Preserving the Language of Subjective Experience

Preserving the Language of Subjective Experience

Recent decades have seen a subtle but consequential change in how human beings in most Western cultures talk about subjective experience. In response to many converging influences – the popularity of the DSM, pressures from pharmaceutical companies, the demands of a certain kind of academic research, the general speeding up of life in the age of the internet and artificial intelligence – we are losing a way of giving voice to our internal lives. Many scholars have noted elements of this process, which include the psychiatric pathologization of normal states such as sadness and anxiety, dissociative tendencies to treat elements of the self or the body as “other,” the proliferation of personal identities, and the popularity of acronyms that oversimplify complex experience. This talk will explore this trend and its implications for psychotherapy and for the mental health community.

Learning Objectives

After this talk, participants will be able to:

I. Describe three ways in which depression differs from normal grief;

II. Name two anxiety systems in the brain and the subjective experiences associated with each;

III. Discriminate the paranoid process from normal fear and posttraumatic apprehension.

Nancy McWilliams is Visiting Professor Emerita at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology and practices in Lambertville, New Jersey. She is author of Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (1994, rev. ed. 2011), Psychoanalytic Case Formulation (1999), Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (2004) and Psychoanalytic Supervision (2021) and is associate editor of all three editions of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (2006, 2017, 2025). A former president of Division 39 (Psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological Association, she has been featured in three videos of master clinicians. She is a Trustee of the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA. Her books are available in 20 languages, and she has taught in 30 countries.

Continuing Education

This class is approved for 3.0 CE contact hours for psychologists, social workers, and psychoanalysts:

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education credits for psychologists. The National Institute for the Psychotherapies maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0018.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #Psyan-0004.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0131.

National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0059.

Personalized CE certificates can be downloaded at the end of this event after completing an evaluation form. Attendance for the full duration of the lecture is mandatory for CE credits.

Refunds, & Cancellation Policy

Cancellation requests made more than a week prior to the event will be given a full refund of registration fees. Refunds will not be granted for cancellation requests made within a week of the first day of the event or for no-shows on any of the days event take place.