Program Coordinator: Bart Blinder, MD, PhD

Presenter

Mark Solms, PhD, is Director of Neuropsychology at the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town. He is also Honorary Lecturer in Neurosurgery at the St Bartholomew’s Royal London Hospital School of Medicine and an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists. He is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the American and South African Psychoanalytic Associations. He is director of training, as well a training analyst, of the South African Psychoanalytical Association and director of the Science Department American Psychoanalytic Association. He is co-chair of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society, and was founding editor of its journal, Neuropsychoanalysis. He was previously research chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Sigourney Prize and the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award of the IPA.  He has published 350 scientific papers, and eight books, the latest being The Hidden Spring (Norton, 2021). He is the authorized editor and translator of the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 volumes) and the forthcoming Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud (4 volumes). In early 2026, he will publish The Only Cure – a neuroscientific defense of psychoanalysis in this era of biological psychiatry. His research interests have spanned the brain mechanisms of dreaming and those of consciousness and emotion (which prove to be deeply entwined). The major focus of his current research is the quest for an artificial consciousness.

Discussants

Lois Oppenheim, PhD, is University Distinguished Scholar, Professor of French, and Chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Montclair State University where she also teaches Medical Humanities. Dr. Oppenheim is Scholar Associate Member, on the faculty, and Chair of the Program Committee of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and Honorary Member of the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute. She has authored or edited fifteen books, including Imagination from Fantasy to Delusion – awarded the Courage to Dream Prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association – and co-authored For Want of Ambiguity: Order and Chaos in Art, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience. Other titles include Psychoanalysis and the Artistic Endeavor; A Curious Intimacy: Art and Neuro-Psychoanalysis; and The Painted Word: Samuel Beckett’s Dialogue with Art. Dr. Oppenheim is currently completing a book on neuroaesthetics and the intersection of art and science under contract with Routledge. In addition, she has published over 100 book chapters and papers, is the co-creator of two documentary films on mental health, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Psychoanalytic Horizons series of Bloomsbury Academic Publishing. 

Riccardo Steiner, is a distinguished psychoanalyst, historian, and author based in London, recognized for his substantial contributions to the understanding of psychoanalytic theory, history, and its sociopolitical context. Born and educated in Italy, Steiner relocated to England in the 1970s to complete his psychoanalytic training, subsequently becoming a full member and Distinguished Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He has also served as the Society’s Honorary Archivist and as Secretary of the International Psychoanalytical Association’s committee on Archives. Steiner’s scholarly work is especially noted for illuminating the intellectual and organizational controversies that shaped British psychoanalysis during and after the Second World War. He co-edited, with Pearl King, the landmark volume The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941–45, which meticulously documents the debates between Kleinian, Viennese, and “middle group” analysts. This work has been acclaimed internationally, earning nominations for Book of the Year by both the American Association of Psychoanalysis and the Paris Association of Psychoanalysis.

Moderator

Barton J. Blinder MD, PhD, is an active member of the NPC Senior Faculty in Adult and Child Psychoanalysis and Chair of the NPC Research Committee. He is an active member of APsA and IPA and a Distinguished Life Fellow of APA and AAPAC. He is a Clinical Professor and past Director of Eating Disorder Treatment Research at UC Irvine and additionally on the teaching faculty at the University of Washington and USC. At APA, in addition to leadership, Dr. Blinder participated in the establishment of Practice Guidelines, Commission and Caucus on Psychotherapy in Psychiatry, and editing a major text on Integrating Psychotherapy and Pharmacotherapy. His active research interests include Autobiographical memory, Neuropsychoanalysis, Spontaneous Thought, and Free Association in Psychoanalysis and relation to Neuroscience Contributions, and Treatment Resistant Depression and Early Life Trauma, Response to psychoanalytic/psychodynamic treatment, psychodevelopmental and neurobiologic roots of somatization, embodiment and eating disorders. He is in private practice of Adult and Child Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis in Newport Beach.

RECORDING:

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FEES:

General registration $125 | Member registration $100 | Candidate and Student registration $65

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