Scientific Meeting: Truth and Reconciliation

1. Buy your ticket at nypsi.org. PLEASE NOTE: Ticket Registration is NOT the same as ZOOM registration.
2. One day prior: Complete ZOOM registration for webinar which you will receive by email from Sharon Weller. This step involves entering your name and email address. If you do not complete this, you will NOT receive link to webinar.
3. Click on email from Lois Oppenheim (host) which contains ZOOM link and password to “enter” the webinar.
4. Evaluation survey and CME/CE documentation will be emailed the day after the event.

The 1050th Scientific Program Meeting:

“Truth and Reconciliation”

The first in a series of three meetings devoted to the notion of conflict, both small-scale and large-scale, intra-institutional and inter-national.

Saturday, October 2, 2021

10:00 am – 12:00 pm (EST)

Panelists: Teresa Bejan, Ph.D., Rebecca Brendel, M.D., Henry Nunberg, M.D. (moderator), & Theodore Shapiro, M.D.

This panel will be devoted to the notion of conflict, both small-scale and large-scale, intra-institutional and inter-national. How might the origins of conflict be contextualized? Are the routes to reconciliation comparable? The role of aggression in human history and prehistory manifests in both small and large groups. Examples of the effect of increased aggression in the larger community on smaller groups abound; violence appears waiting to be stimulated. It is well-known that gratuitous violence – i.e., violence not connected to the need for food, territory, or reproductive opportunity – is more common in primates than in other species, the most obvious non-human example being chimpanzees. In a previous NYPSI meeting, tribalism was shown to be inextricably interwoven with aggression. What does this tell us about humans, from the members of the largest to the smallest groups and individual psychology as well? What are the ethical implications for political systems? These are among the questions to be considered by this group of distinguished panelists.

2 Contact Hours. 2 CME/CE credits will be offered. See details below.

Teresa M. Bejan, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Political Theory and a Fellow of Oriel College at the University of Oxford. Her book, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Harvard, 2017), was called “penetrating and sophisticated” by The New York Times. She writes regularly for scholarly and popular venues and is currently at work on a second monograph entitled First Among Equals: A History of Equality in Theory and Practice.

Henry Nunberg, LLB, M.D. (moderator) is a psychoanalyst in clinical practice in New York City. A member of NYPSI, where he is on the faculty, and of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he is a former member of the NYPSI Board of Directors and a past Vice-President. Dr. Nunberg is Professional Director of The Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund. His recent writings have been devoted to the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Theodore Shapiro, M.D. is Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College and a Training and Supervising Analyst at NYPSI. He was Editor of JAPA from 1983-1992 and served on the Boards of the Quarterly and Psychoanalysis and Science. He is the author of more than 25 scholarly and research articles published in peer review journals. His most recent books (two of nine) are a manualized treatment for children and adolescents coauthored with Barbara Milrod and Sabina Preter (Oxford U Press)and a compendium of his papers, From Inner Speech to Dialogue: Psychoanalysis, Linguistics and Development (IPP). Dr. Shapiro has served as Secretary of the Institute, on the Board of Directors and Education Committee and he was Director of Research for ten years. He is the recipient of multiple awards and lectureships including the Hartmann and Brill awards at NYPSI as well as the Rado lectureship at Columbia and the Plenary at the annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He continues to teach and lecture at the WCMC and practice in NYC.

Rebecca Weintraub Brendel, M.D., J.D. is President-Elect of the American Psychiatric Association.  Director of the Master of Bioethics Program and Associate Director of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, she bases her clinical and forensic psychiatry practice at Massachusetts General Hospital where she is Director of Law and Ethics at the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior. Dr. Brendel, who is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is also admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. Dr. Brendel is Chair of the Massachusetts Medical Society Committee on Ethics, Grievances, and Professional Standards and is an appointed member of the American Medical Association Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA). Dr. Brendel lectures nationally and internationally on critical topics at the intersection of psychiatry, ethics, human rights, and law.

Educational Objectives: Upon completion of this activity participants should be able to:

1. Describe the role of aggression, conscious and unconscious, in our patients’ difficulties.
2. Describe the relation between ethical considerations and aggression in the psychoanalytic situation.