NPSI upcoming events

NPSI May Scientific Meeting - Save The Date (05/20/2026)

Thu, 21 May 2026 02:00:00 GMT

SAVE THE DATE

NPSI May Scientific Meeting

"How Do We Know What We Know? Recognizing Secrets in the Body"

Presenter: Kathryn Zerbe

Moderator: Nancy Winters

NPSI May Scientific Meeting (05/20/2026)

Thu, 21 May 2026 02:00:00 GMT

“How Do We Know What We Didn't Know?

Recognizing Secrets in the Body"

Kathryn Zerbe, MD, FIPA

The impact of secrets on body and mind has received relatively little attention in psychoanalysis, despite their ubiquity in clinical practice. Growing evidence suggests that secrets are often sensed in the bodies of both clinician and patient. In this presentation, Kathryn Zerbe explores how secrets can be and often have been “hidden, but in plain sight” for decades, such that they may be “known and yet not known” by both patient and clinician. This information can exert subtle, unconscious effects on the treatment process and may manifest through somatic countertransference responses. Zerbe examines how secrets can be effectively recognized and addressed in the treatment, particularly when they are manifested within the body. By linking psychodynamic principles with evolving knowledge from neuroscience and cognitive science, she shows how clinicians can more effectively attune to these secrets within the dyad and take preventive steps to maintain their own wellbeing.

Learning Objectives:

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

1. Recognize the unanticipated impact that a warded off secret (e.g., "what we know but may not know") has on the patient's and therapist's body.

2. Demonstrate and use somatic/embodied countertransference as an additional source of recognition of warded off secrets.

3. Use three concepts emerging from contemporary psychoanalysis, cognitive science, and neuroscience research that can assist the well-being of both patient and clinician.

About the Presenter

Kathryn J. Zerbe, MD, FIPA is currently a Training and Supervising Analyst of the Oregon Psychoanalytic Institute and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Oregon Health & Science University. Before moving to Portland in 2001, she served in numerous clinical and administrative roles at the Menninger Clinic and was a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis. Dr. Zerbe has published over 100 chapters, papers and reviews and 5 books, including her most recent book: Secrets in Psychotherapy: Stories that Inform Clinical Work (2025, Routledge). She speaks nationally and internationally on topics such as the mind/body relationship, eating disorders and addictive economies, and the impact of secrets on the body and mind of clinician and patient. Dr. Zerbe received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Eating Disorders Association in 2011 and in 2022 gave the G. Phillip Wilson Lecture for contributions to mind/body medicine. She practices in Portland.

About the Moderator

Nancy C. Winters, MD, FIPA practices in Portland, Oregon. She is a Training and Supervising Analyst on the faculty of the Oregon Psychoanalytic Institute and the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Oregon Health & Science University. Recent publications and presentations include: Co-editor and chapter author of Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (2022, Routledge); “Autoimmunity and its Expression in the Analytic Situation: Contemporary Reflections on Our Inherent Self-Destructiveness” (2022); “A Home to the Lie: The Contemporary (Per)Version of Truth” (2023); “Transformations in O Online: Group Process in the Virtual Realm” (2024); and recent presentations: “The Liar and the Truth-Teller: An Analytic Dialogue” (Lisbon, 2025), and “Freud’s ‘Open Wound’ of Melancholia: Psychic Inflammation and Self-Healing” (Seattle, 2026).

NPSI June Scientific Meeting (06/17/2026)

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 02:00:00 GMT

“A Peculiar People:

Mormonism, Drag Performance, and Erotic Non-Belonging”

Danny Gellersen, LICSW, FIPA

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, FIPA, is a licensed clinical social worker and psychoanalyst with a private practice in Seattle, Washington and New York State. They are a graduate of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, National Training Program in New York City, and resides in Seattle full-time, where they teach on the faculties of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and chairs the Distinguished Speaker Series for the Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study. Their practice and studies as an artist, writer, educator, and student of realist classical drawing, Mormonism, queer theory, and drag performance are greatly intertwined with their clinical werk.

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.

NPSI September Scientific Meeting - save the date (09/16/2026)

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 02:00:00 GMT

SAVE THE DATE

NPSI September Scientific Meeting

[Title TBD]

Presenter: Jeffrey Eaton

Moderator: Caron Harrang

NPSI November Scientific Meeting - save the date (11/18/2026)

Thu, 19 Nov 2026 03:00:00 GMT

Thu, 18 Nov 2027 03:00:00 GMT

SAVE THE DATE

NPSI November Scientific Meeting

Presenter: TBD

Moderator: TBD