ISPS-US Annual Conference 2026

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11:00am EST

Psychosis as a Social Relation: Phenomenology, Ecology, and the World We Create (In-Person Only)

Sunday November 8, 2026 11:00am - 12:00pm EST

Psychosis as a Social Relation: Phenomenology, Ecology, and the World We Create

11-11:30pm Can We Live Together?: A Phenomenological Perspective on the Sociogenic Roots of Psychosis and the Soteria Model for Community Liberation - Drew Madore, Sebastián Hernández-Del Valle, Yveton Isnor
11:30-12pm An Ecological Approach to Generalized Psychosis: Emancipatory and Reactionary Potentials - Caleb Scott

Can We Live Together?: A Phenomenological Perspective on the Sociogenic Roots of Psychosis and the Soteria Model for Community Liberation - Drew Madore, Sebastián Hernández-Del Valle, Yveton Isnor
To render as alien realities which are distinct from the consensual - to render madness meaningless in what we commonly call "psychosis" - is to render illegible that which can be understood. This panel will discuss a phenomenological understanding of psychosis as a disruption at the level of the self-world relation, with particular attention to the ways in which the social matrix itself can create psychic suffering and become a pathogenic - or, sociogenic - force. We will highlight the ways in which this sociogenic force is enacted both at the level of the social and at the level of the institutional within biomedical/psychiatric systems, particularly within coercive models of treatment that fuel epistemic injustice and ontological harm. We will draw upon this understanding to elucidate the basis for a social “treatment” for psychosis and to provide an overview of the history of such treatments, with particular emphasis on the contemporary example of soteria communities. We will also discuss the empirical basis for soteria as a treatment model that has been found to be more effective than “treatment as usual” within the biomedical/psychiatric system.

An Ecological Approach to Generalized Psychosis: Emancipatory and Reactionary Potentials - Caleb Scott
Drawing on Lacan’s structural account of psychosis, Guattari’s three ecologies, and a critical analysis of social reproduction, this presentation proposes a framework for understanding psychosis not as evidence of an individual brain disease but as a condition traversing the mental, social, and environmental registers simultaneously. Beginning from the structural distinction between the facilitative and symbolic functions, the argument extends this logic across registers — treating capitalism as a determining force that actively fragments autonomous communities and subordinates heterogeneous social drives and symbolic expressions to the single logic of wage labor and financial extraction. This produces at the social level the same rigid objectification and collapse of symbolic anchoring that precipitates breakdown in the subject. Psychosis, on this account, is neither celebrated nor demonized but understood as a structural opening: the dissolution of a foreclosed symbolic order creates conditions for new meaning-making and new political possibilities, even as the same rupture invites paranoid closure and reactionary reconsolidation. Both potentials are visible across registers. The presentation grounds this framework in the concrete situation of New York City’s fragmented, underfunded, and carceral mental health system, issuing a call for a movement organized around care and freedom — one that centers those rendered surplus by the economic order, not as objects to be managed and abandoned under the sign of care, but as subjects whose liberation is the measure of any serious politics. The question animating the conclusion is: what would it mean to work with the

Speakers

Drew Madore, PsyD

Instructor in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Drew Madore is a queer ex-vangelical who believes the work of therapy is to develop greater degrees of freedom in self- and other-relatedness, and who draws upon psychoanalysis as a theory and praxis with liberatory potential at the individual, group, and social levels. Drew is a... Read More →

Caleb Scott, PsyD

Psychologist on Mobile Crisis Team and Adult Outpatient, Woodhull Medical Center

Caleb Scott is a New York City based psychologist with extensive clinical experience working with individuals experiencing psychotic disorders and other severe psychiatric presentations. He works part time on a mobile crisis team responding to psychiatric emergencies across Brooklyn... Read More →

Sebastián Marcos Hernández-Del Valle, MS

Clinical Fellow in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School; Massachusetts Mental Health Center

Sebastián Marcos Hernández Del Valle, MS is a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology at Carlos Albizu University in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is currently completing his internship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, in addition to serving... Read More →

Yveton Isnor, PsyD, LMHC

Instructor in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Yveton Isnor, PsyD, LMHC, attended Nova Southeastern University (NSU), where he earned a master’s degree in mental health counseling in 2015. He worked at the Boca Habilitation Center for the Handicapped (HabCenter) for seven years, where he helped develop the Program for Education... Read More →

Sunday November 8, 2026 11:00am - 12:00pm EST
Breakout Room #3

Breakout Session, In-Person Only

1:30pm EST

Creating Psychological Homes: Hospitality and Belonging (In-Person Only)

Sunday November 8, 2026 1:30pm - 2:30pm EST

Breakout Room #3

Creating Psychological Homes: Hospitality and Belonging

1:30pm- 2pm The Real City: Psychosis and the Ethics of Hospitality - Loren Dent, PhD, Matthew Oyer, PhD
2-2:30pm A Co-Created Psychological Home as a Respite from Psychosis, Trauma and Social Alienation - Jessica (Yisca) Baris Ginat, MD

The Real City: Psychosis and the Ethics of Hospitality - Loren Dent, PhD, Matthew Oyer, PhD
The contemporary city is a paradoxical space that draws people into close proximity yet relentlessly excludes subjects who cannot conform to its dominant logics. While ordinary urban encounters are symbolically mediated and sustaining, for psychotic subjects, they often arrive raw and unmediated, proving overwhelming. The challenge is to invent "heterotopias"—spaces where chance meetings can be transformed into occasions for speech, recognition, and new forms of belonging. This invention demands a conception of psychosis treatment grounded in an openness to alterity, receiving the unexpected without reducing it to the already known. This requires sensitivity to contingency and structures of hospitality to temper the city's shocks by symbolically elaborating encounters and opening institutional circuits to circulation and translation.

A Co-Created Psychological Home as a Respite from Psychosis, Trauma and Social Alienation - Jessica (Yisca) Baris Ginat, MD
Psychosis has been phenomenologically described as a state of existential homelessness (Kamens et al., 2023), an experience of alienation and social estrangement. While the prevailing view in psychiatric literature, as well as in general culture, conceptualizes this alienation as originating from within the individual, this perspective can be understood as part of a social construct in marginalizing individuals suffering trauma and discrimination, thus contributing to the estrangement of individuals experiencing psychosis. Bion (1959) posited that the therapists must locate their own psychotic states within themselves in order to understand their patient (Lotterman, 2026). Drawing on a case study of a long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy, including vignettes from the consulting room, the journey of a young man who has suffered consecutive early trauma starting at birth, and discrimination, leading to consecutive psychotic breaks and traumatic psychiatric hospitalizations is described. Transformation can be initiated when the psychiatric ward becomes at times a respite from life’s adversities, a space for human contact and understanding (Kamens, Ginat et al, 2026, work in progress) . Via an active involvement in a prolonged psychotherapy a sense of trust in humanity and self worth can start to rebuild.This presentation will suggest that within the psychoanalytic encounter the foundation of an asymmetric co-created psychological home could function as an “Ethical Seduction” of the analytic situation (Chetrit- Vatine, 2019) and a feminine-maternal stance of responsibility for the other. Through versions of the playful squiggle game (Winnicott, 1971), emotional contact can form between its two participants, thus allowing a better mutual understanding and growth. The sense of psychological homecoming can expand beyond the walls of the consulting room to allow for a growing involvement in the day to day activities of urban societal life, and a sense of belonging to the community can evolve. Supported by social services the co-created psychological home can strive to mitigate the consequences of early and severe trauma and of social discrimination, in hopes to further the process of disalienation.

Speakers

Loren Dent, PhD

Co-director, Greene Clinic / Constellations

Dr. Dent is a psychologist who works with children, adolescents, and adults in private practice. He is on the volunteer faculty at Lenox Hill Hospital, where he provides trainees with psychotherapy and psychological evaluation supervision, as well as ongoing didactics pertaining to... Read More →

Matthew Oyer, PhD

Co-director, Greene Clinic / Constellations

Dr. Oyer is co-director of the Greene Clinic and runs the student training program along with Dr. Loren Dent.Dr. Oyer is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst. He is Assistant Clinical Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine and Adjunct Supervising Faculty in the clinical psychology... Read More →

Jessica (Yisca) Baris Ginat, MD

Psychiatrist and psychotherapist, director of the Intansive Therapeutic Day Center in The Jerusalem mental Health Center., The Jerusalem Mental Health Center

Jessica (Yisca) Baris Ginat is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, director of the Intansive Therapeutic Day Center in The Jerusalem mental Health Center and in private practice in Jerusalem.

Sunday November 8, 2026 1:30pm - 2:30pm EST
Breakout Room #3

Breakout Session, In-Person Only

3:00pm EST

Creative Practices, Performance, and Community (In-Person Only)

Sunday November 8, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm EST

Breakout Room #3

Creative Practices, Performance, and Community

3-4pm Integrating Neuroscientific and Psychological Approaches to Explore Group Song-Making’s Efficacy for Fostering Identity and Community Amongst Voice-Hearers - Anthony Pavlo, PhD, Claire Bien, MEd, Deanna Greco, MPhil, Adam Christoferson, Julia Nachemson, MSW
4-4:30pm A Kathak Autobiographical Performance Using Drama, Prose of a South-Asian Woman’s Lived Experience in Madness, Sexuality, Patriarchy, & Intimate Partner Violence - Ishaa Vinod Chopra, RECE, MSc Candidate

Integrating Neuroscientific and Psychological Approaches to Explore Group Song-Making’s Efficacy for Fostering Identity and Community Amongst Voice-Hearers - Anthony Pavlo, PhD, Claire Bien, MEd, Deanna Greco, MPhil, Adam Christoferson, Julia Nachemson, MSW
From lyrics that activate shared emotional resonances to beats that synchronize bodily movements, music serves as a medium through which individuals can connect with community. Music’s capacity for reducing alienation and cultivating connection is amplified when people gather as a collective to create original songs. In this session, we discuss findings from our Song-making in a Group (SING) study: a longitudinal investigation of the benefits of group song-making for people who hear distressing voices. Our panel incorporates various analytical and experiential perspectives to delve into SING’s therapeutic mechanisms. Firstly, we will describe some of the techniques that were employed during the song-making sessions for fortifying agency and identity building which were developed from community-based work at Musical Intervention (a sober creative arts space located in downtown New Haven, CT). Next, to exemplify some of the ways in which SING’s impact extends beyond the song-making workshop, we will discuss computational neuroscience analyses of linguistic data captured in qualitative interviews and decision-making quantified from a behavioral task. Finally, we will describe the results from a phenomenological analysis of interviews conducted before and after the intervention that provide insights into the positive transformations described by study participants. By integrating perspectives from music therapy, neuroscience, and psychology, this panel will demonstrate how humanities-based interventions can alleviate distress by fortifying agency, trust, and community.

A Kathak Autobiographical Performance Using Drama, Prose of a South-Asian Woman’s Lived Experience in Madness, Sexuality, Patriarchy, & Intimate Partner Violence - Ishaa Vinod Chopra, RECE, MSc Candidate
The research topic will use the medium of autobiographical performance at the intersections of drama, poetry, and cultural dance movement, with a live audience, rooted in creative, artistic improvisation, to tell my own narrative through an autobiographical lens, using secondary data consisting of edited soundtracks, prose voice-overs, poetry, and improv monologues. My performance aims to address these issues through a Mad, Feminist, QPOC (Queer, Person of colour) and Disability Justice lens. The research question I intend to examine is: How may performance be represented with a live audience rooted in an autobiographical lens using dramaturgy, Indian classical dance (Odissi, Kathak, Folk), and Latin fusion? How may improvisation be used to explore the themes of madness, sexuality, patriarchy, and gender-based violence? A further sub-question is: How can classical dancers disrupt the foundations of traditional Indian classical Kathak dance to shift the narrative methodologies, focusing primarily on sexist, misogynist, patriarchal Hindu mythologies, to the narratives that centre the voices of marginalized, vulnerable, and racialized populations by merging community-engaged arts and storytelling?

Speakers

Claire Bien, MEd

Research Associate, Yale University Program for Recovery and Community Health

Claire Bien, MEd, is a research associate at the Yale University Program for Recovery and Community Health; mental health advocate and educator; and author of a memoir, Hearing Voices, Living Fully: Living with the Voices in My Head. She is treasurer of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS) and a board member and immediate past president of ISPS-US. She served as a board member of the Hearing Voices Network (HVN)-USA from 2019. Claire speaks widely about her experience... Read More →

Anthony Pavlo, PhD

Clinical psychologist and Associate Research Scientist, Yale University Program for Recovery and Community Health

Anthony Pavlo, PhD is a clinical psychologist and Associate Research Scientist at the Yale University Program for Recovery and Community Health where he focuses on recovery-oriented and person-centered practices in the care of persons diagnosed with serious mental illnesses. His research... Read More →

Deanna Greco, MPhil

Neuroscience PhD Candidate, Yale University

Deanna Greco is a PhD candidate in neuroscience at Yale University. Her research focuses on the various ways in which humanities-based interventions support health and well-being within the context of psychosis and beyond. She is also passionate about advancing accessible educational... Read More →

Adam Christoferson

Founder and Executive Director, Musical Intervention

Adam Christoferson is a singer-songwriter and the founder and executive director of Musical Intervention, a Connecticut-based nonprofit and creative studio that uses music-making as a tool for mental health recovery, connection, and community transformation. His work sits at the intersection... Read More →

Julia Nachemson, MSW

Julia Nachemson is a qualitative researcher and youth facilitator whose work centers holistic wellness, epistemic justice, and systemic equity. She is interested in participatory approaches that challenge pathologizing frameworks of mental difference and elevate lived experience as... Read More →

Ishaa Vinod Chopra, RECE, MSc Candidate

Founder- Finding Order in Disorder Foundation, Finding Order in Disorder Foundation / ISPS- Canada / Guelph University

Ishaa is an Award Winning Author, RECE and Guelph University MSc. Thesis Candidate in Critical Family and Kinship Studies with a Collaborative Specialization in Gender, Sexualities and Bodies at the University of Guelph, Canada. She founded Finding Order in Disorder Foundation - a... Read More →

Sunday November 8, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm EST
Breakout Room #3

Breakout Session, In-Person Only