Tarsila do Amaral, Operários (Workers), 1933
International CONGRESS
Second International Meeting of Psychoanalysis in Psychiatry Section (PIP) of WPA
In Collaboration with Après-Coup Psychoanalytic Association NY
On the Discontents of Patients and Clinicians in Psychiatry Today: What Psychoanalysis Can Offer
June 6 – 7, 2026
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Goldwurm Auditorium
Icahn Medical Institute, 1st floor
1425 Madison Ave, New York, NY
In-person and on Zoom
In our times, the field of psychiatry is confronted with unprecedented clinical difficulties and impasses. If, on the one hand, psychiatry has gained major scientific recognition, on the other, psychiatrists have become increasingly aware of the dangers of distancing from the clinical bases of their practice. Psychiatric practice has often been transformed into an exercise in applying standardized diagnoses, obligatory protocols, and ready-made treatments. It is no coincidence that this trajectory has been accelerated by the adoption of new technologies that make it appear as if the real presence of the clinician is superfluous and that the figure of the psychiatrist could become obsolete. Yet, these new technologies also present new possibilities. How can we make use of them while sustaining an ethics of subjective care?
We are interested in what psychoanalysis can offer to the discontents of patients and clinicians today. Some psychiatrists may believe that the sole contribution psychoanalysis can provide to psychiatry is a form of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Yet, different forms of collaboration are both possible and necessary. For example, psychoanalysis can aid in considerations regarding the importance of the physical presence of the clinician, in measuring the adequate time necessary to the clinical encounter and developing the listening appropriate to the specificity of the patient’s suffering, which is always singular.
What can psychoanalytic experience teach us about why the patient’s speech must be at the center of all care and about the transferential relation between patient and clinician? What do we think should be the necessary formation for clinicians today and what kinds of policies need to be implemented in relation to it? What contributions might psychiatry propose for the advancement of today’s psychoanalytic research? How can the two disciplines cooperate in dealing with contemporary psychopathology and implementing new objectives and approaches?
We welcome psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, scholars, clinicians from all disciplines and other interested participants to join the discussion of how to create an ethical clinic for our time.