D.W. Winnicott is enormously popular in psychoanalysis today, partly because of his charming, charismatic personality which shines through in his writing style. When one digs more deeply into his writing, however, one learns that Winnicott was not just a delightful character. He thought deeply about children, development, families, society, and ethics. His ideas regarding transitional objects and true/false selves are iconic, and his thinking is extremely useful in clinical psychology, philosophy, sociology, and ethics.

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In the latter half of the 20th century, philosophers in the continental tradition (Sartre, Ricœur, Foucault, etc.) began to recognize the import of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, not merely as a theory of the mind, but for the contributions it made to the worlds of phenomenology, aesthetics, epistemology, and ethics. Reading Freud as a modern philosopher and heir to Kant, yet one with deeply held romantic affinities and a profound interest in ancient philosophies and cultures, these thinkers began to wrestle with the complexities of his ideas from a philosophical, rather than purely psychological perspective. Meeting from 7:00 to 8:30 pm EST on the second Wednesday of each month from September to May, participants in this learning group will follow the lead of these philosophical forerunners, engaging in close textual readings of the most theoretical works of Freud and examining them from a philosophical lens, with the hope that a deep dive into psychoanalytic theory will enrich their therapeutic practice.

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Join Zenobia Morrill, Ph.D., licensed psychologist and Assistant Professor at William James College, for a Psychology and the Other pre-conference workshop exploring Critical-Liberation Psychotherapy (CLP). Drawing from critical and liberation psychologies, CLP challenges dominant therapeutic models that reinforce dehumanization and alienation. Participants will examine seven core assumptions embedded in mainstream psychotherapy and engage with practices that recontextualize healing as a relational and liberatory process. Through case vignettes and dialogue, this workshop invites clinicians to imagine therapy as a site for resistance, transformation, and the cultivation of critical consciousness.

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Join Matthew Clemente, Ph.D., Director of Research & Curriculum at the Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics and Assistant Professor of the Practice in Formative Education at Boston College, for a pre-conference workshop exploring Augustine’s Confessions through a psychological lens. Reading Augustine not as a philosopher but as a proto-psychotherapist in the lineage of Socratic inquiry and psychoanalysis, participants will examine core concepts such as guilt, shame, desire, faith, and confession. Drawing links between Augustine and Freud, the workshop engages Confessions as an early meditation on the restless human psyche. Through close reading and discussion, participants will reflect on Augustine’s enduring relevance to psychological thought.

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Decades ago, Frantz Fanon suggested that the Oedipal complex was far from coming into being among Black folk of the Antilles; perhaps tongue-in-cheek, Fanon nevertheless intends to signal in this passage from Black Skin, White Masks that traditional psychoanalytic theory and praxis cannot be applied wholesale, or without radical revision and correction, to Black life under the complicated circumstances of the post-colonial, post-slavery Western worlds. This inquiry aims to explore both the idea of the Oedipus complex, as well as Fanon’s commentary on it, in reference to life on the other side of the Middle Passage as it engendered the African Diaspora centuries ago. The primary concern here is finding a way to articulate an Oedipal cycle—or the transfer of authority from one generation to the next—that has been interrupted or deferred (as it was in the Atlantic slave trade) and what this might look like; the classic model of the complex brings us up short in understanding what this deferral might mean not only in reference to the transfer of power from parents to children, but the configuration of relations between siblings, or the entire field of contemporaries. “Riding With Oedipus” attempts to read the broad movement of the generational across six centuries of Black human becoming.

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This year’s conference will feature a keynote address by Hortense Spillers, six plenary speakers, eight invited addresses, and a wide range of breakout sessions. Arrive a day early to take part in one of three pre-conference workshops. The 2025 tracks include: Psychological Humanities and Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Virtues and Flourishing in Psychology, Global Wisdom, Narratives of Liberation, Lack and Flesh, and Children and War.

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