NPSI upcoming events

NPSI November Scientific Meeting (11/18/2026)

Thu, 19 Nov 2026 03:00:00 GMT

“Psychoanalysis on the Precipice:

Retaining our Humanity and Relevance

During Times of War and Violent Othering”

Harriet Wolfe, MD, FIPA

How can psychoanalysis remain relevant in times of war?

While President of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) as the horrors of the Israel-Palestine war were unfolding, Harriet Wolfe was called upon to articulate the IPA’s stance regarding the war. In this presentation she reflects on her psychoanalytic and personal journey in exploring what psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic institutions might offer in the face of the ravages of violent conflict. She reflects on her struggle to bring psychoanalytic understanding to a recurrent psychoanalytic dilemma: how to retain our humanity and our capacity to think when in a disrupted state of mind in the face of suffering impossible to comprehend and intense pressure to take sides.

Wolfe will present material from her 2025 article, “Psychoanalysis and the Israel-Palestine War: Perspectives on Our Relevance” in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, along with more recent reflections. She examines several interconnected challenges: the challenge to our ability to think when our clinical identities and potential unconscious fantasies about the capacity to cure are threatened by our inability to alleviate suffering; the discovery of how disruptive and painful empathy becomes when one truly begins to apprehend what the other is experiencing; and the power of projection to divide and conquer externally while striving to preserve coherence internally.

Wolfe will suggest how the “we” of clinical psychoanalysts and the “we” of psychoanalysis as an institution might think, speak, and remain relevant and effective in the current Zeitgeist increasingly marked by violent othering.

We anticipate that Wolfe’s observations and self-reflections on life in psychoanalytic organizations will be a stimulating prelude for our conversation on December 5, 2026, with Karim Dajani and Eyal Rozmarin, “Making a Home Together in a Warring World: Two American Psychoanalysts—Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli—Bearing Witness and Imagining a Future.” With Wolfe’s contributions, we hope to open a space for our collective exploration of the dilemmas we face as psychoanalysts and citizens of a turbulent world.

Learning Objectives

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

1. Describe psychic and socio-cultural phenomena that characterize the contemporary Zeitgeist of violent othering.

2. Distinguish the difficulty in sustaining the ability to think within ourselves from that within our colleagues or patients when world events call into question our capacity to alleviate suffering.

3. Recognize the challenges of authentic empathy in the context of unspeakable suffering.

About the Presenter

Harriet Wolfe, MD, FIPA is a psychoanalyst practicing in San Francisco. She is immediate Past President of the International Psychoanalytical Association, Past President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, and Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.

Wolfe’s scholarly interests include clinical applications of psychoanalytic research (“Clinical discussion of Psychodynamic Therapy: a Meta-Analysis Testing Equivalence of Outcome” in: Outcome Research and the Future of Psychoanalysis: Clinicians and Researchers in Dialogue, 2020); organizational processes (“Consultation to organizations” with W. Myerson et al, in: Textbook of Applied Psychoanalysis, 2018), female development (“Female leadership: Difficulties and gifts”, American Journal of Psychoanalysis, accepted 2020) and ethical aspects of therapeutic action.

Wolfe has a longstanding commitment to psychoanalytic public health intervention. She has co-authored a number of guided activity workbooks for children, parents and teachers that help children cope with natural and manmade disasters: the current pandemic, wildfires hurricanes, homelessness, war and terrorism (childrenpsychologicalhealthcenter.org).

About the Moderator

Nancy C. Winters, MD, FIPA is a psychoanalyst practicing in Portland, Oregon. She is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the Oregon Psychoanalytic Institute and the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University. She is co-editor and chapter author of the Gravida Award-winning Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (2022, Routledge). Reflecting her diverse interests, recent publications and paper presentations include “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), and “Transformations in O Online: Group Process in the Virtual Realm” (2024); and the papers “The Liar and the Truth-Teller: An Analytic Dialogue” (Lisbon, 2025; print forthcoming), “Freud’s ‘Open Wound’ of Melancholia: Psychic Inflammation and Self-Healing” (Seattle, 2026), and “The Jouissance of Hatred in Verdi’s Rigoletto” (Toronto, 2026).

NPSI December Scientific Meeting - save the date (12/16/2026)

Thu, 17 Dec 2026 03:00:00 GMT

SAVE THE DATE

NPSI December Scientific Meeting

Presenter: Mary Brady

Moderator: Caron Harrang

NPSI January Scientific Meeting (01/23/2027)

Sat, 23 Jan 2027 17:00:00 GMT

“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:

Distinguish ontic from ontological stakes in psychoanalytic work with gender.
Identify how evidentiary discourse can reorganize analytic listening.
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

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NPSI February Scientific Meeting - save the date (02/17/2027)

Thu, 18 Feb 2027 03:00:00 GMT

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NPSI February Scientific Meeting

Presenter: Drew Tillotson

Moderator: TBD

NPSI March Scientific Meeting - save the date (03/17/2027)

Thu, 18 Mar 2027 02:00:00 GMT

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NPSI March Scientific Meeting

Presenter: Afsaneh Alisobhani

Moderator: Nancy C. Winters

NPSI April Scientific Meeting - Save the Date (04/24/2027)

Sat, 24 Apr 2027 16:00:00 GMT

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NPSI April Scientific Meeting

Presenter: TBD

Moderator: TBD

NPSI May Scientific Meeting - save the date (05/19/2027)

Thu, 20 May 2027 02:00:00 GMT

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NPSI May Scientific Meeting

Presenter: Michael Diamond

Moderator: Drew Tillotson

NPSI June Scientific Meeting - save the date (06/16/2027)

Thu, 17 Jun 2027 02:00:00 GMT

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NPSI June Scientific Meeting

Presenter: Judy K. Eekhoff

Moderator: Caron Harrang

NPSI September Scientific Meeting - Save the Date (09/18/2027)

Sat, 18 Sep 2027 16:00:00 GMT

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NPSI September Scientific Meeting

Presenter: TBD

Moderator: TBD

NPSI October Scientific Meeting - save the date (10/20/2027)

Thu, 21 Oct 2027 02:00:00 GMT

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NPSI October Scientific Meeting

Presenter: Samantha Good

Moderator: Caron Harrang

NPSI November Scientific Meeting - Save the Date (11/17/2027)

Thu, 18 Nov 2027 03:00:00 GMT

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NPSI November Scientific Meeting

Presenter: TBD

Moderator: TBD