PM - 8:45 PM
    • via Zoom
    Register

    “A Peculiar People:

    Mormonism, Drag Performance, and Erotic Non-Belonging”



    Danny Gellersen, LICSW

    In this presentation Danny Gellersen examines the psychic impact of religious cultural inheritance and queer sexual identity—an intersection rarely addressed directly in the psychoanalytic literature. Drawing from a decade-long analytic treatment, they explore how Mormonism, belief, and religious residue persist as uncanny, affectively charged presences within the transference and countertransference.


    Using Freud’s concept of the uncanny, José Esteban Muñoz’s disidentification theory, and Laplanche’s theory of après-coup, Gellersen traces how early theological inscriptions are reanimated in adult erotic life, dissociation, and experiences of non-belonging. Through clinical vignettes, dream material, and personal reflection, they consider how drag performance operates both as metaphor and praxis—destabilizing compulsive normativity while reclaiming erotic vitality.


    Positioning the analytic relationship alongside the drag stage, Gellersen’s presentation invites psychoanalytic colleagues to consider how religious inheritance and sexual identity shape the analytic field in ways that have remained largely untheorized. 


    Learning Objectives


    After this presentation, participants will be able to:


    1.     Identify how religious and cultural inheritances may manifest as “uncanny” residues within transference and countertransference dynamics.


    2.     Apply Freud’s concept of the uncanny and Laplanche’s theory of après-coup to clinical material involving belief, depersonalization, and queer identity.


    3.     Evaluate how performance, disidentification, embodiment, and experiences of non-belonging can function as generative sites of erotic vitality within the analytic relationship.


    About the Presenter

    Danny Gellersen, LICSW is a licensed clinical social worker and psychoanalyst in private practice in Seattle, Washington and in New York State. They are a graduate of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies National Training Program in New York City and reside full-time in Seattle, where they are on the faculty of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and chair the Distinguished Speaker Series for the Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study. Their work and studies as an artist, writer, educator, and student of realist classical drawing, Mormonism, queer theory, and drag performance are deeply intertwined with their clinical work. 


    About the Moderator

    Caron Harrang, LICSW, FIPA, BCPsa is a board-certified psychoanalyst with a full-time private practice in Seattle, Washington. She is an IPA training and supervising psychoanalyst on the faculty of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and teaches throughout North America. Her recent publications include co-editor and chapter author of the Gradiva Award–winning Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (2021); “Introduction. Truth and Lies: Psychoanalytic Perspectives” (2023); “On Grotstein’s ‘Truth’ in Bion’s Theory of ‘O’” (2023); Nancy C. Winters, Caron Harrang, and Stefanie Sedlacek, “Transformations in O Online: Group Process in the Virtual Realm” (2024); “Earthquakes in the Analytic Field: A Post-Bionian View of Negative Therapeutic Reaction” (2025); and “Binocular Vision as a Function of the Analytic Field” (in press). For additional information, see www.caronharrang.com.

    • 09/16/2026
    • 7:00 PM
    • via Zoom

    SAVE THE DATE

    NPSI September Scientific Meeting


    [Title TBD]


    Presenter: Jeffrey Eaton

    Moderator:  Caron Harrang

    • 11/18/2026
    • 7:00 PM - 8:45 PM
    • zoom

    SAVE THE DATE

    “Psychoanalysis and the Israel-Palestine War:

    Perspectives on Our Relevance”

    Presenter:  Harriet Wolfe

    Moderator:  Nancy C. Winters



    • 12/16/2026
    • 7:00 PM - 8:45 PM
    • zoom

    SAVE THE DATE

    NPSI December Scientific Meeting

    Presenter:  Mary Brady

    Moderator:  Caron Harrang





    • 01/23/2027
    • 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM
    • via Zoom
    Register

    “Gender in the Subjunctive Mood: 

    Temporality and the Question of Evidence"



    Oren Gozlan, C. Psych, ABPP, FIPA

    In this timely and thought-provoking presentation, Oren Gozlan takes up contemporary debates around gender-affirming care to interrogate a pressing question for psychoanalysis today: what is meant by “evidence,” and what work does it perform in the analytic field?


    Drawing on his concept of the subjunctive mood, Gozlan explores how evidentiary discourse can subtly reorganize analytic listening—authorizing caution, rendering responsibility legible, and positioning clinical work for scrutiny beyond the consulting room. He distinguishes between the ontic demands of documentation—decision letters, refusals, and retrospective justification—and the ontological stakes of psychoanalysis, where questions of recognition, bodily suffering (for both analyst and analysand), and transference must be discovered within the unfolding analytic process itself.


    Against the apparent neutrality of statements such as “the evidence shows,” Gozlan highlights how these sorts of formulations may prematurely close inquiry while shaping clinical action. Psychoanalytic evidence, he argues, belongs to a different temporality, one that emerges gradually through repetition, revision, transference, and afterwardsness.


    The subjunctive mood names both an ethical and a clinical stance—one that sustains uncertainty in the analytic encounter without collapsing into withdrawal or foreclosing possibility. In this way, gender becomes not only a topic of debate, but a privileged site for rethinking time, knowing, and ethical responsibility in psychoanalysis.


    Learning Objectives:


    After attending this scientific meeting, participants will be able to:


    1. Distinguish ontic from ontological stakes in psychoanalytic work with gender.
    2. Identify how evidentiary discourse can reorganize analytic listening.
    3. Apply the subjunctive mood as an ethic of clinical uncertainty.


    About the Presenter


    Oren Gozlan, C. Psych, ABPP, FIPA, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in Toronto, Canada, and a member of the Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He is the author of Transsexuality and the Art of Transitioning: A Lacanian Approach (winner of the American Academy & Board of Psychoanalysis annual book prize, 2015), and recipient of the Symonds Prize (2016), Ralph Roughton Award (2022), and Miguel Prados Prize (2023). His edited volume Critical Debates in the Transsexual Studies Field: In Transition (Routledge) was a runner-up for the 2019 Gradiva Award. His recent books include Gender with Sexuality: Situations of Psychoanalytic Learning and Gender: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge).



    About the Moderator


    Caron Harrang, LICSW, FIPA, BCPsa is a board-certified psychoanalyst with a full-time private practice in Seattle, Washington. She is an IPA training and supervising psychoanalyst on the faculty of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and teaches throughout North America. Her recent publications include co-editor and chapter author of the Gradiva Award–winning Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (2021); “Introduction. Truth and Lies: Psychoanalytic Perspectives” (2023); “On Grotstein’s ‘Truth’ in Bion’s Theory of ‘O’” (2023); Nancy C. Winters, Caron Harrang, and Stefanie Sedlacek, “Transformations in O Online: Group Process in the Virtual Realm” (2024); “Earthquakes in the Analytic Field: A Post-Bionian View of Negative Therapeutic Reaction” (2025); and “Binocular Vision as a Function of the Analytic Field” (2026). For additional information, see www.caronharrang.com.


    Zoom Information

    A Zoom link will be emailed to registrants the day prior to the event at the email address used to register. If you have not received the Zoom link several hours prior to the event, please check your other email folders (including spam, junk, and trash).  Please also consider adding "admin@npsi.us.com" to your email contacts to ensure receipt of the Zoom link.


    • 02/17/2027
    • 7:00 PM - 8:45 PM
    • zoom

    SAVE THE DATE

    NPSI February Scientific Meeting

    Presenter:  Drew Tillotson

    Moderator:  TBD






    • 03/17/2027
    • 7:00 PM - 8:45 PM
    • zoom

    SAVE THE DATE

    NPSI March Scientific Meeting

    Presenter:  Afsaneh Alisobhani

    Moderator:  Nancy C. Winters




    • 04/24/2027
    • 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM

    SAVE THE DATE

    NPSI April Scientific Meeting

    Presenter:  TBD

    Moderator:  TBD


    • 05/19/2027
    • 7:00 PM - 8:45 PM
    • zoom

    SAVE THE DATE

    NPSI May Scientific Meeting

    Presenter:  Michael Diamond

    Moderator:  Drew Tillotson




    • 06/16/2027
    • 7:00 PM - 8:45 PM
    • zoom

    SAVE THE DATE

    NPSI June Scientific Meeting

    Presenter:  Judy K. Eekhoff

    Moderator:  Caron Harrang




    • 09/18/2027
    • 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM

    SAVE THE DATE

    NPSI September Scientific Meeting

    Presenter:  TBD

    Moderator:  TBD


    • 10/20/2027
    • 7:00 PM - 8:45 PM
    • zoom

    SAVE THE DATE

    NPSI October Scientific Meeting

    Presenter:  Samantha Good

    Moderator:  Caron Harrang




    • 11/17/2027
    • 7:00 PM - 8:45 PM

    SAVE THE DATE

    NPSI November Scientific Meeting

    Presenter:  TBD

    Moderator:  TBD



Our Mission

Our mission is to

  1. Deliver premier psychoanalytic education and training for individuals aspiring to become psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically informed psychotherapists, with a dedicated focus on British Object Relations theory, the work of Wilfred Bion, and contemporary Post-Bionian clinical practice;
  2. Foster the ongoing professional growth and development of our analyst members, candidates, and community members through rigorous scholarship, mentorship, and collegial exchange;
  3. Advance regional, national, and international understanding of mental life by contributing original thought and research to the evolving field of psychoanalysis; and
  4. Promote emotional health, creativity, and well-being for those we serve through the ethical and compassionate practice of psychoanalysis.


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Tel: 206.930.2886

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