Psychoanalytic Dialogues
The origins of Psychoanalytic Dialogues at Western New England trace back to Freud’s Wednesday Psychological Society, founded in Vienna in 1902. Like those early gatherings, our meetings are devoted to the careful exploration of clinical experience, theory, research, and the enduring questions of psychoanalytic practice.
Each year, distinguished speakers engage our community around topics that shape contemporary psychoanalysis. Recent dialogues have explored the traumatizing nature of everyday life, theories of sex and gender, the developmental foundations of creativity, neuroimaging of analytic dyads, ethics of care, analytic neutrality, addiction, mourning, and the evolving relationship between psychoanalysis and society.
Held on Saturday afternoons throughout the academic year, these gatherings are designed to foster rigorous inquiry while cultivating thoughtful conversation across theoretical perspectives and levels of experience. Our shared work is scientific, but it is also sustained through dialogue, ethical reflection, imagination, community, and the disciplined mystery of listening. What we offer one another in these meetings is larger than any single term. Through sustained dialogue, psychoanalysis continues to grow—responding to new clinical challenges while remaining rooted in its rich intellectual and humanistic traditions.
A defining feature of these gatherings is the extraordinary participation of our own Western New England community. Candidates, early career clinicians, seasoned analysts, and retired faculty alike contribute insightful discussions that deepen and extend each presentation. In this spirit, Psychoanalytic Dialogues become more than a lecture series; they are a living conversation across generations, fostering intellectual curiosity, clinical wisdom, and a shared commitment to understanding the complexities of human experience.
Psychoanalytic Dialogues Committee
Co-Chairs: Gretchen Hermes, M.D., Ph.D., and Christopher Futty, LCSW
