Psychological Humanities and Ethics Series
Conversations to Feed the Mind and Soul
This series is comprised of lectures and workshops that promote interdisciplinary conversations focused on human identity, suffering, and potential, with particular concern for the enduring ethical questions at the heart of human existence.
Many of our offerings offer continuing education (CEs) for psychologists, licensed mental health counselors, and social workers. Please see below for more details related to specific offerings. Past offerings can be found at the bottom of the page.
Upcoming Lectures and Workshops
Pilgrimage:
Psychological Narratives And Journey In Light Of A Story
April 22nd, 7:00 - 8:00 PM EST
Format: Lecture
In this Psychological Humanities and Ethics lecture, Paul Elie will discuss pilgrimage, its resonances in contemporary life – in religion and psychology -- and its application to psychological experiences.
Psychologists, LMHCs, and Social Workers are eligible for up to 1.0 CE credit if they attend the lecture in full at the live-time.
Keeping in Touch:
Corporeality of Psychological Experience
May 6th, 7:00 - 8:00 PM
Format: Lecture
In this Psychological Humanities and Ethics lecture, Dr. Richard Kearney will argue that touch is our most primordial sense, foundational to our individual and common selves.
CEs for LMHC, APA, and LI/LCSW will be submitted for review to respective credentialing bodies.
Brutal and Beautiful:
Narrating the Tragicomedy of Dementia
May 13th, 7:00 - 8:00 PM
Format: Lecture
In this Psychological Humanities and Ethics lecture, Mark Freeman will elaborate on the psychological experiences of dementia, from both philosophical and personal viewpoints - as well as fundamental ethical questions of the human condition.
CEs for LMHC, APA, and LI/LCSW will be submitted for review to respective credentialing bodies.
Summer Workshops
Laplanche's "Faithful Infidelity":
An Introduction to Laplanche’s Critique of Psychoanalysis
May 7th, 2:00 - 5:00 PM
Format: Workshop
This workshop with Dr. Gila Astor will introduce three major concepts – seduction, sexuality, and translation - that, taken together, establish Laplanche’s critique of the self-centeredness of psychoanalysis.
CEs for LMHC, APA, and LI/LCSW will be submitted for review to respective credentialing bodies.
#Racialtraumaisreal: Assessment And Treatment Of The Psychological Consequences Of Racism Across The Lifespan
June 11th, 1:00 - 4:00 PM
Format: Workshop
In this Psychological Humanities and Ethics lecture, Dr. Maryam M. Jernigan-Noesi uses recent and relevant research to facilitate mental health clinicians’ understanding of racial trauma and its sequelae, across the lifespan.
CEs for LMHC, APA, and LI/LCSW will be submitted for review to respective credentialing bodies.
Post-Structural Narrative Therapy:
“Storying” Practices In Helping Contexts
June 26th, 1:00 - 4:00 PM
Format: Workshop
In this Psychological Humanities and Ethics workshop, Steve Gaddis and Mookie Manalili introduce “narrative therapy” and its philosophical Narrative Worldview orientation, ethics, and practices. This non-pathologizing/totalizing worldview is grounded in an understanding of the constitutional nature of power; and the ways that people’s lives and relationships are constructed through stories.
CEs for LMHC, APA, and LI/LCSW will be submitted for review to respective credentialing bodies.
Heidegger For Clinicians:
"Being And Time" And Existential Psychotherapy
July 16th, 1:00 - 4:00 PM
Format: Workshop
This Psychological Humanities and Ethics workshop will introduce some important ideas and language from Martin Heidegger’s magnum opus, Being and Time. This is a philosophical introduction for therapists curious about its relevance for psychotherapy practice.
CEs for LMHC, APA, and LI/LCSW will be submitted for review to respective credentialing bodies.
Plato for Clinicians:
Knowing Thyself and Proto-Psychoanalysis
July 30th, 1:00 - 4:00 PM
Format: Workshop
In this Psychological Humanities and Ethics workshop, John Manoussakis and Matt Clemente will introduce clinicians to the ideas of one of history’s earliest and most formative psychologists in Plato.
CEs for LMHC, APA, and LI/LCSW will be submitted for review to respective credentialing bodies.
Foucault for Clinicians:
On Power and Sex
August 27th, 1:00 - 4:00 PM
Format: Workshop
In this Psychological Humanities and Ethics workshop, Ann Pellegrini will engage with the work of historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, and explore what Foucault has to offer psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and psychoanalytic thinkers.
CEs for LMHC, APA, and LI/LCSW will be submitted for review to respective credentialing bodies.
Psychology and the Other Conference
About the Conference
Human life demands the fullest account of itself -- lest we fall into simplistic reductions, corrosive divisiveness, and calcified identifications. The Psychology and the Other Conference is a biennial convening space that models what it points to -- a sandbox meant to allow for the play of languages, ideas, and formulations across fields and disciplines.
Our hope is to foster new and emergent ways of speaking to human identity, suffering, and potential -- not for knowledge’s sake alone, but in order to better serve the call of the suffering Other. Academics, clinicians, and students seeking dialogue are welcome to call this space home.
Past Lectures
Racial Trauma:
The Psychological Consequences Of Racism Across The Lifespan
February 18th, 2021
Lecture with Dr. Maryam Jernigan-Noesi
Experiences of racism and racial discrimination have been found to significantly predict racial stress and trauma (e.g., Carter et al., 2013). Despite both the prevalence of racial discrimination (e.g., between 50 and 75% of Black, Hispanic, and Asians reporting experiences of racial discrimination; Lee et al., 2019) and its consistent association with racial stress and trauma, most mental health providers and supports lack the necessary training to assess and treat racial trauma in therapeutic settings (Hemmings & Evans, 2018). As such, this program uses recent and relevant research to facilitate mental health clinicians’ understanding of racial trauma and its sequelae, across the lifespan. The virtual presentation will provide an overview of the history of racial trauma and its proposed recommendations for treatment. Conceptualization of racial trauma as a form of psychological distress arising from experiences of racism and racial discrimination yet, distinct from the traditional trauma framework will be highlighted. Finally, strategies for effective assessment and treatment of racial trauma will be discussed.
Let's Stress Ethics in Society
Psychological Distress, Human Poverty, and Embodiment
February 4th, 2021
Lecture with Dr. Robert Sapolsky
"Stress - in the beginning it saved our lives. It’s what made us run from predators and enabled us to take down prey. Today, humans are turning on that same life-saving stress response to cope with 30-year mortgages, four-dollar-a-gallon gas, difficult bosses and traffic jams…” Stress - particularly psychological distress for humans - is not merely an individual problem; the way we structure our society, politics, and policy have severe implications on our (as well as our neighbors’) psychological distress, embodiment, and well-being.
In this Psychological Humanities and Ethics lecture, Robert Sapolsky will discuss psychological stress (via neuroscience/ neuroendocrinology) and its relationship with ethics and society. Through dialogue with clinicians and questions from the audience, we will hone into particular discussions on poverty, discrimination, and socio-economic factors - as we humbly understand that our social and embodied natures come with implications towards community and responsibility.
In Praise of Failure
January 14th, 2021
Lecture with Dr. Costica Bradatan
In this lecture Dr. Bradatan will considers the case of E. M. Cioran (1911-1995) from the vantage point of his relationship to failure.There is, first, Cioran’s philosophizing on failure. He was obsessed with the topic throughout his work: from his first book, which he wrote in Romanian when he was 22, to his latest French texts, failure (be it cosmic, collective or personal) always played a central role. There is, then, Cioran’s record of personal failures: his involvement with a fascist movement in interwar Romania, his failure to keep a full-time job (and his bragging about it), his dream to live a parasite’s life in Paris (and the fulfilment of it), his social marginality, of which he was so proud. What complicates matters is that none of this prevented him from becoming one of the most successful thinkers of the 20th century.
Golem, Technology, and Ethics
The core concern of this lecture involves the logic of technology, and with a focus on the restlessness carried by this logic. Before asking questions about technology, from dialysis machines to cell-phone addiction to nuclear physics, we should be aware of the way our technology influences our relationship to the world. Technology is entangled with modes of production, with capitalistic goals of conquest and security, production and profit. In an effort to think otherwise about techne, Severson turns to the philosophical works of Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt, both of whom wrestle in helpful ways with the logic of work, tools, power and language. This lecture investigates the way modern technology surreptitiously influences those who use it, and reconfigures the mode by which modern persons relate to one another ethically. In the ancient wisdom of Golem mythology, Severson finds keys for developing an alternative contemporary attitude toward techne that restores rather than undermines the human encounter with the other person.
Notes on Suicide
Suicide is everywhere. It haunts history and current events. It haunts our own networks of friends and family. The specter of suicide looms large, but the topic is taboo because any meaningful discussion must at the very least consider that the answer to the question — ‘is life worth living?’ — might not be an emphatic yes; it might even be a stern no. Through a sweeping historical overview of suicide, a moving literary survey of famous suicide notes, and a psychological analysis of himself, Simon Critchley offers us an insight into what it means to possess the all too human gift and the curse of being able to choose life or death.
Pleasure of Hating:
A Critical Introduction to the Idea of Racism as “Enjoyment”
Why are so many everyday psychological accounts of racism ineffective? Historically, we are accustomed to thinking of racism as the outcome of ignorance or intolerance. Most approaches seem invariably to miss a central feature of everyday racism, namely that it hinges on a type of passionate intensity. This talk introduces the notion that racism entails a type of “enjoyment” (that is, a type of affective arousal) which is present both in the ‘pleasure of hating’ and in attributions of others as somehow excessive, as contravening cultural norms of enjoyment (by virtue of “their” music, food, religion, dress-sense and culture, etc.). A systematic exploration of a core set of ideas (libidinal enjoyment, resentment, the excessive other, and the moralizing dimension of racism) suggests that they might be more workable, indeed, essential, to how we think and act upon racism today.