APM Symposium – Attacks on Thinking: Dialogues on the Distortion of Reality in the Social Sphere

Saturday, April 26, 2025

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

Attacks Symposium: Time Chart

“Attacks” Symposium: Biographical Profiles of the Panelists

Zahid R. Chaudhary
Zahid R. Chaudhary is Associate Professor of English at Princeton University, and the author of Paranoid Publics: Psychopolitics of Truth, forthcoming by Fordham University Press in Fall 2025. He is also the author of Afterimage of Empire: Photography in Nineteenth-Century India (Minnesota 2012), and has written widely in the fields of postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, contemporary art, film, and critical theory.

Karim Dajani
Karim G. Dajani, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst with a specialization in working with issues related to cultural dislocation and displacement. His research and writing include publications on the links between cultural systems and the unconscious of individuals and groups. He sits on the editorial board of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. His recent works include a special issue dedicated to the social unconscious and a chapter on race and ethnicity in contemporary psychoanalytic theories and praxis in the latest edition of the textbook on Psychoanalysis.

Lauren Dwyer
Dr. Lauren Dwyer is an assistant professor with Mount Royal University’s Information Design program, researching the role of emerging communication technologies in behaviour modification. Dr. Dwyer holds a Ph.D. from Toronto Metropolitan University and York University’s joint Communication and Culture program, where she explored how social robots can be designed to enhance human communication and emotional experiences. Her current research interests lie at the intersection between artificial intelligence, journalism and truth. For more up-to-date information and to see the courses she is teaching you can find her at laurenjdwyer.com

Dagmar Herzog
Dagmar Herzog is Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where she writes and teaches on the histories of Nazism and the Holocaust, sexuality and gender, disability activism and care work, and the politics of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. She is author of seven books, most recently The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany’s Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2024). Other titles include Sex after Fascism (Princeton, 2005), Sexuality in Europe (Cambridge, 2011), and Cold War Freud (Cambridge, 2017). From 2017 to 2022 she was Coeditor (with Matt Ffytche) of the British journal Psychoanalysis and History, where she worked to bring out special issues on “Psychoanalysis and the Middle East,” “Psychoanalysis Confronts Cognitive Disability,” and “Queering Freud Differently.” She also edited the English translation of radical Swiss psychoanalyst Fritz Morgenthaler’s counterculture classic, On the Dialectics of Psychoanalytic Practice (2020). She will coedit a forthcoming Routledge Handbook on the History of Psychoanalytic Ideas.

Carlo Invernizzi Accetti
Carlo Invernizzi Accetti is Professor of Political Science and Executive Director of the Moynihan Center at The City College of New York (CCNY). He also serves as Visiting Professor of European Politics at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). His research focuses on democratic theory and contemporary party politics in Europe and the United States. He has authored four monographs, two edited volumes, and over two dozen articles in international peer-reviewed journals, covering topics such as populism, technocracy, political ideologies, human rights, and the role of rage in politics. He is also a regular commentator on current affairs for media venues including: the New York
Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Wall Street Journal, La Repubblica, Le Monde Diplomatique, and France 24.

Ben Kafka
Ben Kafka, Ph.D., L.P., is an associate professor of clinical psychoanalysis (in psychiatry) at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center and a research fellow at the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. Originally trained as a historian, he’s the author of The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork (Zone Books, 2012) as well as several dozen articles, essays, and reviews. He’s currently working on a new book that returns to mid-century psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychiatry for insight into the everyday ways people drive each other crazy. He received his B.A. from Brown, his Ph.D. in History from Stanford, and his clinical training from the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR), with additional training through the Melanie Klein Trust. He sees patients in Greenwich Village.

Jim Krantz
James Krantz, Ph.D. is an organizational consultant and researcher from New York City, where he is a Principal of  Worklab Consulting, a firm focusing on strategy implementation and leadership development. His interests center on the unconscious background to work and organizational life; on how new forms of work organization are affecting the exercise of leadership & authority; and the impact of the “virtual self in role” on organizational life.  He is a Distinguished Member and past president of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO), and has taught about the history, theory, and use of systems psychodynamics in a wide range of institutions, including Yale, Wharton, INSEAD, Universidad de Chile, Columbia, and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.  James has published widely on his life-long interest in organizations and groups and currently serves as the management committee chair of the journal “Organizational and Social Dynamics.”

Eric Marcus
Eric R. Marcus, M.D. is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and is Training and Supervising analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, where he is a former director. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a Fellow of the American Board of Psychoanalysis and of the New York Academy of Medicine. He has won many teaching awards including The Columbia University Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. He attended graduate school at Columbia University in theoretical anthropology and has taught graduate courses at Columbia in the philosophy of symbolic forms and in psychoanalysis and social science, recently with Barnard Professor of Economics Dr. Homa Zarghamee. He studies symbolic alterations of reality and their adaptational uses by culture. His upcoming book, Modern Ego Psychology: A Contemporary View, spells out a one theory psychoanalytic psychology. His most recent book is Modern Ego Psychology and Human Sexuality – The Meaning of Treatment. His previous book is Psychosis and Near Psychosis – Ego function, Symbol Structure, Treatment, revised 3rd ed., in print for 30 years; it is a modern ego psychology book on symbolic forms in psychosis.

Dionne Powell
Dionne Powell, M.D., is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research as well as at the Psychoanalytic Association of New York (PANY-NYU affiliated). She is an Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at The New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University in New York, and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Assistant Attending Psychiatrist at The New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. Dr. Powell is a founding member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak, was Co-Chair of the Holmes Commission of Racial Equality in Psychoanalysis (CO-REAP), and is Vice-President of the American Association for Psychoanalytic Education (AAPE). Dr. Powell has written and presented extensively on race, racism, gender, and ambition with articles published in journals such as JAPA, the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, and Psychoanalysis Today. She was section editor on racial and ethnic diversity in the second edition of Glen Gabbard’s Textbook of Psychoanalytic Treatments in 2022, where she also contributed a chapter, as well as authored a chapter in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Their Experience of Desire, Ambition and Leadership, edited by Arnold and Brody in 2019. She is an author of the final report of the Holmes Commission report, released in June 2023 and published in JAPA in 2024. Dr. Powell is in full-time private practice in New York City.

Ivor Shapiro
Ivor Shapiro, emeritus professor and former chair of the School of Journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University, is now senior fellow of the Centre for Free Expression and principal investigator of an international, interdisciplinary study of “essential standards” for news reporting for Centre d’études sur les médias at Laval University. He has taught media law and ethics, his scholarship on journalists’ professional identity and practice has been published in leading international journals and collections, and he is an editorial board member of Journalism Studies. Previous roles have included chair of the ethics advisory committee of the Canadian Association of Journalists, principal investigator for Canada of the Worlds of Journalism Study, founding editor of J-Source.ca, managing editor of Chatelaine magazine, and contributing editor of Saturday Night. His latest book is The Disputed Freedoms of a Disrupted Press (Routledge, 2024)

Usha Tummala-Narra, PhD
Usha Tummala-Narra, Ph.D. is a Professor of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology at Boston College. Her research and scholarship focus on immigration, trauma, and culturally informed psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She is also a clinical psychologist in Independent Practice. Dr. Tummala-Narra is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and a Consulting Editor of the American Psychologist. She is a member of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis, initiated by the American Psychoanalytic Association, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN). She is the author of Psychoanalytic Theory and Cultural Competence in Psychotherapy (2016), the editor of Trauma and Racial Minority Immigrants: Turmoil, Uncertainty, and Resistance (2021), and co-author of Applying Multiculturalism: An Ecological Approach to the Multicultural Guidelines (2023), all published by the American Psychological Association Books. Dr. Tummala-Narra is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including being listed among the top 2% of Highly Cited Scholars Worldwide (Stanford University Report).

Frank Yeomans
Frank Elton Yeomans, M.D., Ph.D. is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College, Director of Training at the Personality Disorders Institute of Weill-Cornell, and Adjunct Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons. He is president of the International Society for Transference-Focused Psychotherapy, an Honorary Member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and past Chair of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry Committee on Psychotherapy. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, his PhD in
French Literature and his MD from Yale University, and his psychiatry residency training from New York Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Center Payne Whitney Clinic. Awards include the UCLA Department of Psychiatry Distinguished Psychiatrist Lecturer (2015), the Weill Cornell Department of Psychiatry Arnold Cooper Honorary Lecturer Award (2021), Doctor Honoris Causa, Universidad de Valparaiso (2022), and the University of Michigan Department of Psychiatry Kenneth Silk Lecturer Award (2023). Dr. Yeomans’ primary interests are the development, investigation, teaching, and practice of psychotherapy for personality disorders. He headed the specialized unit for patients with Borderline Personality Disorder at the Weill Cornell Medical Center for ten years. He has taught and helped establish training programs for the psychodynamic therapy of personality disorders in many countries. He has authored and co-authored numerous articles and books, including A Primer on Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for the Borderline Patient; Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality: Focusing on Object Relations; and Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality: A Clinical Guide, all co-authored with Drs. John Clarkin and Otto Kernberg. His most recent books are: Treating Narcissistic Pathology with Transference-Focused Psychotherapy, co-authored with Diana Diamond, Barry Stern, and Otto Kernberg; and Otto Kernberg: A Contemporary Introduction, co-authored with Diana Diamond and Eve Caligor.

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