Calendar of Psychohistory Forum & Psychobiography Reading Group Meetings

Recent and Forthcoming Psychohistory Forum Work-in-Progress & Psychobiography Reading Group Meetings

FORTHCOMING:

RECENT:

Past Events

  • November 12, 2022: Heinz Kohut’s Vulnerable Self, His Reaction to the Holocaust, and his Break with the Psychoanalytic Establishment” (James W. Anderson, PhD, Northwestern University)
  • September 17, 2022: Psychoanalytic Work with Athletes: Probing the Unconscious in Sports (Tom Ferraro, PhD, Sports Psychoanalyst; Independent Scholar)
  • April 30, 2022: Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma and Resilience: What It Has to Do with Psychohistory (Inna Rozentsvit, M.D., PhD – Object Relations Institute)
  • March 12, 2022: Heinz Kohut’s Vulnerable Self, His Reaction to the Holocaust, and his Break with the Psychoanalytic Establishment (Jim Anderson, PhD – Northwestern University and the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute) – postponed
  • February 12, 2022 (Virtual): “Celebration of the Publication of The Many Roads of the Builders of Psychohistory
  • January 29, 2022 (Virtual): “Psychogeography, Identity, and Biophilia in NY’s East Village” (Theresa Aiello, PhD – New York University)
  • November 20, 2021: “The Childhood Origins of Political Violence and Extremism” (Sven Fuchs – Independent Scholar)
  • September 18, 2021: “Psychology of Space in the Age of COVID” (Peter W. Petschauer – Appalachian State University)
  • May 1, 2021: “The Paranoid Style in American History and Politics” (Ken Fuchsman – University of Connecticut)
  • October 31, 2020: “Reflections on Biden’s Childhood and Personality” (Paul H. Elovitz – Ramapo College)
  • October 31, 2020: “The Episodic Man: Donald Trump” (Dan McAdams – Northwestern University)
  • October 31, 2020: “Donald Trump and Stochastic Terrorism” (Denis O’Keefe – NYU University)
  • January 25, 2020: “Trauma Trails from Ireland’s Great Hunger: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry” (Michael O’Loughlin, PhD – Adelphi University)
  • September 28, 2019: Catalysis: A Recipe to Slow Down or Abort Humankind’s Possessive Need for More (Alice Maher, MD – Psychologist/psychoanalyst; and Ken Fuchsman’s commentary)
  • April 13, 2019: Erik Erikson: A Retrospective (Professor Lawrence Friedman, PhD – Harvard University), Lincoln Center of Fordham University
  • March 9, 2019: Beyond Sacred Cows and Scapegoats: Displacement, Ideology, and the Future of Democracy (Brian D’Agostino, PhD – International Psychohistorical Association Past President and Newsletter Editor), Lincoln Center of Fordham University
  • October 19-20, 2018: 2018 Annual Conference of the APCS (Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society), “Transformations: Disrupting Dystopian Futures,” New Brunswick, NJ – See information at https://stevenknoblauchphd.com/event/the-annual-conference-of-the-association-for-the-psychoanalysis-of-culture-society/.
  • October 5-7, 2018: Psychoanalysis in Our Time, in association with the University of Gdansk, Poland.  The theme for this symposium will be: “Psychoanalysis, Nationalism and Ideology”.  See information at https://psychoanalysisinourtime.wordpress.com/sopot-2018/.
  • September 9, 2018: Screening of Vamik’s Room by Molly Castelloe at the Freud Museum, London.  See information at https://www.freud.org.uk/event/screening-vamiks-room-molly-castelloe/.

Meetings from 1983 into 2018 are not included. Below there is incomplete and somewhat limited information on earlier meetings.  There are also some audio and video links to our past meetings.

See a partial listing of Psychohistory Forum Work-In-Progress meetings (seminars) below, with topics, presenters, and dates.  Reports on seminars may be found in back issues of Clio’s Psyche, the journal of the Forum, http://cliospsyche.org/archives.  Questions about the Psychohistory Forum, its seminars, or Clio’s Psyche may be sent to Paul H. Elovitz, PhD, cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com

Watch a Recent Psychohistory Forum Meeting

A Partial Listing of Work-In-Progress Seminars of the Psychohistory Forum

Forthcoming Work-In-Progress Presentations are mailed electronically to Psychohistory Forum Members approximately three weeks prior to each meeting. The Psychohistory Forum’s Work-In-Progress Seminars include panels at the International Psychohistorical Association’s (IPA) Annual June Conference (not listed below).

In the last three decades, our Saturday Work-In-Progress Seminars have included:

  • What Does It Mean to Be Human: An Interdisciplinary and Psychohistorical Approach-Ken Fuchsman, EdD-April 21, 2018
  • Winnicott’s Constant Search for the Life That Feels Real-James William Anderson, PhD-December 2, 2017
  • The Self in Psychology and History-Ken Fuchsman, EdD-November 4, 2017
  • The Pioneers of Psychohistory and My Personal Dilemmas-Paul H. Elovitz, PhD and Challenges and Benefits of Integrating Psychobiography into Academic Psychology Training-Joseph G. Ponterotto, PhD-September 16, 2017
  • Do Ask, Do Tell: Contemporary Questions for Psychohistorians and Psychobiographers-Irene Javors, MED-March 25, 2017
  • The Psychobiography and Psychology of the 2016 Presidential Election—Paul Elovitz, PhD; Ken Fuchsman, EdD; et al.: Fall 2016
  • The Role of Attachment in the Human Condition—Ken Fuchsman: April 9, 2016
  • Thoughts on the Tea Party and the Recent Rise of Right-wing Racism—David Lotto: January 30, 2016
  • Why We Hate—Lawrence J. Friedman: November 7, 2015
  • Psychology of Music—Susan Gregory and Ken Fuchsman: April 11, 2015
  • Adler, Freud, and Winnicott—Michael Clifford: January 31, 2015
  • Visionaries for Peace: The One World Movement—Lawrence J. Friedman: November 2014
  • Are We More or Less Civilized?—Ken A. Fuchsman and and Paul H. Elovitz: September 20, 2014
  • The Film Captain Phillips and the Problem of Contemporary Terrorism—Jacques Szaluta: May 3, 2014
  • A Film on Applying Volkan’s Peacemaking Model to Understanding Violence in America—Molly Castelloe:
    March 8, 2014
  • Social and Historical Influences on Psychoanalytic Thought—Donald L. Carveth: Nov. 16, 2013
  • The Psychoanalysis of Humor—Burt Seitler, Ruth Lijtmaer and David Beisel: September 28, 2013
  • Erikson and Fromm: A Psychobiographer’s Perspective—Lawrence Friedman
  • Psychology and Psychobiography of the 2012 Election—Herbert Barry III, Ken Fuchsman & Paul Elovitz
  • The Work of Eli Sagan—Don Carveth & Eli Sagan
  • “A Dangerous Method” – Freud and Jung: A Vexed Relationship—Jacques Szaluta
  • Brazil’s Lula and American Presidents and Contenders—Ted Goertzel & Paul Elovitz
  • Applying Psychoanalysis to Society—Alice Maher
  • Psychology of American Exceptionalism—Paul Elovitz
  • The Psychology of the Changing American Family—Ken Fuschman
  • Death Orders: The Vanguard of Modern Terrorism—Anna Geifman
  • Pierce Clark, Preserved Smith, and Other Early Practitioners of Applied Psychoanalysis—Paul Elovitz
  • The Resistance of Historians to Psychoanalysis—David Beisel
  • Peter Gay: A Historian Sympathetic to Psychoanalysis—Ken Fuchsman
  • Phyllis Greenacre on Creativity and the Creative Individual—Nellie Thompson
  • The Childhood of Romaine Brooks—Irene Javors and Cassandra Langer
  • Soldiers, Stress & Suicide: The Legacy of Violence and War—Fuchsman, Lotto, and Christine Silverstein
  • Why Barack Obama will be Elected President—Herbert Barry
  • Obama and Group Fantasies of Presidential Salvation—David Beisel
  • Impact of Candidate Personalities on the Election—Paul Elovitz
  • The Psychology of Confronting Death and Dying—Margery Quackenbush, Irene Javors, and Paul Elovitz
  • Love and Hate in Relationships—Jean Hantman, Paul Elovitz, and Jane Goldenberg
  • The Psychohistory of Vengeance—David Lotto
  • Gerontologist Reflects on Aging—Nora O’Brien
  • Women’s Creative Aging—Willa Bernhard
  • Children’s Perceptions of Aging—Robert Quackenbush
  • Lenin’s Brother—Philip Pomper
  • Presidential Responses to National Trauma: G.W. Bush, Carter, and Nixon—Paul Elovitz
  • The Psychology of Atrocity in Guerrilla Warfare—Ken Fuchsman
  • Jewish and Universal Lessons from the Holocaust—Isaac Zieman, Eva Fogelman, and Flora Hogman
  • Suicide, Suicidal Terrorism, and the Psychobiography of Osama bin Laden—Paul Elovitz
  • A Psychoanalytic Approach to Osama bin Laden—Christian Talbot
  • Collective Suicide in Germany in 1945—David Beisel
  • The Search for the Father—Peter Petschauer
  • Why the Secular Sacred is Essential for Progressing Beyond Religious Fundamentalism—Eli Sagan
  • Love, Relationships, Marriage, and Marriage-at-a-Distance—Don Carveth and Jean Hantman
  • Sports Psychology—Tom Ferraro, Henry Kellerman, Christine Silverstein, Stan Teitelbaum, and Elovitz
  • The Era of Watergate & the 1970s as the Age of Permissiveness-Narcissism—Carveth, Elovitz, Fuchsman
  • Understanding the Irrationality of the American Health Care System—Denis O’Keefe and Paul Elovitz
  • Health Care and the Politics of Sacrifice—David Lotto
  • Fame: The Power and Cost of a Fantasy: Family Materials—Sue Erikson Bloland
  • Incomplete Mourning and the Origins of WWII: Chamberlain as Exemplar—David Beisel
  • Conspiracy Thinking in the French Revolution—Barry Shapiro
  • Trotsky’s Self-Destructive Ambivalence—Philip Pomper
  • Lenin’s Personality Profile—Anna Geifman
  • Understanding Children and Adolescents Through Their Symbolic Communications—Robert Quackenbush
  • Freud’s Medical and Literary Ego Ideals—Jacques Szaluta
  • The “Next Assignment” of Psychohistory—Lambert, Lawton, Piven, Quackenbush, Szaluta, Elovitz
  • Some Thoughts on Violence and War—Mary Coleman
  • Psychoanalytic Scholarship on the American Presidents—Paul H. Elovitz
  • Mourning 9/11 and Psychobiographical Understanding of Osama bin Laden and the Terrorists—Javors, Goertzel, and Elovitz
  • The Great Promise and Anxiety of Modernity—Eli Sagan
  • The Terrorism of September 11th and Its Psychological Impact—Gonen, Javors, Elovitz
  • Freud’s Struggle with Misogyny: An Exploration of Homosexuality and Guilt in the Dream of Irma’s Injection—David Lotto
  • The Psychological Origins of Law and the First Written Laws—Gonen & Coleman
  • Psychoanalysis, Psychology, and the Law—Michael Isaacs & H. John Rogers
  • Countertransference: The Royal Road into the Psychology of the Cold War—Mike Britton
  • Hitler’s Utopian Barbarism: The Roots of Nazi Psychology—Jay Gonen
  • Right Wing Violence: The Turner Diaries, Hunter, and Why Some Men and Boys Are Drawn to Violence and Evil—Maria Miliora
  • Generations of the Holocaust—Flora Hogman
  • Men’s Deeply Repressed Envy of Women’s Ability to Create Life—Rita Ransohoff
  • Steven Spielberg’s Creativity and Connection to the American Unconscious—Jacques Szaluta and Richard Harrison
  • The Analyst on the Couch: A Biography of Heinz Kohut—Charles Strozier
  • The Biographer’s Use and Misuse of Empathy—Linda Simon, et al.
  • Hitler’s Apocalypticism—David Redles
  • The Fathers of Psychohistorians—Colp, Elovitz, Lee Shneidman, Strozier
  • The Mothers of Psychohistorians—Pfeffer, C. Shneidman, and Turken
  • The Founders of Psychohistory—Paul Elovitz
  • The Impact of Impeaching Clinton—Barry, Elovitz, Glad, Goertzel, Immelman
  • Genius and Parental Loss—Marvin Eisenstadt
  • Group Process and Propaganda: Nazi Propaganda Film—John Hartman
  • The Rescuer Self in the Holocaust—Eva Fogelman
  • Generations of the Holocaust and Kestenberg Memorial—Flora Hogman et al.
  • Hitler’s Masochism and Evil—George Victor
  • The Present State and Prospects of Psychoanalysis and Psychohistory—panel
  • Marie Bonaparte’s Psychobiography and Sexual Theories—Nellie Thompson

Our presenters come from universities and colleges including Adelphi, Boston, Brandeis, Connecticut (Uconn), Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, CUNY, Drexel, Harvard, Indiana, Kent State, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, South Carolina, Skidmore, Texas, and Ramapo as well as the A.A. Brill Library, the New York School of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Fair Oaks Hospital, and private practice. They are historians, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, social workers, and from a variety of other disciplines. These meetings are unique because the 10-25 interdisciplinary attendees read the paper ahead of time and spend several hours in intensive discussion before going to lunch together.

The Forum continues to be the only organization which consistently has small in-depth psychohistory meetings in New York City and virtually with work-in-progress papers mailed to members by our scholars. We also have ongoing research projects sometimes resulting in publication and a network of like-minded scholars/therapists/interested lay people. We welcome new members and first-time visitors to our sessions.

Please note: Papers are currently emailed only to members of the Psychohistory Forum. Please contact Paul Elovitz at cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com for more information.

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