The Dynamic Interplay of Adult Development and the Treatment Process
The Dynamic Interplay of Adult Development and the Treatment Process
Tuesday, June 3, 2025, at 8pm
Location:
Columbia University Faculty House,
64 Morningside Drive (enter via 116th St. click here for directions)
We strongly encourage participants to attend in person!
or via Zoom
Presenter: Steven Axelrod, PhD
Discussant: Timothy Rice, MD
In this presentation, Dr. Steven Axelrod will describe a developmental scheme of psychological tasks and emerging capabilities that he outlined in his recently published paper “Growth in Adulthood: A Revised Psychoanalytic Framework for Adult Development,” (2024, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 77(1), 126–142). It is a modification and expansion of Erikson’s original epigenetic scheme that incorporates what we have learned from subsequent theorizing and observations (especially longitudinal studies).
Dr. Axelrod will show how the combination of phase-specific, individual, and socio-cultural dynamics shapes the ways in which individuals traverse adulthood. He will illustrate how this perspective can inform and enhance our clinical work, paying special attention to the role of sustaining and developmental objects as drivers of growth in adulthood.
In the final portion of this presentation, Dr. Axelrod will discuss how follow-up data from outcome studies of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis can give us a window into the processes of growth in adulthood. The complex interweaving of psychotherapeutic treatment with subsequent life experience can lead to not only sustained but continuing improvement post-termination. Dr. Axelrod will offer speculations on how this post-termination growth occurs and its implications for the treatment itself and for subsequent patient contact.
PRESENTER
Steve Axelrod, PhD, is a psychoanalyst in independent practice in New York City. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, where he is Co-Chair of the Independent Track, working to foster innovation and improve the intellectual experience for all members of the Postdoc community. He is on the board of the Psychotherapy Action Network and is a principal in the Boswell Group of psychodynamic management consultants. Dr. Axelrod is the author of books and articles on adult development, the psychology of work (Work and the Evolving Self (Analytic Press, 1999)), leadership and management, male development, and hospital-based psychiatric treatment. He is the co-editor of Progress in Psychoanalysis: Envisioning the Future of the Profession (Routledge, 2018).
DISCUSSANT
Timothy Rice, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He Co-Chairs the Child Division at Columbia University’s Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. At Mount Sinai he serves as Director of Inpatient Psychiatry and of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry for Mount Sinai Morningside and West. His academic work focuses on emotion regulation development and the first evidence-based manualized psychodynamic psychotherapy for children with disruptive behaviors, Regulation Focused Psychotherapy for Children.