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ForwardSystems Psychodynamics with Edward Shapiro, MD
This seminar will explore how institutions like ours function as living emotional systems, shaped by unconscious dynamics, role expectations, and shared purpose. Through stories, reflection, and shared inquiry, we’ll examine how each of us experiences and contributes to institutional life—not as isolated individuals, but as members in differentiated roles, each one reflecting an aspect of our mission. I will suggest that our feelings and behaviors in role carry systemic meaning. Themes will include listening for “how they are right,” containing emotion as communication, linking personal experience to role, and adopting a stance of reflective leadership. The sessions are designed to be thought-provoking, practical, and relevant across disciplines.
Target Audience
Open to all staff—clinical, administrative, operations, and leadership. This seminar is interdisciplinary and designed to deepen your understanding of the work we do together.
Learning Objectives
- Describe the core principles of systems psychodynamics as applied to institutional life.
- Identify how individual emotional experience can reflect systemic dynamics in organizational settings.
- Explain the concept of containment and its role in transforming emotional distress into communicative meaning.
- Analyze how roles, traditions, and symbols communicate authority and mission in institutions.
- Demonstrate the use of an interpretive stance to reframe institutional conflict and clarify the organizational task.
Edward Shapiro, MD is a board-certified psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, family researcher, and organizational consultant, Edward R. Shapiro, MD, is the Medical Director/CEO of the Austen Riggs Center effective January 1, 2025. Dr. Shapiro was a distinguished faculty member in the Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy of the Austen Riggs Center. He is the former Medical Director/CEO of the Center (1991-2011).
An organizational consultant for over thirty-five years, Dr. Shapiro has consulted with hospitals, mental health clinics, law firms, and family businesses. He has published over fifty articles and book chapters on human and organizational development, family functioning, and personality disorders, presenting papers in this country and abroad. He is the author of Finding a Place to Stand: Developing Self-Reflective Institutions, Leaders and Citizens (Phoenix, 2020). His book (with A. W. Carr), Lost in Familiar Places: Creating New Connections between the Individual and Society, was published by Yale University Press (1991) as was his edited book, The Inner World in the Outer World: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (1997)
Austen Riggs Center Inc. adheres to the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Medical Education. All those at Austen Riggs Center involved in the planning of this activity, including the presenter(s) listed above, report they have no relevant financial relationships with an ineligible company*.
The views and opinions expressed in this presentation are those of the presenter(s) and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the Austen Riggs Center.
* An ineligible company is any entity whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.
Available Credit
- 5.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™
ACCME - As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for a maximum of 5.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
- 5.00 APA
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for 5.00 continuing education credit(s) (CE) for psychology. Continuing Education (CE) credits for psychologists are provided through the co-sponsorship of the American Psychological Association (APA) Office of Continuing Education in Psychology (CEP). The APA CEP Office maintains responsibility for the content of the programs.
Austen Riggs Center, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0115.
- 5.00 ASWB-ACE
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organization, not individual courses, are approved under this program. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. Austen Riggs Center maintains responsibility for this. Social workers completing this will receive 5.00 continuing education credit(s).
Austen Riggs Center, Inc is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0843.
- 5.00 Contact Hours/ ParticipationA certificate of attendance for all Learners.