ROUNDTABLE: POLITICAL EDGES (IN PERSON)

Politics has long been a contested domain in psychoanalysis. Where Freud turned his gaze to the political in his writings about mass psychology and the mythical origins of humanity, most psychoanalytic traditions that have followed treat the political as something “external” to the person who comes in for analysis, “outside” of the consulting room, “foreign” to intrapsychic process. This roundtable will reflect on how the political has always punctured the analytic situation, whether it has been acknowledged or not. It will also explore the ways this puncturing materializes today, in the consulting room, in and through psychoanalytic institutes, and beyond our field in the public realm where interest in psychoanalytic thought seems to grow.
Far from casting psychical dynamics as simply mimetic of the political realm, we consider instead how the political is libidinally embedded in the psyche and how psychic work might impact political desire. Beyond a (neo) liberal frame of representational politics (e.g., the who of the psychoanalytic dyad), we wish to examine how politics structure analytic encounters and arise in embodied, often unspoken ways. Three interwoven questions guide this gathering: How can we work across varied registers of meaning as they emerge in the consulting room and at our institutes? What has already changed about the ways in which we apprehend politics psychoanalytically? And what must be done—in terms of talk and action—to restructure the field around those whom psychoanalysis has injured and excluded? Speakers will respond to these questions and to each other rather than read prepared remarks. We will then open the floor for discussion and questions.
* An after party will be held at a nearby location.

Daniel Gatzembide, PsyD is a clinical psychologist who helps professionals feel confident and fulfilled at work and their relationships. He’s also assistant professor of psychology at Queens College, where he is the director of the Frantz Fanon Lab for Decolonial Psychology and conducts research on Puerto Rican and Latinx populations, ethnic minority identity, psychotherapy, and public policy and the social determinants of health. He is the author of A People’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology, and Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique: Putting Freud on Fanon’s Couch, which won a 2024 Gradiva Award for Best Book. He received his doctorate from Rutgers University, where he focused on multicultural psychology, anxiety, and trauma. He originally came from Puerto Rico for his education and ended up staying and working in New York City (Krispy Kremes *may* have played a role). In his off-time, he’s an avid gamer, activist, and spoken word artist.
Chanda D. Griffin, LCSW, is a teaching, training, and supervising analyst, as well as Co-Director of the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis (MIP) and Co-Director of MIP’s One-Year Program: Psychoanalysis and the Socio-Political World. Additionally, she is a faculty member at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) and the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP), as well as an Adjunct Professor at the Silberman Graduate School of Social Work at Hunter College. Her writing has appeared in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Psychoanalytic Inquiry, as well as the MIP blog Analysis Now and in The Psychoanalytic Activist. Chanda is a member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak and is in private practice in New York City.
Eyal Rozmarin, PhD is a psychoanalyst and writer. He was born in Israel-Palestine and now lives in New York. He writes at the intersection of the psychological and the social, about the relations between subjects and collectives, and about belonging. Eyal is Co-Editor of the book series Third Way Psychoanalysis, and is on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He teaches at various venues and keeps a psychoanalytic practice in New York. His upcoming book is titled Belonging and its Discontents.
Betty P. Teng, LCSW is a psychoanalyst and trauma therapist who has worked with survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and childhood molestation at Mount Sinai Beth Israel’s Victims Services Program in Manhattan. A co-author of the New York Timesbestseller The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, she is also a contributing essayist in Adam Phillips’ The Cure for Psychoanalysis and co-editor of Mind of State: Conversations on the Psychological Conflicts Stirring U.S. Politics and Society, a Gradiva Award finalist. Betty is the faculty of the Trauma Studies Program and the One-Year Program on Psychoanalysis in the Sociopolitical World at the Manhattan Institute of Psychoanalysis. She sees couples and adults in private practice in New York City.
Jamieson Webster, PhD is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and part-time faculty at The New School for Social Research. She is the author, most recently, of On Breathing (Peninusula Press, UK; Catapult, US) as well as Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis (Columbia, 2018) and, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (Vintage Random House, 2013). She has written regularly for Artforum, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, as well as many psychoanalytic publications. Jamieson was involved in the program “Futures of Capitalism” at the New Institute in the Academic Year 2024/25.

Paige Sweet, PhD, LP holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and is a Licensed Psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She holds faculty positions at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis (MIP), and the National Training Program in Contemporary Psychoanalysis. At MIP she is Chair of the Sexuality and Gender Initiative and Co-Chair of the Colloquium Committee. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Autotheory and Its Others (Punctum Press 2026), Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Parallax, The New Inquiry, and other places. In 2023, she was awarded the Symonds Prize for her essay, “Mask Up." She is currently at work on a book of essays provisionally titled An Apprenticeship in Not Knowing.
Alyson K. Spurgas, PhD is Associate Professor of Sociology and affiliated faculty in the Women, Gender, & Sexuality Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Alyson researches, writes, and teaches about the sociology of trauma, the politics of desire, and technologies of care. They are the author of Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century (The Ohio State University Press, 2020) and co-author of Decolonize Self-Care (O/R Books, 2023) among other articles and essays which can be found at alysonkspurgas.com. Alyson is also a third-year candidate in the Licensure Qualifying Program at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Continuing Education Hours: 2
The Manhattan Institute is a NY State approved provider of continuing education hours for: LCSW, LMSW, LCAT, LMHC and Licensed Psychologists.

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TALS Studio Photographer, 115 West 29th Street, New York, United States

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