Appalachian Psychoanalytic Society upcoming events

April 18, 2026 Spring Conference: Jill Gentile, PhD (Saturday, April 18, 2026)

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 12:30:00 GMT

Appalachian Psychoanalytic Societya local chapter of the Division 39 of the American Psychological Association

presents a

Spring Conference
with

Jill Gentile, PhD

Feminine Law
and the Sacred Space
Between ∆:
Reflections on Psychoanalysis, Democracy, Spirituality,
and Consciousness

Saturday, April 18, 2026
8:30am - 3:15pm

Crowne Plaza Knoxville
401 W. Summit Hill Drive
Knoxville, TN 37902

Description of Program

This intermediate level conference will present ideas of feminine law, free speech, and hate speech along with Winnicott's implicit political theory. It will trace how psychoanalysis and democracy speak to each other and how gender, and most especially the feminine, becomes pivotal to this conversation/intersection. This intersection becomes especially clear in the context of studying hate speech and the impasses of free speech and the way this connects to democratic law and psychoanalytic law. We will reflect on what we've witnessed in recent times as authoritarianism has been on the rise and democracy degraded.

We will build on these ideas and invite a conversation about psychoanalysis, spirituality, and sacred sexuality. This will include a glance at Dr. Gentile’s current work on hysteria and the goddess, on the "alien" and AI, psychedelics and plant consciousness. We will explore the argument that we are living in a time of a rapid acceleration of planetary and human consciousness. Psychoanalysis may usefully adopt a cosmic intersubjectivity paradigm which emphasizes a radical claiming of intentionality, desire, and agency, enabling seismic shifts in collective remembrance, intuition, and manifestations of the divine.

Presenter
Jill Gentile, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, clinical psychologist, writer, and faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and an associate editor for Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. She is the author of Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire (with M. Macrone). Her essays - which treat the intersections of agency, desire, freedom of speech, democracy, and the feminine - have been awarded the 2017 Gradiva Award, the 2020 Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA) prize, and the 2024 Maurice Burke Paper Prize. Dr. Gentile sees individuals and couples in her NYC clinical practice and hosts online study groups, the most recent of which are dedicated to how psychoanalysis might evolve to further a global expansion of consciousness and collective awakening.

Schedule
8:30am Registration
8:55am Welcome and Introduction
9:00am Feminine Law, Free Speech, and Hate Speech
10:30am Break
10:45am Psychoanalysis and Democracy in Conversation
12:15pm Buffet lunch, with vegetarian option (included in registration fee)
1:00pm Psychoanalysis, Spirituality, and Sacred Spirituality
2:00pm Break
2:15pm A Cosmic Intersubjectivity Paradigm for Psychoanalysis
3:15pm Complete Evaluations and Adjourn.

Learning Objectives

After attending this intermediate program in full, participants will be able to:
1. Describe the analogy between free speech in democracy and free association in the clinic, and the significance of constraints that enable the praxis of symbolic freedom and the flow of a discourse of (truthful) desire.

2. Identify how the polarity of gender underwrites the breakdown of democracy and free speech (or the acceleration of authoritarianism), and conversely, how feminine law and the signification of a symbolic space between (∆) creates the possibilities for democracy and psychoanalysis.

3. Describe how hate and the feminine function paradoxically, and differentiate the structure of hate speech from free speech.

4. Apply Winnicott’s conception of object usage and breakdown to the discovery/creation of a transcendent Maternal or Spirit-Subject; draw implications for psychoanalysis as a radically democratic and spiritual praxis.

5. Explain what is meant by a framework of cosmic intersubjectivity and how this may aid humanity during a period of rapid acceleration of consciousness (COVID, AI, the alien, political turmoil, genocide, Epstein revelations and more) and foster possible shifts in collective remembrance, intuition, and manifestations of the divine.

Participants
This program is open to all APS members and other interested mental health professionals
who may not be members. It is not limited to individuals practicing in a predominately psychoanalytic mode. The material will be appropriate for clinicians with intermediate levels of experience and knowledge.

Registration Fees and Policies

BY April 13, 2026:

Professional Members and Scholar Members: $125
Non-members: $145
Early-Career Professional Members: $75
Graduate Student Members: $30.

AFTER April 13, 2026:
Professional Members and Scholar Members: $150
Non-members: $165
Early-Career Professional Members: $100
Graduate Student Members: $50.

Registration will close on April 17, 2026.

Although walk-ins will be accepted, please register online at www.aps-tn.wildapricot.org in advance to assure adequate food and seating.

If you prefer to pay by check, please print the Program Registration form, and mail with your payment to:

Marisa Whitley, PhD
APS Treasurer
100 Forest Court
Knoxville, TN 37919.

Refunds honored with written/electronic notice at least 48 hours before date of conference. Contact Marisa Whitley, PhD.

Contact the APS President Joyce Cartor, PhD to negotiate fees, if needed.

Facility is accessible to persons who are physically challenged. If participants have special needs, we will attempt to accommodate them. Please address requests, questions, concerns and any complaints to Joyce Cartor, PhD .

APS Membership
Eligible professionals can join APS or renew their membership for the 2025-2026 program year for $120. Scholars can join/renew for $80 and Early-Career Professionals can join/renew for $65. Graduate students may join or renew for $25.

American Psychological Association Approval Statement
Division 39 is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Division 39 maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

Continuing Education
This program, when attended in its entirety, is available for 5 continuing education credits. With full attendance (sign-in at start of program) and completion of a program Evaluation and Learning Assessment, a certificate will be issued. Psychologists will have their participation registered through Division 39. Partial credit is not available for partial attendance.

APS and Division 39 are committed to conducting all activities in conformity with the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles for Psychologists. APS and Division 39 are also committed to accessibility and non-discrimination in continuing education activities. Participants are asked to be aware of the need for privacy and confidentiality throughout the program. If program content becomes stressful, participants are encouraged to process these feelings during discussion periods.

Selected References/Recommended Reading
Gentile, J. (in press). Hysteria, the witch, and the goddess: Resurrection of the trinitarian feminine beyond repression and repudiation. In Gherovici, P. & Steinkoler, M. (Eds). Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality. New York: Routledge.

Gentile, J. (2025). Hate speech as the action of inequality: Psychoanalytic reflections on social power and democracy. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, DOI:10.1080/07351690.2025.2489330

Gentile, J. (2024). Fear of breakdown and object usage: Confronting and surviving destructiveness, with some help from the Maternal, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 34:5,620-622.

Gentile, J. (2023). On psychoanalysis’s invention of patriarchy and the democratic significance of anatomical difference. In J. Petrucelli, S. Schoen, & N. Snider (Eds.), Patriarchy and its Discontents. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 110-131.

Gentile, J. (2020). Time may change us: The strange temporalities, novel paradoxes, and democratic imaginaries of a pandemic. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 68:4, 649-669.

Gentile, J. (2017). Tugging at the umbilical cord: Birtherism, nativism, and the plotline of Trump's delivery, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 53:4, 489-504.

Gentile, J. (2016). Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire, with M. Macrone (London: Karnac).

Contact
If participants have special needs, we will attempt to accommodate them. Please address requests, questions, concerns and any complaints to the APS President Joyce Cartor, PhD.

There is no commercial support for this program nor are there any relationships between Division 39, APS, presenters, program content, research, grants or other funding sources that could reasonably be construed as conflicts of interest. During the program, the validity/utility of the content and risks/limitations of the approaches discussed will be addressed.

May 9, 2026 Paul Lerner Scholar's Symposium: Mark Waugh, PhD (Saturday, May 09, 2026)

Sat, 09 May 2026 12:30:00 GMT

Appalachian Psychoanalytic Society
a local chapter of the Division 39 of the American Psychological Association

presents the

Paul Lerner Scholar's Symposium
with
Mark Waugh, PhD,
on
Troubadours of Transitional Space
and the
New DSM
(digital simulated mentalization)

Saturday, May 9, 2026
8:30am - 12:10pm

University of Tennessee Medical Center
Morrison Education and Conference Center
1924 Alcoa Highway
Knoxville, TN 37920

Participants are encouraged to read this article before the program:
Who Do We Become When We Talk to Machines?

Description of Program
Some argue that the rise of AI and virtuality is the fourth narcissistic blow to humanity (after Copernicus, Darwin, Freud). That is, human language, cognition, and, indeed, the self are no longer uniquely human. Situated in basic psychoanalytic principles and current concepts of personality disorder, we examine AI and virtuality for the psychodynamic clinician.

Presenter

Mark Waugh, PhD, ABPP, is a clinical psychologist who has practiced psychological assessment and psychotherapy in the greater Knoxville area in a variety of contexts, taught and supervised at the University of Tennessee Department of Psychology, and presented and published scholarly articles and books on personality disorders.

Schedule
8:30am Registration
8:55am Welcome and Introduction
9:00am Presentation
10:30am Break
10:40am Presentation
12:10pm Complete Evaluations and Adjourn.

Learning Objectives

After attending this intermediate-level program in full, participants will be able to:
1. Describe psychodynamic features of dimensional models of personality disorder.

2. State broad principles of mentalization theory.

3. Identify ways in which the concept of Winnicottian transitional space applies to child development, psychotherapy, and other areas of adult behavior.

4. Identify behavioral and emotional features of contemporary digital experience.

5. Connect transitional space, mentalization theory, and contemporary digital experience.

6. Analyze potentials and risks of generative AI and digital experience in relation to psychotherapy.

Participants

This program is open to all APS members. It is not limited to individuals practicing in a predominately psychoanalytic mode. The material will be appropriate for clinicians with intermediate levels of experience and knowledge.

Registration Fees and Policies

Professional Members and Scholar Members: FREE
Early-Career Professional Members: FREE
Graduate Student Members: FREE

Non-members, please join APS to attend this program.

Although walk-ins will be accepted, please register online at www.aps-tn.wildapricot.org in advance to assure adequate food and seating.

Continuing Education
This program, when attended in its entirety, is available for 3 continuing education credits. With full attendance (sign-in at start of program) and completion of a program Evaluation and Learning Assessment, a certificate will be issued. Psychologists will have their participation registered through Division 39. Partial credit is not available for partial attendance.

APS and Division 39 are committed to conducting all activities in conformity with the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles for Psychologists. APS and Division 39 are also committed to accessibility and non-discrimination in continuing education activities. Participants are asked to be aware of the need for privacy and confidentiality throughout the program. If program content becomes stressful, participants are encouraged to process these feelings during discussion periods.

Selected References
Choi-Kain, L. W., & Gunderson, J. G. (2008). Mentalization: Ontogeny, assessment, and application in the treatment of borderline personality disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 165(9), 1127-1135.

Fonagy, P., Luyten, P., & Allison, E. (2015). Epistemic petrification and the restoration of epistemic trust: A new conceptualization of borderline personality disorder and its psychosocial treatment. Journal of Personality Disorders, 29(5), 575-609.

Turkle, S. (2024). Who do we become when we talk to machines? Who Do We Become When We Talk to Machines?

Waugh, M.H. (2025). The Psychodynamic Core of Personality Disorder: Contemporary Models and Methods. In K. Banicki & P. Zachar (Eds), Conceptualizing Personality Disorder: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychological Science, and Psychiatry (pp. 59-85). Cambridge University Press.

Yirmiya, K., & Fonagy, P. (2025). Mentalizing without a mind: psychotherapeutic potential of generative AI. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 27, e79156.

Contact
If participants have special needs, we will attempt to accommodate them. Please address requests, questions, concerns and any complaints to the APS President Joyce Cartor, PhD.