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2026 Fall Conference - Hope in Hard Times: Building Community (Webinar live online or in-person)
In-person attendance: $250; limited to 50 people at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA
Virtual/remote attendance: Free
CE/CME available: 6 hours (pending approval)
Hope in Hard Times: Building Community is a hybrid conference designed for mental health clinicians and allied professionals seeking to think together about the ethical, clinical, and institutional challenges of practicing in a time marked by social fragmentation, political instability, and collective trauma. Drawing on psychoanalytic perspectives and interdisciplinary dialogue, the conference explores how transgenerational trauma, structural violence, and bureaucratic systems shape both individual psychic life and professional roles—while also attending to sources of resistance, responsibility, and hope.
The conference opens with a framing panel on "Transgenerational Trauma, Resistance, and Radical Hope," featuring brief presentations by Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP; Morteza Modarres Gharavi, PhD, LP, PsyA; and Bindu Methikalam, PhD. This session situates contemporary clinical and institutional dilemmas within broader historical, cultural, and political contexts, establishing a shared foundation for the conference.
Subsequent sessions invite participants to engage with two central questions: how clinicians and institutions can remain ethically grounded in the face of dehumanizing bureaucratic pressures, and how professionals can speak and listen across differences of identity, power, vulnerability, and role. Throughout the conference, brief didactic presentations are paired with facilitated large-group discussions to support reflection, dialogue, and application to clinical and professional practice.
The conference concludes by turning explicitly toward action and connection, examining how psychoanalytic ideas and values can inform social engagement in clinical, educational, and civic arenas. Participants will be invited to identify shared concerns and areas of interest and to make collegial connections intended to support ongoing work beyond the conference itself. Rather than managing ongoing groups, the conference serves as a clearing-house for connection, emphasizing community-building, professional resilience, and ethical responsibility in difficult times.
Conference Organizers
- Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP
- Vivian Chan, DO, MS
Presenters
- Bindu Methikalam, PhD
- Morteza Modarres Gharavi PhD, LP, PsyA
- Michael O’Loughlin, PhD
- Kritika Dwivedi, PsyD
- Cynthia Chalker MSS, LCSW
- Carrie Atikune, PsyD
- Cheryll Rothery, PsyD, ABPP
- Dennis Debiak, PsyD
- Hada Soria Escalante, PhD
- Abby Kuchin
Conference Schedule
Friday, October 2, 2026
6:00-6:30 p.m. - Registration
6:30-7:30 p.m. - Plenary "Framing the Conference: How Did We Get Here?" (in-person + live virtual)
Theme: Transgenerational Trauma, Resistance, and Radical Hope
Panel Presentations:
Reclaiming Voices from the Margins: Finding Strength through Diversity
Radical Hope Under Totalitarianism: Sustaining Social Cohesion in Times of Collapse
Addressing Colonialism, Internalized Racism, and Defenses in Organizations
7:30-8:00 p.m. - Hybrid moderated discussion
8:00-9:00 p.m. - In-person welcome gathering, desserts, and coffee/tea
Saturday, October 3, 2026
8:30-9:00 a.m. - Breakfast, late registration, and gathering for in-person attendees
Session I: Ethics, Responsibility, and Social Justice
9:00-10:00 a.m. - Panel presentation (in-person + live virtual)
10:00-10:30 a.m. - Moderated discussion (in-person + live virtual)
Shared Learning Objectives:
Ethical decision-making under institutional constraint
Professional responsibility in dehumanizing systems
10:30-10:45 a.m. - Break
Session II: Talking Across Difference
10:45-11:45 a.m. - Panel presentation
11:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. - Moderated discussion
In-Person Track:
Brief presentations followed by facilitated dialogue
Emphasis on relational dynamics, power, vulnerability, and privilege
Virtual Track:
Parallel facilitated discussion using breakout or moderated large-group format
Shared Learning Objectives:
Clinical and professional communication across difference
Awareness of power and positionality in professional roles
12:15-1:15 p.m. - Lunch
1:15-2:15 p.m. - Plenary "From Psychoanalysis to Social Action" (in-person + live virtual)
Panel: "Bringing Psychoanalytic Ideas into Social Action—Clinically, Educationally, and Politically
2:15-2:45 p.m. - Large-Group Discussions
In-Person Track:
Facilitated large-group discussion inviting participants to speak about:
Challenges in their professional roles
Contexts in which they are attempting to intervene or create change
Virtual Track:
- Parallel facilitated discussion with identical prompts and structure
2:45-3:00 p.m. - Break
3:00-4:00 p.m. - Closing Session: "Building Ongoing Community" (in-person + live virtual)
Introduction of the conference’s clearing-house for connection
Participants (in-person and virtual) invited to:
Identify areas of interest
Opt into post-conference collegial connections
Contact information and thematic interests will be collected electronically to ensure equal access across modalities. The conference will facilitate initial connections only and will not manage ongoing groups.
Learning Objectives
- Identify the ways transgenerational trauma, social collapse, and structural violence influence individual psychic life, clinical work, and professional institutions.
- Describe psychoanalytic perspectives on resistance, radical hope, and ethical responsibility in times of social and political instability.
- Analyze how bureaucratic systems and organizational defenses can contribute to dehumanization in clinical and institutional settings.
- Apply psychoanalytic concepts to dialogue across difference, with attention to power, privilege, vulnerability, and internalized oppression.
- Evaluate how psychoanalytic ideas can inform social action in clinical, educational, and political contexts.
- Identify collegial and institutional resources that support professional resilience, ethical practice, and community-building.
Conference Organizers
Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP
Vivian Chan, DO, MS
Presenters
Bindu Methikalam, Ph.D.
Morteza Modares Gharavi PhD, LP, PsyA is a licensed psychologist in New York and a graduate psychoanalyst of the William Alanson White Institute, where he teaches and supervises in the Intensive Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Program (IPPP). He is also Supervising Psychologist at the Pratt Institute Counseling Center. Before relocating to the United States in 2021, he was an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology and the Founding Director of the Clinical Psychology Department at Ibn Sina Psychiatric Hospital, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Iran, and the founder and director of the Mashhad branch of the Freudian Group of Tehran.
Michael O’Loughlin, PhD is Professor in the College of Education and Health Sciences and in the Ph.D. and Psy.D. programs in Derner School of Psychology at Adelphi University, New York. He has authored or edited many books. Since 2018 he has been coeditor of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He is editor of the book series, Psychoanalytic Interventions: Clinical Social, and Cultural Contexts for Bloomsbury. He is a Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council. He founded and directs the Adelphi Asylum Project. He has a private practice for psychotherapy and psychoanalysis on Long Island, NY.
Kritika Dwivedi, PsyD
Cynthia Chalker MSS, LCSW is a Black queer-identified clinical social worker and psychoanalyst who lives and works in New York. She completed her psychoanalytic training at Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis. Her research interests include the intersection of race, culture and identity in psychoanalysis. She is an instructor at various psychoanalytic institutes and a guest presenter around the country and abroad.
Carrie Attikune, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Portland, Oregon, where she works primarily with BIPOC, queer, and trans patients in psychotherapy and analysis. Her primary areas of interest are difference and otherness in psychoanalysis and Asian American experience. She is also the Director of Communications and Operations for the Consultation Liaison Network (CLN), a grassroots organization dedicated to psychoanalytic practitioners involved in DEIB work. She completed her analytic training at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles.
Cheryll Rothery, PsyD, ABPP is a Professor of Psychology in the Clinical Psychology doctoral program at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Rothery served as Director of Clinical Training for 25 years and Chair of the Center for Professional Psychology for 12 years. She is a licensed and board-certified clinical psychologist and a Fellow of the American Academy of Clinical Psychology.
Dennis Debiak, PsyD is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He was the first chair of the Committee on Sexualities and Gender Identities (SGI), a two-term board Secretary and President of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology: Division 39 of APA. He is the Chair of the Marsha D. McCary Fund for Psychoanalysis. He is a founding board member and one of the first graduates of the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia (IRPP), where he serves as faculty, supervisor and analyst of candidates. He is also the Director of Philadelphia-based Insight For All (IFA), which provides pro bono psychoanalytic treatment to formerly unhoused individuals.
Hada Soria Escalante
Abby Kuchin is Associate Zacharias Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Ursinus College, where she also coordinates the Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies program. Abby is co-founder, Associate Director at Large, and Associate Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. She also co-hosts the Ordinary Unhappiness podcast.