Trauma:
Mind, Body, and Healing
Houston Psychoanalytic Society (HPS) is inviting proposals for educational programs in 2023-2024 pertaining to the theme of Trauma: Mind, Body, and Healing. Over the years, psychoanalytic conceptualizations of trauma have evolved and expanded—and so, too, have our ideas about treatment. We are inviting proposals about trauma, its etiologies, risk and resilience factors, clinical picture, and treatment. Specifically, what is new, different, or better understood about trauma? Proposals may focus on clinical or applied psychoanalysis. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Intergenerational transmission factors, including the role of epigenetics
- Indications for, utility, and benefits of new biochemical interventions, such as ketamine and psilocybin, and their integration with talk therapy
- Climate change and environmentally-related traumas
- Possible trauma underlying other disorders, such as substance abuse, eating disorders, and somatic symptoms
- Conceptualizing and treating trauma from various schools of psychoanalytic thought
- Recognizing and treating preverbal trauma
- Similarities and differences between adult-onset trauma and childhood trauma
- Recognizing and intervening when dissociation occurs during the clinical encounter
- Memory functions in collective versus individual trauma
- Dealing with recovered memories
- Fostering hope and resiliency
- The clinician’s bright spots, blind spots, and trauma
All educational programs are online, enabling us to have speakers and audiences from the Houston area and beyond. Speakers and facilitators are paid a low honorarium. We are seeking proposals for the following types of programs:
Evening Speaker Series are monthly programs that consist of a 45-minute to 1-hour lecture, followed by audience comments and questions, with the program concluding in 1.5 hours. Panel discussions are also possible.
Meet the Author sessions are 1.5 hours long, featuring the author of a book published in recent years. The sessions consist of a 30 to 45-minute lecture by the author, followed by commentary from a discussant, panel discussion, and/or audience discussion.
Study Groups typically consist of 3 to 6 sessions focused on a book or pre-circulated journal articles. The groups have a limited number of participants in order to delve more deeply into a topic than possible in an evening lecture. Study groups often have 2 facilitators leading them.
We also are considering Film Discussions in which participants watch a popular film or documentary on their own, then convene to discuss the film with a facilitator or facilitators.
Program proposals should designate the type of program (i.e., evening lecture, study group, etc.) and provide a working title and short paragraph about the proposed content. Potential speakers and facilitators also should
provide their name(s), email address for the primary contact person, and a description of ea
ch speaker/facilitator’s expertise in the topic (i.e., publications, presentations, training, and experience). PROPOSALS ARE DUE NOVEMBER 30, 2022. They should be submitted by email to
info@houstonpsychoanalytic.org, with a Subject Line of Program Proposal. If a proposal is accepted, the
final documents will be due in April 2023 (title, abstract, learning objectives, 3 references from the professional literature, and the speaker/facilitator’s CV and bio), no exceptions.
