Marilyn Charles is a staff psychologist at the Austen Riggs Center and a psychoanalyst in private practice in Stockbridge, MA. She is also a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis; International Coordinator of the Psychoanalytic Track at the Universidad de Monterrey (UdeM) in Mexico; and on faculty at Harvard Medical School and Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. She is a contributing editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, and a member of the editorial boards of numerous other psychoanalytic journals. She is actively engaged in mentoring, creating professional opportunities, and promoting community involvement and socially relevant research. Research interests include creativity, psychosis, resilience, reflective function and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Marilyn is also an artist, a poet, and a writer, who has presented her work nationally and internationally, publishing over 100 articles and book chapters and five books: Patterns: Building Blocks of Experience; Constructing Realities: Transformations Through Myth and Metaphor; Learning from Experience: a Guidebook for Clinicians; Working with Trauma: Lessons from Bion and Lacan; Psychoanalysis and Literature: The Stories We Live; and five edited volumes: Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis; and Fragments of Trauma and the Social Production of Suffering (with Michael O’Loughlin); Women and Psychosis and Women and the Psychosocial Construction of Madness (with Marie Brown); and The Importance of Play in Early Childhood Education: Psychoanalytic, Attachment, and Developmental Perspectives (with Jill Bellinson).

Carol Owens is a psychoanalyst and psychoanalytic scholar in Dublin, Ireland. A member of the Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland (APPI), she worked variously on their executive, scientific, and training committees for over 12 years to promote interest and activity in the field of Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis and edited the Irish Lacanian journal The Letter from 2003-2008. She founded the Dublin Lacan study group in 2008 focused on the close reading of Lacan’s seminars, and has co-organised the annual Irish Psychoanalysis and Film Festival since its inception in 2009. She has published numerous articles and book chapters in the field of Lacanian psychoanalysis and its intersections with Critical Psychology, Critical Management theory, Film studies, Queer theory, and Zizek studies. She is co-editor of Lacanian Psychoanalysis with Babies, Children and Adolescents (with Farrellly Quinn, Routledge, 2017), and Studying Lacan’s Seminars: From Lack to Desire (with Almqvist, Routledge, 2019). She is co-author with Stephanie Swales of Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: on and off the couch (Routledge, 2020). She is series editor for the newly established Routledge series Studying Lacan’s Seminars. She serves on the editorial board of the APCS journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society.

Michael O’Loughlin is Professor at Adelphi University, New York. His books include The Subject of Childhood (2009); Imagining Children Otherwise: Theoretical and Critical Perspectives on Childhood Subjectivity (2010) [with Richard Johnson]; Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in South Africa: Contexts, theories and applications (2013) [with Glenys Lobban and Cora Smith]; Psychodynamic Perspectives on Working with Children, Families and Schools (2013); The Uses of Psychoanalysis in Working with Children’s Emotional Lives (2013); The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting: Essays on Trauma, History and Memory (2015); Fragments of Trauma and the Social Production of Suffering (2015) [with Marilyn Charles); And We Forgave Them: Stories From the Struggle Against Apartheid in Venda, South Africa (2018); Lives Interrupted: An Analysis of Life Narratives of Persons with Chronic Psychiatric Struggles (2019) [with Montana Queler and Secil Arac-Orhun], and Precarities of 21st century childhoods: Critical explorations of time(s), place(s), and identities.(2023) [with Carol Owens and Louis Rothschild]. He is editor of the book series Psychoanalytic Studies: Clinical, Social, and Cultural Contexts, and co-editor of Critical Childhood Studies: Theoretical Explorations and interventions in clinical, educational, social and cultural settings. With Angie Voela, he has been editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society since 2018. His interests include the working through of intergenerational and collective trauma; the social origins of psychosis; critical psychiatry; child rights; childhood subject formation and decoloniality; migration and displacement trauma; and the totalitarian subject. He founded and runs Adelphi Asylum Project and he is in private practice on Long Island. For more on his work, please visit http://michaeloloughlinphd.com/ and https://www.adelphi.edu/faculty/profiles/profile.php?PID=0064.

Ionas Sapountzis, a native of Greece, is an Associate professor and the director of the School Psychology program of Adelphi University.  He received doctorate from NYU in the area of Educational Psychology with a specialization in the area of severe disabilities.  He received a respecialization certificate in Clinical and School Psychology from Hofstra University and pursued postdoctoral training in the areas of Child, Adolescent and Family Psychotherapy and also in Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy from the Derner Institute of Adelphi University.  He is a faculty member and a supervisor in the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and the Child, Adolescent and Family Psychotherapy programs of the Derner School of Psychology of Adelphi University.  He has worked with emotionally disabled children and students on the spectrum in school and community settings and maintains a private practice in Garden City, New York.  His articles have been published in the journals of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Psychoanalytic Psychology, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Psychoanalytic Review, Journal of the Humanities, and the Journal of Infant, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy (JICAP). 

Jennifer I. Durham began her work in professional psychology as an intern at The Consultation Center of Yale University Medical School.  She left Yale to do direct service work as a School Psychologist for the Teaneck Board of Education.  After seven years, she was hired as the Executive Director of Communities In Schools of Newark, Inc. Her work in the areas social justice, culturally competent services, and racial disparities within health and educational settings has resulted in numerous awards such as the Donald Peterson Prize and the Baldwin Fellowship. Dr. Durham is currently a Full Professor and Director of Clinical Training at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers. She was previously tenured Associate Professor at the Derner School of Psychology at Adelphi University, where she helped develop a doctorate school psychology program that focuses on social justice. Her Clark Social Justice Lab is named after Kenneth and Mamie Clark who conducted the doll studies that were an integral part of the Brown vs Board of Education case. Her lab conducts research and consultation on positive identity development and systemic equity for communities of color. She serves as the Eastern Representative for the International Association of Black Psychologists. She has authored several book chapters, is published in professional journals, and has presented nationally and internationally.

Angie Voela is a Reader in Social Sciences, University of East London (UK). With Michael O’Loughlin she has been the co-editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society since 2018. She has published numerous articles and book chapter in gender and feminism; psychoanalysis and philosophy; psychoanalytic approaches to politics, pedagogy and space; and psychoanalysis in contemporary culture, especially film and literature. She is the author of After Oedipus: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Myth in Contemporary Culture (2017) and the co-editor of We Need to Talk About Family: Essays on Neoliberalism, the Family and Popular Culture (2016). Her recently publications appear in Hyptia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy; European Journal of Women’s Studies, Subjectivity, Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, Journal for Cultural Research, Architecture and Culture, and New Formations.  

Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd is Associate Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies and Associate Member of the Political Science Graduate Faculty at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. A lawyer and political scientist, Dr. Alexander-Floyd has been actively engaged in a wide range of political and legal issues. Dr. Alexander-Floyd has been a featured speaker at fora and symposia at a number of colleges and universities, including Bryn Mawr College, Northwestern University, Prairieview A&M University, Princeton University, and Syracuse University, among others. An award-winning educator, she teaches a range of courses on Black feminist theory, Black women’s political activism, and race, gender, media, and the law. Dr. Alexander-Floyd is the author of Gender, Race, and Nationalism in Contemporary Black Politics (Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), and her articles have appeared in leading journals such as The International Journal of Africana Studies; Feminist Formations; Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies; Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism; The National Political Science Review; Politics & Gender; and PS: Political Science & Politics. Her current book project investigates the political implications of post-feminist, post-civil rights ideology in popular culture, formal politics, and contemporary political discourse.

Claude Barbre, M.S., M.Div., Ph.D., L.P. (Member at Large) is Distinguished Full Professor, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. He is Course-Lead Coordinator of the Psychodynamics Orientation, and lead faculty in the Child and Adolescent Studies. A teacher and psychotherapist for the past 35 years, Dr. Barbre served for 12 years as Executive Director of The Harlem Family Institute, a New York City school-based, psychoanalytic training program working with children and families. Author of prize-winning articles, books, and poetry, Dr. Barbre is a former Editor-In-Chief of Gender and Psychoanalysis (IUP Press), and Associate Editor of the Journal of Religion and Health (Springer Press) for 15 years. His edited books include: with Esther Menaker, The Freedom to Inquire (Jason Aronson, 1995), and Separation Will, and Creativity: The Wisdom of Otto Rank (Aronson, 1996); with Alan Roland, and Barry Ulanov, Creative Dissent: Psychoanalysis in Evolution (ABC-Clio Press, 2003); and with Marcella Weiner and Paul C. Cooper, Psychotherapy and Religion: Many Paths, One Journey (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). He is a five-time recipient of the international Gradiva Award in four categories (Book, Article, Book Chapter, and Poetry) “for outstanding contributions to psychoanalysis and the arts,” presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP). He is also the 2017 recipient of the Ted Rubenstein Inspired Teaching Award, and the 2018 Distinguished International Research and Scholarship Award-- both presented by The Chicago School. He is a Board Member and Training Supervisor at The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP), and in private practice in Chicago, IL. 

Miles Beattie is a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at Adelphi University and is in analytic formation at PLACE, a Lacanian association in Los Angeles, California. Miles holds an MA from Columbia University, where he completed his thesis on the use of scansion in the analytic session. Miles is writing a dissertation on the question of the libidinal body in Freud and lives and works in New York City.

Rubén Benavides Crespo is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and thanatologist based in Mexico, working in private practice in psychoanalysis and thanatology, as well as in clinical-research settings. He is a PhD candidate in Thanatology, with academic and clinical work focused on death, mourning, chronic illness, and processes of meaning-making. He currently serves as Head of the Research Laboratory and Clinical Development at Chronnect, a foundation that promotes the well-being of people living with chronic illness, where he leads applied research on illness experience and quality of life. His work draws from psychoanalytic, existential, and ontological perspectives, with attention to how individuals and communities negotiate loss, uncertainty, and meaning in clinical and cultural contexts. He is also part of a metacognitive research group led by Dr. Marilyn Charles, where his work engages with questions of meaning-making, reflexivity, and symbolic processes in clinical and cultural contexts. His scholarship and clinical practice are grounded in ethical care and critical inquiry into how normative frameworks, power relations, and institutional discourses shape experiences of suffering and vulnerability.

Vivian Chan, MS, DO, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in the Berkshires, MA. She completed her psychiatry residency at Mount Sinai Morningside West and psychoanalytic fellowship at the Austen Riggs Center. Her commitment to scholarly learning about psychiatry, psychoanalysis and its intersection with culture has its origins in research, where she published many articles on academic medicine, mood disorders, and quality of life. She frequently speaks at psychoanalytic and psychosocial conferences, focusing on psychoanalytic theory and its intersection with our current culture and media. Her passion for group dynamics and education extends to her work as a consultant to small groups and a mentor and teacher for psychiatric residents and medical students. 

Lita Crociani-Windland is a senior lecturer in Sociology and Psycho-Social Studies at the University of the West of England, UK. She heads Psycho-Social Studies as part of the Social Science Research Group at her University and is an advisory member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies executive committee. Her research and interests range from Group Relations work to an extended study of community, identity and inter-group relations, using festivals as a window on these issues, to excursions into politics and affect as well as special educational needs provision, disability issues and life course. The linking thread throughout is an abiding interest in affective dynamics, in relation to both Deleuzian and psychoanalytic understandings. She is a regular peer reviewer for a number of academic journals and member of two journals’ editorial boards.

Danielle Frank, LCSW (Member at Large) is a psychotherapist at the Lenox Hill Hospital Outpatient Center for Mental Health in NYC where she works in the Early Treatment Program for first episode psychosis and is also in private practice. She is currently a candidate at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in NYC and is an instructor at the Columbia School of Social Work. She is a graduate of the Smith College School for Social Work, a previous APsaA fellowship recipient, and writes on issues of trauma, mourning, identity, and the psychic implications of sociopolitical subjecthood.

Erica D. Galioto is associate professor of English at Shippensburg University, where she teaches courses in contemporary literature & film and psychoanalysis. Recent publications includearticles on Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Sapphire’s Push, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Are You My Mother?, Ling Ma’s Severance, and Sally Rooney’s Normal People. “‘Story It’: The Danger of Counter-transference and Need for Patient Voice in A.M. Homes’s In a Country of Mothers and Lidia Yuknavitch’s Dora: A Headcase” just appeared in the ZAA journal’s special issue on the Aesthetics and Politics of Psychotherapy (2024). “‘A Special Meeting Only for the Queens’: Reversing Psychoanalytic Myth in Midsommar’s Contemporary Horror” is forthcoming.

Karla Lizette Gomez received a Master’s in Clinical Psychology from the Universidad de Monterrey and is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in Mexico.  Karla is part of the volunteer committee and is an active board member in the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society (APCS). She was also an active member of Section VIII Couple and Family Therapy and Psychoanalysis for Division 39: Society of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology in 2020-2022.  In addition, she participated in the fellowship of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy from 2020-2023. Besides being active in the psychoanalytic community she has published articles such as “Clinical Conflict: The family Problem” with PARAPRAXIS in 2022 and her research (Mythological Bridge Between Intergenerational Transmission of Unmourned Loss and Addiction) in The Psychoanalytic Review in 2020.  She has also been active in presenting in several conferences and had the opportunity to present a case study in a live supervision panel with Nancy McWilliams at Division 39: Society of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology Spring meeting in 2019. Karla used to work as a psychotherapist at Desarrollo Integral en Movimiento A.C., a residential rehabilitation center for substance abuse for 4 years, and has worked in other mental health community agencies in Chicago, IL for 4 years.  In addition to intergenerational transmission of trauma, her interests include art therapy, psychosis, self-development and Greek mythology.

Jacob Johanssen is Associate Professor in Communications, St. Mary's University (London, UK). He is the author of Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data (Routledge, 2019), Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere: Male Bodies of Dis/Inhibition (Routledge, 2021) and Event Horizon: Sexuality, Politics, Online Culture, and the Limits of Capitalism (with Bonni Rambatan, Zero Books, 2021). His research interests include psychoanalysis and digital media, audience research, sexuality and digital media, affect theories, psychosocial studies, and critical theory. He is Co-Editor of the Counterspace section of the APCS journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society. He is a Founder Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) and also sits on the executive committee of the Association for Psychosocial Studies (APS).

Christine Liszewski is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in private practice in MD. She sees individuals for intensive psychotherapy in addition to medication management. Dr. Liszewski works primarily with individuals who struggle with mood disorders and trauma. She also teaches psychiatry residents. Dr. Liszewski is an adjunct professor at Michigan State University and University of Maryland. She is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. 

María Mirón is a clinical psychologist in private practice and a professor at the Universidad de Monterrey (UdeM) in Monterrey Mexico. Her research interest explore intersectionalities in both content and form, and center around metacognition, meaning-making, and complex systems. She is particularly interested in using technological innovations to further clinical research. In 2019 she co-developed an early childhood algorithm that won the MIT Solve Award, in 2019 she received the “Digital Pioneer” scholarship by Galvanize Inc and MtyDigitalHub to continue training as an applied data scientist, and in 2017 she was the recipient of the Scholar’s Award by APA's Division 39. María also has a passion for environmental justice, and since 2021 is the Lead Data Scientist for a coral restoration non-profit in the island of Cozumel, merging scientific diving skills and uses of data modeling to help coral reef ecosystems across the Caribbean.

bio forthcoming

Billie A. Pivnick is a psychoanalytic psychologist in private practice in NYC, specializing in treating children and families suffering from traumatic loss and problems related to adoption. She is faculty/supervisor in the William Alanson White Institute Child/Adolescent Psychotherapy Program and co-chair of WAWI’s Committee on Public Mental Health. Co-Chair of the Humanities and Psychoanalysis Committee of APA’s Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, she is a co-host of the Couched podcast, which features conversations between analysts and influential cultural figures. She is also co-founder and co-leader of the Psychoanalytic Community Collaboratory, a web-based seminar and project incubator for psychoanalytically-informed projects focused on innovative interdisciplinary responses to significant community problems. She is also Consulting Psychologist to Thinc Design, partnered with the National September 11 Memorial Museum, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, Orlando’s OnePulse Foundation; and to the Parkside School in Manhattan. Author of some thirty professional articles, she was the winner of the SPPP’s 2015 Schillinger Memorial Essay Award for her essay, “Spaces to Stand In: Applying Clinical Psychoanalysis to the Relational Design of the National September 11 Memorial Museum,” and the IPTAR’s 1992 Stanley Berger Award for her contribution to psychoanalysis. Formerly head of the Graduate Dance Therapy Program at Pratt Institute, she is also faculty at the Derner Institute, the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, and the New Directions Program in Psychoanalytic Writing at the Washington/Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. She is also an Associate Editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis.

Joseph S. Reynoso is a psychoanalytic clinical psychologist treating children and adults, and is also a provider for the National Basketball Players Association’s mental health and wellness program. He is the former Book Review Editor for Psychoanalytic Psychology journal and currently serves on the editorial boards of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. His 2021 paper, “The Racist Within,” published in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, was a finalist for the Gradiva Award. In 2024, he was a keynote speaker for APA’s Division 39’s Spring meeting on the topic of politics, psychoanalysis, sex and sports. In 2024, he published two co-edited collections of essays on sport and psychoanalysis with Jack Black. The first was a special issue of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society entitled “Just a Game? Sport and Psychoanalytic Theory.”  The second, the book Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears (Bloomsbury) was a finalist for the Gradiva Award. In 2025, he and Jack Black were named Senior Editors of the new Sport and Psychoanalysis section of the Cogent Social Sciences journal (Taylor & Francis).

Sophie Savage is an Associate Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol, UK. Sophie is a disabled academic and psycho-social researcher who has a focus on disability, education and social justice, most recent projects include Disability Rights and Robotics: Co-Producing Futures project and has been trailblazing the use of telepresence teaching as a reasonable adjustment in higher education. Sophie uses lived experience in teaching and research contributing to the Doctorate in Counselling Psychology, Postgraduate Social Work, MSc Transplantation Sciences and MSc Assistive Robotics programmes at UWE drawing on lived experience and current research.

Annie Stopford is an Australian psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice who has lived in the US since 2011. Annie's psychosocial research has primarily explored postcolonial and interracial contact zones, and in more recent years,  the links between structural racism and community violence in American neighborhoods. Her work has been published in several disciplines, including psychoanalysis, Critical Psychology, African studies, and trauma studies. Eminent sociologist William Julius Wilson described Annie's book "Trauma and Repair: Confronting Segregation and Violence in America" (Lexington, 2020) as a really important addition to the literature on concentrated impoverishment. 

Stephanie Swales is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Dallas, a practicing psychoanalyst, a licensed clinical psychologist, and a clinical supervisor located in Dallas, Texas.  She has authored numerous articles and book chapters as well as two books: Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch (Routledge, 2019), co-authored with Carol Owens, and Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject (Routledge, 2012).  Her current publications and works in progress focus on empathy, liminality, and perversion from a Lacanian perspective.  In addition to her role on the Board of APCS, she serves as an editor for the PCS review section of Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, member-at-large for the Dallas Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology, and Secretary for the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (APA’s Division 24).

Nigel Williams is a Visiting Fellow in Psychology at the University of the West of England, Bristol and a practicing psychotherapist. He has been a psychodynamic psychotherapy trainer for 30 years and has been active in the forming and supporting of charitable counselling clinics in local communities in SW England. He has taught Systemic Thinking, Applied Psychodynamics and Psychosocial Research Methods at UWE over a 15 year period. He is involved in organisational consultation in the charitable sector. His current research activities are in Social Memory and the Generations and in the Psychology of Buildings. His most recent publications are: Mapping social memory: A Psychotherapeutic Psychosocial Approach (2021, Palgrave Macmillan, Studies in the Psychosocial), Further Researching Beneath the Surface (Volume 2): Psycho-social Research Methods in Practice. (edited with Cummins, Oxon: Routledge, 2018), and the chapter “Anglo- German displacement and diaspora in the early twentieth century; an intergenerational haunting” in The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting, essays on Trauma, History and memory (Editor Michael O’Loughlin, Rowman and Littlefield, 2015).