NPSI October 2026 Special Event with Andrea Celenza (10/24/2026)

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 16:00:00 GMT

“Ethical Uses of Countertransference Love:

The Analyst's Embodied Presence”

Andrea Celenza, Ph.D.

Dr. Celenza will read several essays from her recent book Transference, Love, Being: Essential Essays from the Field (Routledge, 2022). The first essay sets the background context involving Dr. Celenza' s theorizing on the place of love and receptivity in analytic work. The second essay will discuss the use of embodied countertransference and will be read in short excerpts to maximize audience participation throughout. The final essay will present a field theory approach to clinical process. After each reading, there will be time allotted for discussion with the audience for a lively interactive experience throughout.

Learning Objectives

After the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Discuss the place of love and receptivity in psychoanalytic practice.

2. Make use of their embodied countertransference in the immediacy of clinical practice.

3. Notice and use unconscious, emergent imagery as it arises in the clinical field.

About the Presenter

Andrea Celenza, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and Assistant Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School. She is also Adjunct Faculty at The Florida Psychoanalytic Center. She has written numerous papers on love, sexuality and psychoanalysis and is on the Editorial Board of JAPA. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Karl Menninger Award and the Helena Deutsch Prize. She has two online courses and her writings have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Chinese and Farsi. Her third book, entitled, Transference, Love, and Being: Essential Essays from the Field, was published in 2022 by Routledge and was a finalist for the Gradiva Award. Her latest book is part of a series on seminal contributions, Erotic Transferences: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, July, 2025). Dr. Celenza is in private practice in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA.

About the Moderator

Drew Tillotson, PsyD, FIPA, BCPsa is a board-certified psychoanalyst in San Francisco, California. He is a graduate, Training and Supervising Analyst, faculty member, and Past President of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC) and also serves as a Training and Supervising Analyst on the faculty of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NPSI). He is Past Vice-President of the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation and currently a board director for both the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies and the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation. He teaches at PINC and NPSI and maintains a full-time private practice in San Francisco. 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); chapter author in Braving the Erotic Field in the Treatment of Adolescents and Children (2022); and contributions to Jonathan Sklar’s The Soft Power of Culture: Art, Transitional Space, Death and Play (2024).

NPSI Special Event: "Making a Home Together in a Warring World" (12/05/2026)

Sat, 05 Dec 2026 17:00:00 GMT

NPSI SPECIAL EVENT

“Making a Home Together in a Warring World:

Two American Psychoanalysts - a Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli - Bearing Witness and Imagining a Future”

Karim G. Dajani, PsyD and Eyal Rozmarin, PhD, Presenters

Carolyn Steinberg, MD, FRCPC, FIPA, Interlocutor

Can we remain in conversation when the differences between us feel impossible to bridge?

Since late 2023, Karim G. Dajani and Eyal Rozmarin—a Palestinian and a Jewish-Israeli psychoanalyst, respectively, both living and working in the United States—have been engaged in an ongoing conversation about Israel-Palestine, their personal and collective histories, and the conscious and unconscious forces that shape sociopolitical life. Their dialogue has unfolded through written correspondence, a filmed conversation titled Speaking of Home, public conversations, and a forthcoming coauthored book.

For many psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, the Israel-Palestine conflict has become a subject that can evoke profound grief, fear, anger, loyalty, identification, and a painful sense that one’s own history or suffering is not being heard. At a time when respectful conversation across these divides can feel nearly impossible, Dajani and Rozmarin offer an opportunity to experience what becomes possible when two psychoanalysts with profoundly different histories remain willing to listen to one another without requiring agreement.

In this special event, the presenters will engage in a spontaneous conversation rather than deliver formal presentations. Carolyn Steinberg, serving as Interlocutor, will pose questions to open and deepen their exchange, inviting them to follow what emerges between them. The conversation will explore how trauma, identity, belonging, and attachment can shape what we hear in one another, and what we cannot yet hear.

At the heart of the encounter is a psychoanalytic question: What happens when our experience of the other—especially the other who seems most different from us—becomes a mirror in which we may encounter something of ourselves? Can uncertainty and curiosity about another individual’s experience create room for something new without requiring us to relinquish our own histories, convictions, or identities?

This event is not intended to resolve the profound political and historical differences surrounding Israel-Palestine. Rather, it invites participants into an experience of dialogue that remains open in the presence of those differences, and to imagine together where such openness might lead.

Learning Objectives

By the conclusion of this event, participants will be able to:

1. Explore how trauma, collective identity, attachment, belonging, and the social unconscious can shape individual and group responses to sociopolitical conflict and influence what becomes possible to hear in dialogue with those who hold profoundly different perspectives.

2. Examine the psychoanalytic challenges and possibilities of sustaining curiosity, recognition, and relational connection across deeply felt political, cultural, and historical differences without requiring agreement or the relinquishing of one’s own experience.

3. Reflect on how psychoanalytic dialogue, including the capacity to tolerate uncertainty, difference, and emotional complexity, can contribute to new ways of imagining relationship, responsibility, and coexistence in the face of seemingly intractable conflict.

About the Presenters

Karim G. Dajani, PsyD is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst specializing in issues related to cultural dislocation and displacement. His research and writing explore the links between cultural systems and the unconscious of individuals and groups. He serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. His recent publications include a special issue dedicated to the social unconscious and a chapter in a textbook on psychoanalysis addressing race and ethnicity in contemporary psychoanalytic theories and practice.

Eyal Rozmarin, PhD is a psychoanalyst and writer. He was born in Israel-Palestine and now lives in New York. He writes at the intersection of the psychological and the social, about the relations between subjects and collectives, and about belonging. Eyal is Co-Editor of the book series Third Way Psychoanalysis, and on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He teaches at various venues, and keeps a psychoanalytic practice in New York. His upcoming book is titled Belonging and its Discontents.

About the Interlocutor
Carolyn Steinberg, MD, FRCPC, FIPA is a psychoanalyst and Fellow of the International Psychoanalytical Association. She is a full member of Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NPSI) and currently serves as President of its Board of Directors. A psychiatrist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine, she has been engaged in psychoanalytic teaching, leadership, and organizational work for many years. She is also the current Secretary for the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation (NAPsaC) and a Discussion Group facilitator for the IPA Presidents’ Meeting Process.

About the Moderator
Drew Tillotson, PsyD, FIPA, BCPsa is a board-certified psychoanalyst and maintains a full-time private practice in San Francisco, California. He is a graduate, Personal and Supervising Analyst, faculty member, and Past President of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC), and a Training and Supervising Analyst on the faculty of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NPSI). He is a Past Vice-President of the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation and currently serves as a board director for both the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies and the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation.

NPSI upcoming events

NPSI October 2026 Special Event with Andrea Celenza (10/24/2026)

NPSI Special Event: "Making a Home Together in a Warring World" (12/05/2026)