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UPCOMING EVENTSIf you have any questions or concerns about upcoming events, please contact Membership & Events Coordinator Julia Seixas at [email protected].Upcoming Events
The Community Outreach Division cordially invites you to join your colleagues and friends for an important PCOP Town Hall on Sunday, September 28th, 2025 from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm. Samuel Wyche, DO, will be leading the conversation on:
PROCESSING OUR RACIST THINKING:THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICS ON OURMOODS AND PERCEPTIONSWe hope you will join us for this important discussion.RSVP HERE!*Members Only*
Date: Sunday, October 12, 2025 Time: 2:00 - 4:00 pm Location: Rockland - East Fairmount Park 3810 Mt Pleasant Dr. Philadelphia, PA We look forward to celebrating with PCOP members and both new and returning students at our upcoming Welcome Back Party! Join us for a lively afternoon of meeting new students, reconnecting with fellow members, and celebrating the start of the new academic year. Snacks and refreshments will be provided! Click here for the event flyer & to RSVP!Attendees MUST register in advance.
Date: Saturday, October 18, 2025 Time: 10:30 am – 12:00 PM EDT Workshop Leader: Charity Hume - PCOP Associate Member Location: Virtual via Zoom Free for PCOP Members with Optional Donation to PCOP or World Central Kitchen Limited space, RSVP required to secure your spot Click here for the event flyer & to RSVP!ABOUT THE WORKSHOP In this generative workshop, Charity Hume invites writers, therapists, and clinicians to explore how the landscapes of childhood bedrooms, ancestral homes, and remembered streets hold the architecture of memory. Together, we will look closely at masterpieces of literary setting—touring scenes from Homer to Virginia Woolf—to see how setting establishes mood, character, and conflict. We will then turn inward, mapping our own geographies of memory through a psychoanalytic lens. In the space between the "you then” and the "you now," these landscapes can be reclaimed with greater understanding and self-acceptance, offering integration between our internal and external selves. Participation is limited to 15 people (with a waitlist). Yet the work of memory and writing is an ongoing process, much like the slow reveal of analysis. Those curious about the doors creative writing can open are warmly invited to continue the journey with me — through one-on-one coaching or future workshops at charityhume.com.
ABOUT CHARITY HUME Charity Hume is a former director of the NYU Graduate Creative Writing Program and coaches writers of all ages. She has led workshops on grief, memory, and identity, including “Writing into the Hidden Meaning of Childhood Artifacts” for PCOP. Her essays have appeared in Ms. Magazine, HuffPost, Writers for Democratic Action, and Cultural Weekly. She holds a Certificate in Memoir from Pacifica Graduate Institute and is a Fellowship Associate of the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia.Optional background reading (this will be emailed to you upon registration).
Presenter: Steve Axelrod, PhD Date: Wednesday, October 22, 2025 Time: 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT Program Flyer – Click here to learn more about the program & RSVP!Program Description Steven D. Axelrod, PhD, has created a revised model of adult development and he reconsiders Erikson’s original epigenetic scheme of the psychological stages of development in adulthood. Further, his model integrates the observational work of Anna Freud and the recent theorist, Anne Hurry. In his presentation, Dr. Axelrod will elaborate a developmental scheme of tasks and emerging capacities. He will discuss the drivers for individual growth and vitality. His concept of “the drivers of individual growth” includes, but is not limited to, object finding and object usage in both treatment and in the wild. In explicating this concept, he will pay special attention to what has been termed the “developmental object” by Anne Hurry and others. Dr. Axelrod will also discuss psychotherapy research and outcome studies to offer a window into the processes of growth in adulthood. He will discuss research evidence that points to the existence of a group of psychotherapy/psychoanalytic patients who show continuing improvement and better adjustment over time post-termination, referred to as “the “sleeper effect.” He will discuss the factors in treatment and the processes that occur during the post treatment period, that promote and sustain psychological growth.
About the Speaker
Dr. Steve Axelrod 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 a Principal in the Boswell Group of psychodynamic management consultants and is on the board of the Psychotherapy Action Network. 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). This presentation is based in part on his recent article “Growth in adulthood: A revised psychoanalytic framework for adult development” in the 2024 Psychoanalytic Study of the Child.
Date: Friday, November 7th, 2025 Time: 2:30 pm – 5:00 PM EDT Workshop Leader: Dayna Sharp, LCSW Location: Magic Gardens - 1020 South St, Philadelphia, PA FREE for PCOP Members Members Only 2.5 CE/CMEs RSVP HERE!ABOUT
Step into the mosaic field of Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens through a Bionian lens. This experiential workshop invites participants to absorb the Gardens as a living metaphor for Bion’s ideas on perception, thought, and transformation. Drawing on key readings from Bion and his contemporaries, we will use the Gardens as a space for observation, reverie, and discovery—dipping our pens into its “ink” and transforming chaotic fragments, screens, and impressions into shared thought, narration, and intersubjective meaning.
Participants will gather at the Magic Gardens (1020 South St, Philadelphia, PA 19147) on Friday, November 7, 2025 at 2:30pm for an hour of independent and small group exploration. Bring a notebook or sketchbook to jot down your impressions during the journey. Following this immersive experience, we will reconvene at the William Way Community Center (1315 Spruce St, Philadelphia, PA 19107) from 4:00–5:30pm for a facilitated group discussion. Pre-readings will be sent in your confimation email.
ABOUT DAYNA SHARP, LCSW Dayna Sharp is a Clinical Social Worker and Psychoanalyst working in private practice. She serves as a mentor in the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia’s Fellowship program, where she completed a two year psychotherapy program, and teaches at the Institute of the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in NYC, where she completed her formal analytic training. She has additionally taught for the National Institute for the Psychotherapies and the Tehran Psychoanalytic Institute.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Membership & Events Coordinator Julia Seixas at [email protected]. Disclaimer: The Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia (PCOP) is not responsible for any inquiries, communications, or information exchanged among attendees during this event. PCOP assumes no liability for injuries, accidents, or property damage on the premises. Attendance is at the participant’s own risk and subject to all rules and policies of the Magic Gardens here. By registering you acknowledge this statement. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact PCOP Membership & Events Coordinator, Julia Seixas, at [email protected] for questions or assistance with registration! |
