Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis

JOIN US FOR “INTERSUBJECTIVITY ON THE WORLD STAGE” COURSE ON JUNE 6 & 13

For most of its history, psychoanalysis focused inward — on drives, defenses, and the internal world of the individual patient. One isolated mind, working on another.
The intersubjective turn asks a different question: what if the most important things happening in treatment are not located inside either person, but between them? What if development, trauma, and healing are all constituted in the space of human encounters, not merely influenced by it, but made possible by it?

This is the question at the heart of intersubjectivity as a psychoanalytic orientation. And it has been answered very differently across three psychoanalytic cultures.
In North America it emerged from phenomenological philosophy, infant research, self psychology, and relational and interpersonal theories centering the analytic encounter as a mutually influencing field.

In France and Europe, it developed along entirely different lines — rooted in a different reading of Freud, a different relationship to language and the unconscious, and the legacies of Lacan and Laplanche. It raises pointed critiques of the American relational paradigm that are worth taking seriously.

In Latin America yet another set of frameworks developed — and many Latin American analysts, working in social and political contexts that "irrupted" into consulting rooms in ways their counterparts elsewhere rarely experienced, were intersubjectivists in practice long before they were in theory.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY ON THE WORLD STAGE — A TWO-SESSION CE COURSE WITH EVA D. PAPIASVILI, PHD, ABPP — places these three traditions into genuine dialogue. Not to flatten their differences, but to let their convergences and disagreements illuminate each other.
THE COURSE STARTS THIS SATURDAY, JUNE 6. REGISTRATION IS STILL OPEN — JOIN US.

Virtual · June 6 & 13, 2026 · 12–3:30 pm EDT
9 CE Hours (APA · NYS Psychologists · NYS Social Workers) ·
6.5 CE (Licensed Psychoanalysts)

REGISTER: https://orinyc.org/6-6-26-6-13-26-intersubjectivity-on-the-world-stage/

Join our FB Group "Psychodynamic and Object Relations Community": https://www.facebook.com/groups/psychodynamicandobjectrelationscommunity

Not everyone finds relational approaches convincing.

This course is also for those who have found themselves skeptical.

French psychoanalytic thinking on intersubjectivity developed along distinct lines — rooted in a different reading of Freud, a different relationship to language and the unconscious, and the legacies of Lacan and Laplanche. It stresses the "unconscious subject" and its formation in relation to the real other, and it raises pointed critiques of the American relational paradigm that are worth taking seriously.

Intersubjectivity on the World Stage — a two-session CE course with Eva D. Papiasvili, PhD, ABPP — places these traditions into genuine dialogue. Not to flatten the differences, but to let the convergences and disagreements illuminate each other.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY ON THE WORLD STAGE (CE COURSE)
Virtual · June 6 & 13, 2026 · 12–3:30 pm EDT
9 CE Hours (APA · NYS Psychologists · NYS Social Workers) · 6.5 CE (Licensed Psychoanalysts)

REGISTER: https://orinyc.org/6-6-26-6-13-26-intersubjectivity-on-the-world-stage/

Join our FB Group “Psychodynamic and Object relations Community” at https://www.facebook.com/groups/psychodynamicandobjectrelationscommunity

What does it mean that many Latin American analysts were intersubjectivists in practice long before they were in theory?

Working in social and political contexts that "irrupted" into consulting rooms in ways their European and North American counterparts rarely experienced, they were already treating the analytic encounter as a mutually influencing field — before the paradigm had a name.
This is one of three psychoanalytic traditions examined in Intersubjectivity on the World Stage, a two-session CE course with Eva D. Papiasvili, PhD, ABPP, based on the IPA's Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.

North American, French/European, and Latin American traditions — placed into genuine dialogue, with their convergences and their disagreements both taken seriously.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY ON THE WORLD STAGE (CE COURSE)

Virtual · June 6 & 13, 2026 · 12–3:30 pm EDT
9 CE Hours (APA · NYS Psychologists · NYS Social Workers) · 6.5 CE (Licensed Psychoanalysts)

REGISTER: https://orinyc.org/6-6-26-6-13-26-intersubjectivity-on-the-world-stage/

Join our FB Group “Psychodynamic and Object relations Community” at https://www.facebook.com/groups/psychodynamicandobjectrelationscommunity

INTERSUBJECTIVITY
In Psychoanalytic Cultures of North America, Latin America & Europe
with Eva D. Papiasvili, PhD, ABPP
Virtual Live Course
June 6 & 13, 2026 (12–3:30 PM EDT)
9 CE Hours for APA (covers most mental health professions outside of NYS), NYS Psychologists, NYS Social Workers
6.5 CE Hours for Licensed Psychoanalysts (from NAAP)
Registration - https://orinyc.org/6-6-26-6-13-26-intersubjectivity-on-the-world-stage/

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to join us for a timely and intellectually rich course exploring INTERSUBJECTIVITY as one of the most influential and far-reaching developments in contemporary psychoanalytic thought and clinical practice.

What happens between analyst and patient is never only “inside” one mind.

Contemporary psychoanalysis increasingly recognizes that emotional meaning, unconscious communication, enactment, affect regulation, and analytic transformation emerge within a dynamic intersubjective field between patient and analyst. Across psychoanalytic traditions, thinkers have increasingly moved beyond exclusively one-person models of mind toward theories emphasizing relational process, mutual influence, subjectivity, field dynamics, and co-constructed meaning.

This course examines how that paradigm shift unfolded differently across North American, French/European, and Latin American psychoanalytic traditions — each developing distinct yet overlapping ways of conceptualizing intersubjectivity, unconscious communication, the analytic field, and the relationship between analyst and patient.

Based on the entries of the IPA’s Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (IRED), the course places major international psychoanalytic traditions into dialogue while tracing the historical, philosophical, developmental, and clinical evolution of intersubjective thinking across psychoanalytic cultures.

Dr. Papiasvili will explore how intersubjective thought emerged through multiple converging streams, including:
• phenomenology and continental philosophy
• infant research and developmental psychology
• attachment theory and affect regulation
• interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis
• self psychology and object relations theory
• post-Kleinian and post-Bionian developments
• field theories and unconscious communication
• contemporary neuroanalytic and developmental neuroscience perspectives

One concept. Three psychoanalytic cultures.

Participants will examine how North American psychoanalysis developed intersubjective perspectives through relational, interpersonal, self psychological, and field-theoretical approaches; how French psychoanalysis approached the “unconscious subject,” subjectivation, and the role of language and the “real other”; and how Latin American psychoanalytic traditions developed sophisticated theories of analytic field, relational process, and unconscious communication within distinct social and cultural contexts.

The course will also address the profound clinical implications of intersubjective thinking for contemporary psychoanalytic work, including:
• transference-countertransference dynamics
• enactment and unconscious communication
• analytic field processes
• nonverbal communication and affective exchange
• rupture, repair, and co-constructed meaning
• the analyst’s participation within the analytic process itself

From early development to analytic dialogue.

The course additionally integrates findings from affective developmental neuroscience, attachment research, and neuroanalytic studies illuminating the neurobiological foundations of intersubjective connectivity, affect regulation, and nonverbal communication in both development and psychoanalytic treatment.

This course offers a rare opportunity to study intersubjectivity not simply as a single theory, but as a major international psychoanalytic conversation unfolding across cultures, traditions, and clinical schools worldwide.

Whether you are a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, educator, or clinician interested in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice, this course provides a unique cross-cultural and interdisciplinary exploration of one of the central paradigm shifts in modern psychoanalysis.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY
In Psychoanalytic Cultures of North America, Latin America and Europe
(Based on the Entries in the IPA’s Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, IRED)
with Eva D. Papiasvili, PhD, ABPP

Virtual Live Course
Two Saturdays, June 6 & 13, 2026 (12-3:30pm EDT)

Continuing Education: 9 CE Hours for APA (covers most mental health professionals outside of NYS),
NYS Psychologists, NYS Social Workers (from Amedco)
6.5 CE Hours for Licensed Psychoanalysts (from NAAP)

You can find details and registration at https://orinyc.org/6-6-26-6-13-26-intersubjectivity-on-the-world-stage/

What happens between us — not just within us.
For much of its history, psychoanalysis focused inward: on drives, defenses, intrapsychic structure, the internal world of the individual patient. The analyst was a neutral observer. The patient’s mind was the object of study.
But over the past few decades, something has shifted — quietly at first, then more fundamentally. Clinicians and theorists began asking: what if the most important things happening in treatment aren’t located inside either person, but between them? What if development, trauma, and healing are all constituted in the space of human encounter — not just influenced by it, but made possible by it?
This is the question at the heart of intersubjectivity as a psychoanalytic orientation.
It’s a word that gets used in many ways — loosely, precisely, sometimes interchangeably with “relational,” sometimes meaning something quite different. It has developed along distinct lines in North America, in France, in Latin America, each tradition drawing on different philosophical and clinical roots, each arriving at different — and sometimes surprisingly convergent — answers.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be exploring these traditions together, prompted by readings and conversation. We’ll be looking at where intersubjective thinking came from, what it actually claims, and what it changes — or doesn’t change — about how we listen, how we understand transference, how we think about trauma, and what we believe we’re doing when we sit with another person in pain.
A question to start — not theoretical, but personal:
Has there been a moment in your clinical work, or in your own experience, where you sensed that something important was happening between people rather than inside one of them — and you didn’t quite have the language for it yet?
That’s the territory we’re entering.

ORI is collaborating with IPhA and would like to share this video invitation from IPhA President Marc-André Cotton and International Vice President Gabriela Gusita to the 49th Annual Conference of the International Psychohistorical Association.

The conference, “Breaking Cycles of Violence: Psychohistorical Perspectives on Individual and Collective Healing,” invites reflection on trauma, historical memory, violence, and the possibilities of repair across individual and collective life.

Watch the invitation:

Invitation to 49th IPhA Annual Conference - from M.-A. Cotton & G. Gusita. BREAKING CYCLES OF VIOLENCE:Psychohistorical Perspectives on Indiv...

INTERSUBJECTIVITY
In Psychoanalytic Cultures of North America, Latin America & Europe

with Eva D. Papiasvili, PhD, ABPP
Virtual Live Course
June 6 & 13, 2026 (12–3:30 PM EDT)

9 CE Hours for APA (covers most mental health professions outside of NYS), NYS Psychologists, NYS Social Workers
6.5 CE Hours for Licensed Psychoanalysts (from NAAP)

A rare opportunity to study one of the foundational-contemporary developments in psychoanalysis through an international and cross-cultural lens.

Based on the entries of the IPA’s Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (IRED), this live 2-part course explores how different psychoanalytic traditions conceptualize intersubjectivity, unconscious communication, analytic field dynamics, subjectivity, affect regulation, and co-constructed meaning.

The course places North American, French/European, and Latin American psychoanalytic perspectives into dialogue while integrating insights from developmental neuroscience, attachment research, infant research, and neuroanalytic studies.

Topics include:
• Relational and self psychological perspectives
• Field theory and unconscious communication
• Transference-countertransference and enactment
• Subjectivation and the “unconscious subject”
• Neurobiological foundations of intersubjective process

For psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and clinicians interested in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and clinical work.

Register on the web: https://orinyc.org/6-7-26-intersubjectivity/