What is the nature of the relationship that is offered by Artificial Intelligence? Following the publication of his book Holding and Holding Back, in part a reflection on the kind of relationship AI is not, Bret Schermerhorn takes up the question of the kind of relationship AI makes possible. The history of AI and the emerging technologies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries will be traced alongside the increased focus on the relationship between client and therapist and the social dimension of psychoanalytic practice during the same period. The phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty will be used to ground the existential dimension of the problem AI poses through an interrogation of the ontological dimensions of existentially informed psychotherapy. As opposed to the intersubjectivity of thinkers like Robert Stolorow and Jessica Benjamin, Schermerhorn will argue that the relationship offered by AI is an intrasubjective one: that AI instantiates a kind of relationship with the self that is neither wholly isolated nor wholly relational in ways that are important for understanding the therapeutic use of these new technologies and their broader impact on how we understand being with ourselves and being with others.

Chalfin centers queer and feminist theory as essential to an existential-phenomenological exploration of the paradox of powerlessness and powerfulness.Considering non-dual spiritual traditions, deconstructive and critical theory, psychoanalytic relational frameworks, and the existential relational tradition cultivated at NECET, she highlights how marginal voices – often erased or minimized in dominant narratives – offer vital perspectives on vulnerability, responsibility, and being-with.Embracing multiplicity, friction and dislocation, not as deficits but as generative conditions for relational and pollical aliveness, Chalfin reframes home and belonging as dynamic, contested, and transformative. Tracing a journey from formative origins to dwelling in the margins, the presentation invites reflection on how difference (differance), power, and presence create openings for clinical practice and community-making that inhabit, rather than resolve, paradox.

Challenging the notion that psychoanalysis is bound to the past, Al Margulies reframes trauma and experience through the lens of the future – drawing on Freud’s Nachtraglichkeit (deferred action), Lacan’s après-coup, and Heidegger’s temporality. He examines existential shock, dislocation, and the longing for home within our current “permacrisis.”

Building on decades of clinical and theoretical work, Margulies reflects on the interplay of art, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, and how meaning, memory and temporality shape our being-in-the-world. His presentation will touch on the full circle of his engagement with NECET – from his early keynote address in 1996 to his return now – situating the existential-psychoanalytic dialogue at NECET as a vital home for meaning-making in troubled times.

Wendy Sharak shares her journey discovering Eugene Gendlin’s phenomenological Focusing model within her clinical work integrating expressive arts therapies with NECET’s existential-psychoanalytic approach. She describes the profound joy of finding a sense of home in this integration – a therapeutic framework honoring embodied experience and existential presence.

Drawing from Gendlin’s research with Carl Rogers, Sharak highlights the core concept of “felt sensing”, an intentional, embodied way of being with lived experience.She explores existential themes such as “experiencing” and “interaction first”, which enliven the therapeutic space.Through brief guided exercises, participants will connect with their own embodied experiencing, deepening their engagement with this dynamic process of belonging and therapeutic change.

Bob Fox traces the philosophical and clinical origins of NECET through his formative encounters with Eugene Gendlin’s embodied phenomenology, Aron Gurwitsch’s instruction in Husserl’s theory of intentionality, and Paul Russell’s psychoanalytic teaching of the repetition compulsion. He will explore how the guiding injunction – “Yes. There it is. Attend to it. Follow it.” – has shaped his work as a therapist, teacher and community-builder, and how it continues to inform NECET’s ethos. Situating NECET’s beginnings within a lineage of existential, phenomenological and psychoanalytic traditions, Fox invites reflection on how attention to the implicit – in body, language, and relationship – can deepen clinical practice and sustain community over decades.

Lynn will present the final talk of the series whose very title evokes themes from Heidegger and Levinas but Lynn will lean heavily on the writing of Hans-Georg-Gadamer, the quintessential hermeneutic philosopher. As a psychotherapist specializing in working with death and dying, her talk will explore what it means to be with the suffering other in a caregiving role, and the implications to one’s sense of self and identity. She will explore the identity transformations experienced in her own working with death and dying through the lens of Gadamer and other philosophical traditions that explore modes of being-with and being-with-oneself in the caring relationship.

Richard’s presentation draws upon the experience of being thrown toward his acutely ill brother dying of cancer.From this encounter with death and dying of a loved one, Richard will explore the transformative potential of caregiving in such circumstances. His talk considers this transformation as a point of departure toward nothingness and yet surprisingly a gift of being more oneself and more with the other. He will draw upon Heidegger, Kierkegaard and especially Derrida’s The Gift of Death to survey an experience of this point of departure as an event that exposes the limits of reason and logic and yet opens to more.

Julie’s presentation further explores identity, in this instance, the identity of someone who has freely chosen the role of professional caregiver. Julie will explore the idealizations and simplifications surrounding death and dying work. While hospice workers are often called “angels,” Julie attests that while this is not incorrect, it is incomplete. She illustrates the complexity of the work, exploring the supremely challenging and uncomfortable position of thinking about one’s own mortality daily. Informed by existential philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, and a systems approach, this talk will explore what it means to be a professional whose work is to be with people who are being towards death.

Bob’s presentation emerges from his experience caring for his wife, who was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer late last year. The talk will center on the shifts of identity that arise when suddenly and unalterably thrown into this role. Identity in relation to caregiving for the dying other will be explored from multiple perspectives, including psychodynamic, existential, and cultural. The dialectics of reliance and burden will be explored with particular attention to issues of dependency, guilt and resentment, and grief and appreciation. As always at NECET, the personal will be used as a way to illustrate and explore these philosophical and psychological themes.

Returning guest speaker Karley Guterres will turn directly toward working with suffering and the forces of hope and dread in clinical practice. Where these polarizing responses to suffering can reduce the world into black and white, this talk explores how we can stay in the gray areas: what it means to work under conditions of great existential uncertainty while resisting the temptation to cling to comfortable solutions in the face of anxiety.

Our guest speaker, Dr. Lisa Moore will join us from the University of Chicago. Her talk will how contemporary practice conditions require us to reconsider outdated notions of self, illusions of anonymity, and constructions of the therapeutic container. Her discussion will move the clinical frame toward more rigorous and less reductive understandings of the practitioner's self in the therapeutic dyad, challenging and reframing the clinical frame and formations of self. PLEASE NOTE: This talk will be entirely ON ZOOM!

NECET steering committee member Richard Freid will elaborate on his talk for the Psychology of the Other conference entitled What is Ethics? From Content to a Mode of Existential Activity. Drawing upon Heidegger’s later work on Identity, Difference and "the openness"; Richard will show how this openness evokes a tenderness that softens the threat of difference. From this perspective, he will show how ethics can shift from defensive, protective rules of right and wrong to a relational mode of existential activity, which can be embodied in clinical practice.

In this first talk of the 2023-2024 NECET Conference Series, Robin and Bob co-present a discussion of ethics that challenges the trend toward lofty abstractions on morality and alternately righteous conversations of survival. Through untangling and unpacking the ancient and contemporary myths surrounding selfishness and selflessness they explore a non-reductive relational mode of ethics in practice.

Virtual event, co-sponsored and hosted by Psychology and the Other. In this workshop, ethics emerges as a set of paradoxes challenging the selfless-selfish binary by exploring dialectical tension and hermeneutical movement as essential to ethical thinking and action.

Jason takes us into/through “Departures” (2008), directed by Yojiro Takita.
(We recommend seeing the film before attending this talk.)
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Glen invites us to experience “Harold and Maude” (1971), directed by Hal Ashby.
(We recommend seeing the film before attending this talk.)
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Ming Chang shares her analysis of “The Farewell” (2019), directed by Lulu Wang.
(We recommend seeing the film before attending this talk.)
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Bob Fox takes us through “Paterson” (2016), directed by Jim Jarmusch.
Respondents: Laura Gimby, RN, CNS and Julie Weiss, PhD.

(We recommend seeing the film before attending this talk.)
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Jason Ri, LMHC

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Michael "Mookie" Manalili, LCSW