Wisconsin Psychoanalytic

Events & Programs

Upcoming Events and Meetings

Speaker series meetings feature distinguished psychoanalytic thinkers presenting clinical and theoretical work. Meetings are free and open to the public, held via Zoom.

Free for everyoneCEUs $35 for non-Center membersAll meetings via Zoom

Upcoming meetings

6 events
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Allannah Furlong, PhD

Putting the Analytic Frame to Work: Why It Matters

Psychoanalysis is not just about what happens in the room, it is also about the structure that holds it all together. Drawing on her own experiences and those of her colleagues, Dr. Furlong rethinks the traditional approach to the analytic frame that sees disruptions as obstacles. Instead, she argues that disruptions—missed sessions, consent complexities and third-party demands—can be essential moments for deepening therapeutic insight.

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Bruce Herzog, MD

Repulsion in the Analyst and Its Impact on Empathic Capacity

For a successful treatment process to occur, a few areas of significant empathic contact are necessary. This requires some matching up of relational premises between analyst and patient. If the areas of matching are not sufficient, or if there is an issue where overwhelming repulsion is created in the analyst, the analyst is precluded from entering the world of the patient and the analysis may fail. Three clinical vignettes are used to illustrate how the experience of disgust in the therapist can be effectively or unsuccessfully dealt with in the consulting room.

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Sarah Schoen, PhD

Erotic Entanglements in the Search to Be and Belong: Traversing the Forcefield of Dependency and Desire

As clinicians, we encounter the challenges of working with patients for whom the repetitive pursuit of intense, erotic relationships both express and conceal yearnings to be and belong. Dr. Schoen's detailed clinical account illuminates sexuality's dense entanglement with experiences of coming alive and the knotted strands of character armor, sexual charge, developmental trauma, disintegrative anxieties, and concretized longings for physical touch that permeate eroticism in the space of breakdown. It is through delving into and living through these unstable intersections in the analytic relationship that basic issues of being and becoming can emerge.

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Richard B Gartner, PhD

Trauma Inhabits Me: My Grandfather, My Great-Uncles, My Self

Dr. Gartner has written extensively about his therapeutic work with sexually traumatized men but hasn't always understood why he found it so compelling. Awakening from a dream involving his grandfather, his great-uncles and his own book about male sexual victimization, he feels deeply unsettled. In this article, he traces his dream associations to a conclusion that transgenerational transmission of trauma has shaped his professional interest in male sexualization.

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Mark J Blechner, PhD

Working with Dreams in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: A Modern Integrative Approach

Dreams are enormously helpful in our clinical work but our understanding of them has changed in many ways. After reviewing Freud's and Jung's main ideas about dreams, Dr. Blechner will discuss how discoveries in clinical and laboratory work have changed those ideas. He will reconsider the use of associations, symbols and manifest content and the special insights of group dream work. Finally, he will explore how a patient's dreams reveal things about transference and countertransference along with revelations about psychological defenses.

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Judy Kantrowitz, PhD

A Personal View of Terminations and Endings

There are many myths about ending an analysis but the reality is there are many ways to do it. Dr. Kantrowitz describes what she learned from interviewing volunteers about ending their analyses and her own process around terminating with patients where she considers the patient, their needs, and the nature of their work together. In addition, she will share thoughts about what the risks and responsibilities are as an older analyst working with patients, the needs of the analyst fulfilled through the work, and the analyst's mourning the end of a treatment.

2025–2026 Society Meeting Schedule

Past meetings

6 events
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Anthony Bass, PhD

Unconscious Communication Between Therapist and Patient: The Ordinary Uncanniness of Everyday Psychoanalytic Life

Dr. Bass considers uncanniness from two vantage points: Freud's concept of the uncanny as an intrapsychic one-person phenomenon, and the special evocative power of two unconsciouses at play in the two-person field of intersubjective therapy. Two new Routledge books from Dr. Bass arrive in 2026: Philip Bromberg: A Contemporary Introduction (March) and It Takes Two to Know One—Unconscious Dialogues in Therapy (September).

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Michelle Harwell, PsyD, MFT

When We Are Undone: Exploring Moments of Vulnerability, Surrender, and Creative Transformation Within the Analyst

What happens within a treatment when an analyst is overcome by her own primal pain, memory, and even trauma? Dr. Harwell offers a deeply personal look at the interiority of the analyst as she navigates the impossible entanglement of two traumas—her patient Lacy's and her own—and the spontaneous, ingenious ways healing arrives.

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Leon Hoffman, MD

Addressing Defenses: A Core Mechanism of Change in Psychodynamic Treatments

Dr. Hoffman directs our attention to the process of addressing patient defenses, discussing the importance of observing and appropriately addressing how patients manage painful affects in the moment. This experience-near intervention, developed for work with children, has broader applications across psychodynamic treatment.

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Stephen Seligman, MD

Holding and Containing: The Metaphor of the Baby in Winnicott, Bion, and Klein

We often use the ideas of holding and containing to describe our clinical work. Winnicott and Bion developed distinctive images of infancy from Melanie Klein's object relations: for Winnicott, holding conveyed a more mutual and harmonious arrangement, while Bion's containment implied something potentially disruptive to contain. Dr. Seligman explores the theoretical and clinical implications of these differences.

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Nancy Kulish, PhD

Case of Infantile Trauma and Resilience

A woman analytic patient's early severe neglect comes alive through bodily experiences on the couch. The treatment raises technical questions about recovery and reconstruction of early nonverbal memories, as well as questions about psychoanalytic ideas of development and resiliency in a high-functioning patient.

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM CT · Via Zoom

Dr. Martha Stark, MD

Conflict Statements: Leveraging the Patient's Anxiety to Incentivize Transformation and Growth

Dr. Stark takes a deep dive into the unspoken dynamics of neurotic conflict—namely, the tension between defiance and compliance. She proposes an optimally stressful, growth-promoting "conflict statement" as an intervention that targets both sides of the patient's ambivalence.

Continuing Education & Accreditation

CEU credit types offered. Programs are approved for the following continuing education credits:

  • Physician Credit (ACCME)
  • Psychologist Credit (APA)
  • Social Work Credit (ASWB)
  • Nursing Credit (ANCC)
  • Physician Assistant Credit (AAPA)
  • Pharmacist Credit (ACPE)

ACCME Accreditation Statement. This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Center. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

AMA Credit Designation Statement. The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this live activity for a maximum of 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Disclosure Statement. The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME's identification, mitigation, and disclosure of relevant financial relationships. This activity does not have any known commercial support.