Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis upcoming events

Case Conference II (Marilyn Charles, PhD) (15 Nov 2026)

Sun, 15 Nov 2026 14:00:00 GMT

Marilyn Charles, PhD

Zoom

September 13; October 4, November 15, December 6, 2026
January 10, February 7, March 14, April 4, May 2, 2027

Case Conference I (Suzanne Rosenfeld, MD) (15 Nov 2026)

Sun, 15 Nov 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Suzanne Rosenfeld, MD

In-Person Only

November 15, December 13, 2026
January 17, February 21, April 11, May 16, June 20, 2027

Time: 9am-1pm

Seminar: Winnicott and the Relational Holding Model (Joyce Slochower, PhD) (21 Nov 2026)

Sat, 21 Nov 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Joyce Slochower, PhD

Winnicott and the Relational Holding Model

November 21-22, 2026

1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago

& ZOOM

Seminar Description: In this seminar we will review Winnicott’s contributions as they first altered our understanding of clinical work and ultimately informed the relational turn. I then offer an expanded understanding of what holding can look like in the consulting room. Arguing both for and against the clinical power of holding, I unpack her own understanding of its varied clinical impact in different kinds of therapeutic “knots.” If we have time, I hope to also address the underbelly of our analytic ideal and what I’ve called relational excess.

Joyce Slochower Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Psychology at CUNY; Faculty, NYU Postdoctoral Program, Steven Mitchell Center, National Training Program, & PINC in San Francisco. Second Editions of her books, Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective and Psychoanalytic Collisions were released in 2014. Her latest book, Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken, was released by Routledge in 2025. She is co-Editor, with Lew Aron and Sue Grand, of “De-idealizing Relational Theory: A Critique From Within” and “Decentering Relational Theory: A Comparative Critique” (2018, Routledge) both of which received the Gradiva award in 2019. She is in private practice in New York City where she sees individuals and couples and runs supervision and study groups.

Readings:

Aron, L., Grand, S., & Slochower, J. (2018a). De-idealizing relational theory: A critique from within. Routledge.
Slochower, J. (2014b). Holding and psychoanalysis: A relational perspective (2nd ed.). Routledge. (Original work published 1996)
Slochower, J. (2014c). Psychoanalytic collisions (2nd ed.). Routledge. (Original work published in 2006)
Winnicott, D. W. W. (1965). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment. Hogarth Press.
Balint, M. (1968). The basic fault. Tavistock.

There is far more relevant reading than we can cover in a weeklong seminar; I’m including a list of recommended readings for those who are interested. The Winnicott readings are background, but if you haven’t read them already, please try to familiarize yourselves with these three:

Winnicott

The aims of psychoanalytical treatment (Maturational Processes, 166-170)

Dependence in infant care, in childcare, and in the psychoanalytic setting (Maturational processes, 249-260)

The use of an object and relating through identifications (Playing and Reality 8694)

A relational perspective on clinical work

Slochower, J. (2014) Holding and Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Chapters 3,5,6

Slochower, J. (2014) Psychoanalytic Collisions. London: Routledge. Chapters 4, 9, 10

Slochower, J. (2021) A few regrets. Psychoanalytic. Dialogues, 31(2): 166-180.

Seminar: Winnicott and the Relational Holding Model (Joyce Slochower, PhD) (22 Nov 2026)

Sun, 22 Nov 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Joyce Slochower, PhD

Winnicott and the Relational Holding Model

November 21-22, 2026

1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago

& ZOOM

Readings:

Aron, L., Grand, S., & Slochower, J. (2018a). De-idealizing relational theory: A critique from within. Routledge.
Slochower, J. (2014b). Holding and psychoanalysis: A relational perspective (2nd ed.). Routledge. (Original work published 1996)
Slochower, J. (2014c). Psychoanalytic collisions (2nd ed.). Routledge. (Original work published in 2006)
Winnicott, D. W. W. (1965). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment. Hogarth Press.
Balint, M. (1968). The basic fault. Tavistock.

Winnicott

The aims of psychoanalytical treatment (Maturational Processes, 166-170)

Dependence in infant care, in childcare, and in the psychoanalytic setting (Maturational processes, 249-260)

The use of an object and relating through identifications (Playing and Reality 8694)

A relational perspective on clinical work

Slochower, J. (2014) Holding and Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Chapters 3,5,6

Slochower, J. (2014) Psychoanalytic Collisions. London: Routledge. Chapters 4, 9, 10

Slochower, J. (2021) A few regrets. Psychoanalytic. Dialogues, 31(2): 166-180.

Case Conference II (Marilyn Charles, PhD) (6 Dec 2026)

Sun, 06 Dec 2026 14:00:00 GMT

Marilyn Charles, PhD

Zoom

September 13; October 4, November 15, December 6, 2026
January 10, February 7, March 14, April 4, May 2, 2027

Seminar: See Description for Daily Subjects (Jill Gentile, PhD) (12 Dec 2026)

Sat, 12 Dec 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Jill Gentile, PhD

See Individual Titles Below

December 12-13, 2026

ZOOM

***Please note starting time: 10am***

Jill Gentile, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, clinical psychologist, writer, and faculty member at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality.

She is the author, with Michael Macrone, of Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire and more than fifty scholarly essays exploring agency, desire, democracy, free speech, and the feminine. Her work has received the Gradiva Award, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association Prize, and the Maurice Burke Paper Prize. She also served as an advisor to the acclaimed film The Tale.

Gentile has trained in ketamine-assisted therapy and psychedelic integration, and her broader studies encompass master plant dietas in the Peruvian Amazon and shamanic and spiritual approaches to healing. Alongside her analytic practice in New York City, she hosts study groups exploring how psychoanalysis might evolve in dialogue with emerging forms of consciousness, spirituality, and collective awakening.

Weekend Seminar

This seminar explores the evolution of personal, political, and ultimately spiritual agency—and the possibilities for expanded forms of consciousness. We begin with the aspirational promises of psychoanalysis and democracy, considering their shared commitments to freedom of expression: free association in the analytic setting and freedom of speech in the democratic sphere. From there, we take up the paradoxical role of hate and hate speech—not only as forces of psychic and political degradation and breakdown, but as entangled with desire, freedom, and the struggle toward more egalitarian forms of relation.

We then turn to feminine law and the exiled yet determinative feminine signifier, asking what becomes possible when psychoanalysis moves beyond an exclusive reliance on paternal laws of prohibition and lack. Finally, we consider recent eruptions of the previously “unthinkable”—pandemic, climate crisis, democratic and symbolic breakdown—as global psychoanalytic processes. Without minimizing their devastating and unequal tolls, might breakdown also expose the limits of inherited symbolic forms and become a portal to psychic, democratic, and spiritual transformation? Throughout, we will ask what the obscured but decisive action of the feminine might contribute to more relational, nondual, and heart-centered forms of collective life.

**A note on the reading: There is a substantial amount of reading assigned, so please begin well in advance of the seminar and do as much as you reasonably can, recognizing that some skimming may be necessary. As you read, please highlight passages or quotations that especially engage, provoke, puzzle, or challenge you, and note questions or associations you would like to bring into our discussion. I hope we can use the readings less as material to be “covered” than as a shared field for thinking together. Please come prepared, for each section of the seminar, to bring in at least one passage, question, or idea that you would especially like us to take up as a group.

Saturday morning: Speaking Freely: Psychoanalysis, Democracy, and the Fundamental Rule

Readings:

Gentile, J. (2016). Democracy: Relevant to psychoanalysis. American Psychoanalyst, 50.

Gentile, J. (2016). What is special about speech? Psychoanalytic Psychology, 33, 73–88.

Gentile, J. (2001). Close but No Cigar: The perversion of agency and the absence of thirdness. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 37, 623-654.

Gentile, J. (2026) Hate Speech as the Action of Inequality: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Democracy and Social Power, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 46:6, 617-632, DOI:10.1080/07351690.2025.2489330

Saturday Afternoon: The Feminine Signifier

Readings:

Gentile, J. (2017, November 13). Trump, Freud, and the puzzle of femininity. Philosophical Salon. Retrieved from https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/trump-freud-and-the-puzzle-of-femininity/

Gentile, J. (2022). The missing signifier and a malfunctioning paternal law: On the feminine third as vital portal to sexual difference and emancipatory democracy. In A. Govrin & T. Caispi (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy. London/ New York: Routledge, pp. 495-507.

Gentile, J. (2023). On psychoanalysis’s invention of patriarchy and the democratic significance of anatomical difference. In J. Petrucelli, S. Schoen, & N. Snider (Eds.), Patriarchy and its discontents (pp. 110–131). Routledge.

Gentile, J. (2017) Tugging at the Umbilical Cord: Birtherism, Nativism,

and the Plotline of Trump's Delivery, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 53:4, 489-504, DOI: 10.1080/00107530.2017.1373543

Sunday morning: The Evolution of Spiritual Agency: Psychoanalysis, Psychedelics, and the Future of Consciousness

Readings:

Gentile, J. (2020). Time may change us: The strange temporalities, novel paradoxes, and democratic imaginaries of a pandemic. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 68:4, 649-669.

Gentile, J. (2026) Threshold of the Zero: Breakdown, Cosmic Intersubjectivity, and The Sacred Space Between (∆), Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 23:2, 203-215, DOI: 10.1080/1551806X.2026.2643116

*Gentile, J. with Macrone, M. (2016) Coda: homeland security and the secure home base. Chapter 18. In Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire. New York/ London: Karnac. Pp. 228-245. (*optional reading)

Case Conference I (Suzanne Rosenfeld, MD) (13 Dec 2026)

Sun, 13 Dec 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Suzanne Rosenfeld, MD

In-Person Only

November 15, December 13, 2026
January 17, February 21, April 11, May 16, June 20, 2027

Time: 9am-1pm

Seminar: See Description for Daily Subjects (Jill Gentile, PhD) (13 Dec 2026)

Sun, 13 Dec 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Jill Gentile, PhD

See Individual Titles Below

December 12-13, 2026

ZOOM

***Please note starting time: 10am***

Weekend Seminar

Saturday morning: Speaking Freely: Psychoanalysis, Democracy, and the Fundamental Rule

Readings:

Gentile, J. (2016). Democracy: Relevant to psychoanalysis. American Psychoanalyst, 50.

Gentile, J. (2016). What is special about speech? Psychoanalytic Psychology, 33, 73–88.

Gentile, J. (2001). Close but No Cigar: The perversion of agency and the absence of thirdness. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 37, 623-654.

Gentile, J. (2026) Hate Speech as the Action of Inequality: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Democracy and Social Power, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 46:6, 617-632, DOI:10.1080/07351690.2025.2489330

Saturday Afternoon: The Feminine Signifier

Readings:

Gentile, J. (2017, November 13). Trump, Freud, and the puzzle of femininity. Philosophical Salon. Retrieved from https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/trump-freud-and-the-puzzle-of-femininity/

Gentile, J. (2017) Tugging at the Umbilical Cord: Birtherism, Nativism,

and the Plotline of Trump's Delivery, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 53:4, 489-504, DOI: 10.1080/00107530.2017.1373543

Sunday morning: The Evolution of Spiritual Agency: Psychoanalysis, Psychedelics, and the Future of Consciousness

Readings:

Gentile, J. (2020). Time may change us: The strange temporalities, novel paradoxes, and democratic imaginaries of a pandemic. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 68:4, 649-669.

Gentile, J. (2026) Threshold of the Zero: Breakdown, Cosmic Intersubjectivity, and The Sacred Space Between (∆), Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 23:2, 203-215, DOI: 10.1080/1551806X.2026.2643116

Seminar: The Opening Phase of Psychoanalysis (Nancy Burke, PhD) (19 Dec 2026)

Sat, 19 Dec 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Nancy Burke, PhD

The Opening Phase of Psychoanalysis

December 19-20, 2026

1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago

& ZOOM

Nancy Burke, PhD, ABPP, is a board member, core faculty member and past-president of CCP. She is the co-chair of Expanded Mental Health Services of Chicago, NFP, Vice-President of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis-US, a co-convener of the 606 Project, on the board of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology and Associate Clinical Professor, Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University.

Seminar Title:The Opening Phase of Psychoanalysis

Seminar Description: This case-based seminar will honor the tensions that it poses in its very being: Definitions of psychoanalysis tend to be vague and unsatisfying, the debates about how to distinguish psychoanalysis from psychoanalytic psychotherapy are often tedious, and in fact, there are as many ways to engage in the practice of psychoanalysis as there are psychoanalysts. Yet we mean something by the word “psychoanalysis” even if, in discussing it, we find ourselves circumscribing an emptiness capable of holding multitudes. Ditto for “opening;” it’s striking that this course has traditionally, at CCP at least, not been called “The Beginning Phase,” but rather refers to a phase of “opening.” What we mean by that word, “opening,” will likewise be considered as it applies to both the course participants and their patients. Most of all, we will aim to support both analyst and analysand in their efforts to start out on the not-wrong foot, will think together about how best to encourage the development of an “analytic attitude” in both parties, will attend to fears and concerns that could arise in the process of opening an analysis, and will address some of the seemingly concrete issues around the practice of intensive psychoanalytic treatment.

Readings

Bassen, C. (1989) Transference-countertransference enactment in the recommendation to convert psychotherapy to psychoanalysis. International Review of Psychoanalysis, 16: 79—92.

Bollas, C. (2013). Catch Them Before They Fall: The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown. NY: Routledge.

Cauwe, J. & Vanheule, S. (2018). On beginning the treatment: Lacanian perspectives. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 87:695-727.

Ehrich, L. T (2013). Analysis begins in the analyst’s mind: Conceptual and technical considerations on recommending analysis. JAPA, 61(6): 1077-1107.

Elkins, J. (2024) On “beginning” in analysis. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 93:567-591.

Freud, S. (1913). On beginning the treatment. 12: 121-144.

Glover, W. C. (2000). Where do analysands come from? A candidate’s experience in recommending analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis, 9:21—37

Ogden, T. H. (1992). Comments on transference and counter-transference in the initial analytic meeting. Psychoanalytic Inquiry 12:225-247

Stern, D. (2024) Beginning the treatment on a personal note: Creating emotional connection. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 93:647-674.

Wigoder, Meir. (2009) “In the Beginning is My End:” The initial analytic meeting from the patient’s perspective. Psychoanalytic Review 96:145-172.

Seminar: The Opening Phase of Psychoanalysis (Nancy Burke, PhD) (20 Dec 2026)

Sun, 20 Dec 2026 15:00:00 GMT