Community events
A Day with International Visiting Scholar Gail Lewis
Racial Trauma in the Afterlife of the Middle Passage: From Plantation to Provision Ground
Gail Lewis, PhD, discussant Jyoti Rao, MFT
Saturday Apr 11, 2026
9:00 AM – 2:30 PM [PDT]
A Day with International Visiting Scholar Gail Lewis
On-line and in-person event hosted at PINC
In this talk Gail Lewis addresses the issue of racial trauma through the register of two Black Feminist approaches to subject formation, and briefly, the concept of Black Rage as theorized by Beverly J. Stoute. The two black feminist approaches are intersectionality and, what Dr. Lewis calls ‘Black Feminism Otherwise’ (sometimes called ‘black study’). Following Stoute, she suggests that their respective conceptualizations of the making of subjects and subjectivities provide a key resource for clinical work and she hopes to show this through reference to a single case of a black man with whom she worked psychodynamically.
More Info PINC
NPSI April Scientific Meeting: “Freud’s ‘Open Wound’ of Melancholia: Psychic Inflammation as Self-Healing”
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
7:00PM – 8:45PM Pacific Time via Zoom
Sigmund Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917) remains the foundational psychoanalytic account of depression, offering enduring insights into its genesis and its notorious resistance to treatment. Nancy Winters revisits Freud’s intriguing observation that “the complex of melancholia behaves like an open wound, drawing to itself cathectic energies . . . from all directions, and emptying the ego until it is totally impoverished.” For Freud, this “open wound”—and what distinguishes it from mourning—is seen in the melancholic’s severe self-denigration. As Freud observes astutely, the true target of the melancholic’s self-reproaches is the lost love object, taken into the ego through identification.
Winters reconsiders the melancholic’s self-accusations as a mode of truth-seeking that may be understood as an attempt to heal this open wound, in line with Freud’s (1911) view of the symptom itself as an effort at recovery. She conceptualizes this process as a form of psychic inflammation, analogous to biological inflammation in its dual capacities for pain and healing, as well as its pathological extreme in the autoimmune self-attack (Winters, 2022). Clinical vignettes illustrate how this ‘inflammation’ can manifest as a search for the most damning truth about oneself—understood dynamically as an effort to loosen the identification with the introjected object and ultimately to restore life-enhancing libido to the depleted ego.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1. Understand Freud’s metaphor of melancholia as an “open wound” that draws libidinal energy to it and impoverishes the ego.
2. Describe the melancholic’s self-accusations as a mode of truth-seeking that can be thought of as akin to “psychic inflammation”
3. Discuss clinical implications of the proposed psychic inflammatory process as an attempt to self-heal.
COST: General Public: $65 USD | NPSI Members: $50 USD | Analysts-in-Training from other institutes (validation required): $15 USD | NPSI Analysts-in-Training: $5 USD
More Info NPSI
INTRODUCTORY SEMINAR SERIES on WILFRED BION
Sponsored by: REGIONAL BION SYMPOSIUM
APRIL 25 – JUNE 20
WEEKLY ON SATURDAYS, 9 MEETINGS
9:00am – 11:00am PST
This introductory seminar series explores the clinical applications of Wilfred Bion’s work. Designed for early career professionals, analytic candidates and those interested in Bion studies, the course uses Joseph Aguayo’s Introducing the Clinical Work of Wilfred Bion (2024) as its primary text.
Facilitated by seasoned psychoanalytic colleagues of the Regional Bion Symposium, this course promises to be an enriching and informative experience on introductory Bion.
Students and analytic candidates : $675
Career professionals and analysts: $900
Please note: CEU credits are not offered.
More Info RBS-Regional Bion Symposium
The Canadian Psychoanalytic Society is pleased to announce a new episode of their flagship podcast, “Conversations in Psychoanalysis Today.”
Episode 10 features a conversation with Dr. Endre Koritar, a training analyst and supervisor at the Institute of the Psychoanalytic Society of Western Canada and a clinical assistant professor at the University of British Columbia. Endre is also a board member of the International Sándor Ferenczi Network and an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. He shares his fascinating journey to the ideas of Hungarian psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi, and where those ideas have taken him in his work and in the world. How are Ferenczi conferences different from other psychoanalytic conferences? Listen, and find out.
To listen, go to https://www.en.psychoanalysis.ca/podcast/
About the Podcast
Hosted by Karen Dougherty, a psychoanalyst and filmmaker with the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society along with guest hosts from across Canada, Conversations in Psychoanalysis Today features talks with analysts, artists, thinkers, movers, and shakers, through a psychoanalytic and distinctly Canadians lens.
Meet the Host
Host and Producer Karen Dougherty is a Registered Psychotherapist and Psychoanalyst in private practice in Amaranth, Ontario. She is also a documentary filmmaker, a former producer in TVO’s Documentary Unit, and a mental health consultant for film and television. She teaches at the TIP, ATPPP, the FPP, and is Chair of the Extension Program of the TPS.
La Société canadienne de psychanalyse est heureuse d’annoncer un nouvel épisode de son balado phare, « Conversations in Psychoanalysis Today ».
L’épisode 10 propose une conversation avec le Docteur Endre Koritar, analyste didacticien et superviseur WCPSI, ainsi que professeur adjoint de clinique à l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique. Endre est également membre du conseil d’administration du l’International Sándor Ferenczi Network et rédacteur associé de l’American Journal of Psychoanalysis. Il nous parle de son parcours fascinant vers les idées du psychanalyste hongrois Sándor Ferenczi et de l’influence de ces idées sur sa pratique et son engagement dans le monde. En quoi les conférences Ferenczi se distinguent-elles des autres conférences psychanalytiques ? Écoutez l’épisode pour le découvrir.
écouter le segment: https://www.en.psychoanalysis.ca/podcast/
Au sujet de …
Animée par Karen Dougherty, psychanalyste et cinéaste membre de la Société psychanalytique de Toronto, et des animateurs invités de partout au Canada, l’émission Conversations in Psychoanalysis Today propose des entrevues avec des analystes, des artistes, des penseurs et des personnalités influentes, à travers une perspective psychanalytique et typiquement canadienne.
l’Animatrice
L’animatrice et productrice Karen Dougherty est psychothérapeute et psychanalyste agréée, exerçant en cabinet privé à Amaranth, en Ontario. Elle est aussi réalisatrice de documentaires, ancienne productrice à l’unité documentaire de TVO et consultante en santé mentale pour le cinéma et la télévision. Elle enseigne au TIP, à l’ATPPP et au FPP, et préside le programme de formation continue de la TPS.
Book launch
Clark Falconer – The Cumulative Effect Trilogy.
Congratulations to Clark Falconer a long-time community member on the publication of the first edition of his fictional Trilogy: “The Cumulative Effect’ : Volume One, Stepping on Little Ants, Volume Two, The Anteater, and Volume Three, A novella, Wolfey? Available on Amazon now.
A three part story of analysts and generational families struggling with never ending consequences of horrific trauma, in this case following WWII. Clark hopes and believes that the works will be of some keen interest to members.
Congratulations again on the creative work.
The books can be found on Amazon>
Stephen Seligman
presents
Beyond the Use of the Object: Care and Constructive Activity in Winnicott’s Stage of Concern
6 CEUs
Dates: March 20 and April 10, 2026
*all seminars are held via zoom*
Time: 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM EST
Fee: $200
Winnicott’s paper on “the development of the capacity for concern” is a neglected masterpiece—the essential companion to “the use of the object.” While that better-known paper stresses destruction, the “concern paper” shows how care and constructive activity are an essential part of the emergence from the transitional phase, toward a more robust way of living with reality. There is a powerful clinical implication here—that therapists’ attention to patients’ positive interests offers a strong pathway for significant therapeutic progress.
This two-session seminar will offer a close reading of that paper, starting with its main idea about how an integrated sense of being a person with an outside world is both “found and created” through hands-on activity with objects—both animate and inanimate, psychic and actual. Winnicott’s interest in positive motives is also a call for a reworking of Klein’s “depressive position.” Along with clinical implications, we will explore the theoretical and historical context of the paper.
Learning Objectives
- Examine how concern for the object develops as the infant begins to experience the caregiver as a separate being.
- Discuss how guilt, empathy and the wish to repair emerge as a part of this concern.
- Explore how focusing on the patient’s positive motives, desires and capacities influences the therapeutic process.
Stephen Seligman | Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco and NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis; Training and Supervising Analyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis & Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California; Author, Relationships in Development: Infancy, Intersubjectivity, Attachment (Routledge, 2018; translations in Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Ukrainian (delayed); co-editor of the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health: Core Concepts and Clinical Practice (American Psychiatric Press); Editor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Dialogues.
Dr Seligman is the author of over 100 articles, chapters and reviews, many of which take up the intersection of infancy, the infantile and psychoanalytic theory and practice. He has been involved in the development of the original “Fraiberg model” of infant-parent psychotherapy for several decades.
Please email eskinassistant@gmail.com to secure your spot today.
REgister email eskinassistant@gmail.comThe Unseen – Community, Political Resistance,
(Un)Bridging, and (Dis)Repair
May 2 & 3, 2026
Study Groups
Vancouver Neuropsychoanalysis
Ongoing Monthly Neuropsychoanalytic Study Group
Reading group dedicated to discussing contemporary neuropsychoanalytic articles and books. Open to all psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, neuroscientists, and other psychologically-trained professionals, either fully certified or in training. The group meets virtually, the 2nd Thursday of each month, from 8-9pm. Please email Curtis at curtis@anelegantmind.com to register.
If you wish to share your events with WCPSI please email info@wcpsi.org.