Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis

CCP has become a vital hub for the broader psychoanalytic community in Chicago,
sponsoring public lecture series, study groups, and a thriving fellowship program offered to clinicians and graduate students.

photo credit: Sandra Ullman

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Announcements

2026 Maurice Burke Paper Prize

Free Association and its Discontents: A Controversial Discussion

The Maurice Burke Paper Prize¹

We are at a juncture in which power demands un-free speech, in which inconvenient truths are being purged from public venues and discourses, and in which thought itself is under attack. The persecution of any form of existence or expression seen as other has inundated public and private life, resulting in both physical and metaphorical erasure. Meanwhile, recent developments in the digital realm have forced us to confront fundamental questions about the nature of thought, the ownership and manipulation of ideas, the commodification of creativity, and the further erosion of personal privacy. This year, we specifically welcome contributions that move us further towards addressing the fundamental challenges to possibilities for inner and external freedom posed by the cultural forces around us, as we likewise welcome more general contributions towards our appreciation of the role psychoanalysis might play in our efforts to envision a productive and enriching practice of human well-being...

A Note from the CCP President

An Antidote

“Dueling banjos open the stock exchange/ paper chasing, hard to stay on the same page”

--Billy Woods, “Versailles”Aethiopes, 2022

Chicago might be celebrating the lowest summer murder rate (122) in over 60 years, and we’ve apparently just opened out first AI school with no teachers, but our culture’s efforts for self-improvement could end up ending humanity by 2030.

According toThe Guardian:

“’AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction (or similarly bad outcomes),’ wrote [Samuel] Marks. ‘This could happen in the next few years…’ Sam Altman, chief executive of Anthropic’s rival OpenAI, said last year that certain aspects of AI, including what he called the ‘silent surrender’ of human decision-making, terrified him.”

Racial Equity Peer Groups & Panels

In the autumn of 2024, CCP inaugurated its Building Racial Equity project, a part of its Diversity and Social Justice Initiative. This multi-year project is intended to address and seek remedies for racial inequities in our psychoanalytic work and institutional life. We want to engage in a process of re-imagining psychoanalysis along more inclusive lines by becoming aware of the dynamics of racism embedded in our everyday practices, and by putting into practice recommendations for a more diverse, equal, and inclusive psychoanalysis....

CCP Spring Open House

If you missed our spring open house for the Fellowship and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Programs, you can catch Lindsey Drummond, MA LCPC, discuss her experience in the programs. And hear CCP faculty discuss their own experiences, goals, and hopes for CCP members. Click below to watch the video:

2025 Annual Maurice Burke Paper Prize Winners

CCP is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 Annual Maurice Burke Paper Prize:

M. Grover, Free Association Under Surveillance: The Psychic Life of Anticipatory Coherence (General Public)

Renee Dickerson, The Right to Speak, the Right to Be (CCP Community)

Kenji Kuramitsu, Kill the Native: Zionism as Identification with the Aggressor and the Gaza Genocide ( Early career winner).

CCP also congratulates those entrants who were shortlisted for the MOB Prize:

Handan Sureyya Aysun, Where Do the Analytic and the Political Meet?

Michael O'Loughlin, Theorizing an Activist, Social Justice–Oriented, Emancipatory, and Collective Psychoanalysis

We thank all who contributed to the dialogue around the prize’s central theme.

Little Hysterics -- The CCP Podcast

We are proud to have our very own Austin McCann hosting Little Hysterics, a podcast where we interview practitioners and thinkers focused on the contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis in our culture.

You can subscribe here or listen anywhere you get your podcasts.

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Diversity & Social Justice Initiative

The Diversity and Social Justice Initiative aims to create space within the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis to reconsider our psychoanalytic understandings of prejudice, discrimination and structural injustice in order to address the inequities in psychoanalytic practice and training programs, both our own and in general. To inaugurate this initiative, we propose launching a multi-year program for the entire CCP membership, so that we can learn, discuss, and implement change together. The mission statement we will create together will be an evolving document addressing aspects of social inequities in the light of which organizational and clinical practice and theory should be re-examined. The Holmes Commission Report provides an initial blueprint that can both provide a template for addressing endemic racism and guide inquiry into other structural barriers to care, theory-building and training in psychoanalysis...