The 33rd Annual Symposium of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Society features distinguished speakers Vamik Volkan and Ana-Maria Rizzuto. The Symposium will take place March 8, 2008, from 8:15 am to 3:45 pm, at the Hotel Baronette in Novi.

Our presenters are two world-renowned contributors to the psychoanalytic literature on aggression, in whose company we will revisit the powerful force of aggression as it plays a role in human lives and in human suffering. The Symposium is planned to sharpen our appreciation for the dynamics of this force, one which has been elaborated less over the course of psychoanalytic history than has been the force of sexuality.

Ana-Maria Rizzuto, M.D., who is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, East, has authored and co-authored a series of papers examining psychoanalytic thinking about aggression, which work culminated in the 2004 publication of The Dynamics of Human Aggression: Theoretical Considerations, Clinical Applications. This study, which begins with a review of all major previous psychoanalytic contributions to the topic of aggression’s origins as a part of the mind and of psychopathology, offers an integration of these theories into a new model with distinct clinical implications.  Dr. Rizzuto has published widely in the psychoanalytic literature, and is also known for her papers and books on psychoanalysis and religion, among them Why Did Freud Reject God?: A Psychodynamic Interpretation, and her papers on psychoanalysis and language. Dr. Rizzuto has delivered the William James Lecture at Harvard Divinity School, and is a recipient of the Oskar Pfister Prize and of the Gradiva Award for her writing.

Vamik Volkan, M.D. is at present Senior Erik Erikson Scholar at the Austen Riggs Center,  a Training and Supervising Analyst Emeritus of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, and Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia.  He has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the negotiation of international conflict situations. Dr. Volkan is the author of a series of both clinical and applied psychoanalytic works, focusing on two interrelated areas: severe psychopathology, and the psychology of intergroup aggression and conflict, an area he has named “the psychopolitical.”  A well-known writer, he is the author of over 100 papers and author or co-author of more than 25 books, including What Do You Get When You Cross a Dandelion with a Rose?; The Infantile Psychotic Self:  Understanding and Treating Schizophrenics and Other Difficult Patients; The Need to Have Enemies and Allies; Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism; and Killing in the Name of Identity: A Study of Bloody Conflicts.