ICP Salon Series: Owning Unintelligibility and Uncertainty Anxieties: A Workshop in Psychoanalytic Knowing
Join for us for a Zoom presentation with Dr. Peter Maduro, Dr. Allison Merrick, Dr. Jeffery Trop, and Dr. Gabriel Trop.
Sunday, July 12, 2026, from 10:00am to 12:00pm PT
A free zoom event for active ICP members 2 CE’s
program description:
Through a mix of lecture, clinical case presentation, and workshopping, the audience will be invited to critically question the cultural – and arguably psychoanalytic – idealization of intelligibility and certainty, in contrast to unintelligibility and uncertainty, as well as evidence that psychoanalysts may often pre-reflectively privilege pursuit of the former in their clinical processes and understandings.
In this workshop process, the audience will learn to better see and understand unintelligibility and uncertainty, and their crucial importance, as well as design therapeutic responses to them that facilitate invaluable emotional tolerance of the anxieties they evoke. The program also hopes to examine stubborn clinical resistances – whether in therapist or patient, individual or groups – to experiences that lie outside the knower’s categories and horizons of intelligibility.
Learning objectives:
At the end of the program participants will be able to:
- Describe the difference between an epistemological ideal of intelligibility and certainty, that may be inhospitable to unintelligibility and uncertainty anxieties, and one that is hospitable to them..
- Describe affect states evoked in therapists and patients when, on one hand, they fear and resist, and on the other hand, face and bear, emotional experiences of unintelligibility and uncertainty..
- Critique the claim that psychoanalytic hospitality to states of unintelligibility and uncertainty generatively expand the possibilities for human knowledge of otherness, and facilitate analysis of certain ranges of stubborn resistance to transformation.
presenters:
Peter N. Maduro, JD, PsyD, PsyD
Peter Maduro is a clinical and forensic psychologist and psychoanalyst with a private practice in Santa Monica, CA. He is a Faculty Member and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in West Los Angeles. Peter is published in psychoanalysis, including several articles integrating Existential Philosophy with Psychoanalytic Trauma Theory.
Jeffrey L. Trop, MD
Jeffrey Trop is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst holding an honorary Assistant Professorship in Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine He is also a Training and Supervising Analyst, and Faculty Member, at The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, in West Los Angeles. Jeff is widely published in psychoanalysis, including several articles co-authored with his collaborators Melanie Burke and Gabe Trop regarding the application of dynamic systems theory to psychoanalytic theory and practice. Jeff was also an undistinguished member of the Sullivan High School Basketball team.
Allison M. Merrick, PhD, PsyD
Allison Merrick is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, San Marcos, and a trained Research Psychoanalyst with a private practice. She is the author of the book Nietzsche on the Methods and Aims of Philosophy: The Seal of Liberation (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and is the co-editor of “Shame: Sources and Trajectories,” a special issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry.
Allie is currently working on two short books: Nietzsche on Genealogy, which will also be published by Cambridge University Press as part of their Cambridge Elements series and Robert Stolorow: A Contemporary Introduction, which will be published by Routledge as part of their Introductions to Psychoanalysis Series.
Gabriel Trop, PhD
Gabe Trop is Associate Professor of German at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He earned his Ph.D. in German and Medieval Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. He has co-written articles on psychoanalysis and dynamic systems theory, often collaborating with Melanie Burke and Jeff Trop. In general, Gabe’s research focuses on the relationship between philosophy, literature, and science.
CE Credit
Special Accommodations
Please submit any requests for Special Accommodations to the ICP Office prior to registering or at your earliest convenience to ensure that we are able to assist.
The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) is a continuing education provider that has been approved by the American Psychological Association, a California Board of Behavioral Sciences recognized approval agency.
No one in the planning or presentation of this activity has any relevant financial relationships with a commercial interest to disclose.
The Presenter/s will receive an honorarium.
Due to United States sanctions, we regret that we are unable to provide online access to our programs for people who are located in Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.
