This roundtable explores the nature of pain as both a biological signal and a subjective experience, examining how it arises, how it is processed in the nervous system, and how it relates to affect, behavior, and homeostasis. It also considers current scientific approaches to pain management, including the use and risks of analgesics such as opioids, and reflects on the ethical challenges involved in advancing pain research and treatment for both humans and other species.

This roundtable explores the significance of libraries across their many forms—physical, digital, and cognitive—as systems for organizing, preserving, and transmitting knowledge. It considers their epistemic and mnemonic roles in shaping how information is stored, accessed, and interpreted, as well as their broader cultural and philosophical importance in structuring individual and collective understanding.

This roundtable examines autism as a neurodevelopmental condition, tracing the evolution of its diagnosis and treatment from early misconceptions to current understandings grounded in brain development and circuitry.

This roundtable explores the concept of happiness from philosophical, psychological, and ethical perspectives, examining how it is defined, measured, and understood across both individual experience and the span of a life. It considers questions about the relationship between pleasure and well-being, the role of happiness in relation to others’ welfare, and how contemporary approaches such as positive psychology influence broader social, economic, and policy frameworks.

This roundtable explores fear and anxiety as multi-layered phenomena involving neurobiological, physiological, behavioral, cognitive, and unconscious processes. It examines how these states are generated and experienced, compares human expressions of fear with those observed in other animals, and considers how perspectives from neuroscience, psychology, and psychoanalysis contribute to understanding anxiety as a central aspect of mental life and its broader implications for cognition and behavior.

This roundtable will explore why women’s genius is often less readily recognized than men’s, using that disparity as a starting point to examine how historical definitions of genius, along with gender norms, institutions, and cultural beliefs, have shaped whose contributions are visible and valued.

This roundtable will examine meditation as a deliberately cultivated mental state that, despite being difficult to define, has well-documented benefits for mental and physical health, focusing on the interplay between conscious intention and unconscious processes that sustain it.

These roundtables will explore how advances in computational neuroscience, molecular biology, and genomics are transforming understandings of disease, shifting perceptions of illness toward more mechanistic, data-driven, and personalized frameworks, and enabling earlier detection, refined diagnosis, and targeted therapies.

This colloquium, organized by the Helix Center and ADAPes Freud Committee, brings together psychoanalysts, scholars, and cultural and political figures to engage in roundtable discussions on identity formation, education and the pursuit of knowledge, and the role of knowledge in addressing religious and nationalist extremism. Drawing on Freudian thought, the event examines how modern crises of identity, secularization, and globalizing consumerism intersect with tensions between individual desire, collective belonging, and social cohesion. It further considers the limits of education, the dynamics of mass psychology, and the distinction between open civic structures and closed systems such as nation and religion. Across these themes, the colloquium seeks to reflect on how psychoanalytic perspectives might help interpret contemporary social malaise and contribute to a renewed commitment to reason, humanism, and cosmopolitan values.

Part 3: Identity A Colloquium of The Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation and L’ Association Des Amis de Passages (ADAPes) Comité Freud December 5th and 6th, 2015 at the Helix Center Participants: Marilia Aisenstein Psychoanalyst; Former President, Société Psychanalyste de Paris (Paris Psychoanalytic Society) Ian Buckingham Psychoanalyst; President, New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute Vincent... read more! »