Draft programme is now available! To download, please click here.
Please note that programme is subject to minor revision,
including the shifting of research presentation slots.
Below are the details of the speakers who are currently confirmed.
Anne Alvarez
Dr Anne Alvarez, PhD, M.A.C.P is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist (and retired Co-Convener of the Autism Service, Child and Family Department, Tavistock Clinic, London). She is author of Live Company: Psychotherapy with Autistic, Borderline, Deprived and Abused Children and has edited with Susan Reid, Autism and Personality: Findings from the Tavistock Autism Workshop. A book in her honour, edited by Judith Edwards, entitled Being Alive: Building on the Work of Anne Alvarez was published in 2002. She was Visiting Professor at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society in November 2005. Dr Alvarez’s latest book is titled The Thinking Heart: Three Levels of Psychoanalytic Therapy with Disturbed Children.
Ron Britton
Dr Britton is a training and supervising analyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society. He first trained as a doctor, and as a child psychiatrist was Chair of the Department of Children and Parents at the Tavistock Clinic. He is the former president of the British Psychoanalytic Association (BPA).
Mark Edwards
Professor Edwards is the Eleanor Peel Professor of Neurology at St George’s University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. His clinical and research interests are in movement disorders and Functional Neurology. Professor Edwards runs a specialist outpatient service for the diagnosis and treatment of functional movement disorders and other functional neurological disorders.
To view Professor Edwards’s profile, please click here
Peter Fonagy
Professor Fonagy is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist. He is Professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science and head of the department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at University College London. He is also CEO of the Anna Freud Centre, and a training and supervising analyst in the British Psycho-Analytical Society in child and adult analysis.
To view Professor Fonagy’s profile, please click here
Aikaterini Fotopoulou
Dr Fotopoulou is a Reader in Psychodynamic Neuroscience at the Psychology and Language Sciences Division, University College London. Funded by a Starting Investigator Grant from the European Research Council for the project ‘Bodily Self’, she runs KatLab, a group of researchers and students that conduct studies on topics and disorders that lie at the borders between neurology and psychology. Katerina is the founder of the Study of Affective Touch (IASAT) and the editor of the volume: Fotopoulou, A., Conway, M.A., Pfaff, D. From the Couch to the Lab: Trends in Psychodynamic Neuroscience. Oxford University Press, 2012. In 2016, she was awarded the prestigious Early Career Award of the International Neuropsychology Society.
To view Dr Fotopoulou’s profile, please click here
Karl Friston
Professor Friston is a theoretical neuroscientist and a leading expert in the field of brain imaging. He invented statistical parametric mapping (SPM), voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and dynamic causal modelling (DCM). His mathematical contributions include variational Laplacian procedures and generalized filtering for hierarchical Bayesian model inversion. He currently works on models of functional integration in the human brain and the principles that underlie neuronal interactions. His main contribution to theoretical neurobiology is a free-energy principle for action and perception (active inference).
To view Professor Friston’s profile, please click here
Sid Kouider
Dr Kouider is a cognitive neuroscientist who works on the neurobiological and psychological foundations of consciousness. His main interest lies in how conscious and unconscious processes differ at both the psychological and neural level.
To view Professor Kouider’s profile, please click here
Christoph Mathys
Dr Mathys works at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL and the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research. He is a candidate with the Swiss Society for Psychoanalysis. Apart from psychoanalysis and neuropsychoanalysis, his research interests are in systems neuroscience, predictive coding, and disorders of the mind.
To view Dr Mathys’s profile, please click here
Eamon McCrory
Professor McCrory is Professor of Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology at UCL and Director of the Developmental Risk and Resilience Unit. His research uses brain imaging and psychological approaches to investigate the impact of childhood maltreatment on emotional development and mental health. He is also a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Director of Postgraduate Studies at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families where he leads the UCL-Yale MRes in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology. He is also a visiting Professor at the Child Study Centre, Yale University.
To view Professor McCrory’s profile, please click here
Susan Mizen
Dr Mizen is a consultant medical psychotherapist and Jungian analyst. Having trained at the Cassel Hospital and the Society of Analytical Psychology, she worked as a Consultant Medical Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital Fulham before moving to Devon where she has developed a service for patients with Severe and Complex Personality Disorder working with a therapeutic team using a psychoanalytic model in a day and outpatient setting. She has a long standing interest in Neuroscience and Neuropsychoanalysis.
To view Dr Mizen’s profile, please click here
Jaak Panksepp
It is with immense sadness that we have to report the recent passing of our dear colleague and NPSA friend Jaak Panksepp. In memory of Jaak and his outstanding scientific contributions we will be hosting a dedicated session at the Congress. Please watch this website for further details.
Jaak Panksepp was a neuroscientist and psychobiologist, and the Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being Science for the Department of Veterinary and Comparative Anatomy, Pharmacology, and Physiology at Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. He was also an Emeritus Professor of the Department of Psychology at Bowling Green State University. Professor Panksepp coined the term ‘affective neuroscience‘. During his distinguished career he conducted groundbreaking research into the neurobiological nature of emotions, detailing the brain’s basic emotion command systems. Amongst many notable works, he was the author of two seminal texts: Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (1998), and The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotion (2012).
To view Professor Panksepp’s profile, please click here
Leo Schilbach
Dr Schilbach is a managing consultant psychiatrist, the head of the Clinic for Disorders of Social Interaction and group leader of the Independent Max Planck Research Group for Social Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry (Munich, Germany). He is also a lecturer at the Department of Psychiatry at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (Munich, Germany), a faculty member of the International Max Planck Research School for Translational Psychiatry (IMPRS-TP), and associate faculty member at the Graduate School of Systemic Neuroscience (GSN) in Munich.
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Mark Solms
Professor Solms is best known for his discovery of the forebrain mechanisms of dreaming, and his pioneering use of psychoanalytic methods and theories in contemporary neuroscience. He works in the Department of Neurology at Groote Schuur Hospital and holds the Professorship in Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town. He is president of the South African Psychoanalytical Association, member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and Honorary Member of the New York Psychoanalytic Society.
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Manos Tsakiris
Professor Tsakiris studied psychology and philosophy before completing his Ph.D. in psychology and cognitive neurosciences at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL. His research has focused on the neurocognitve mechanisms that shape the experience of embodiment and self-identity using a wide range of research methods, from psychometrics and psychophysics to neuroimaging. He is Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, where he is also Director of Research (2014+). He has published widely in neuroscientific and psychology journals, and his current research projects investigate the plasticity of self-identity. He is the recipient of the 2014 Young Mind and Brain Prize and of the 22nd Experimental Psychology Society Prize, and is also a former NPSA grantee.
To view Professor’s Tsakiris’s profile, please click here
Maggie Zellner
Maggie Zellner, PhD, LP, is a behavioral neuroscientist and a licensed psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She is also executive director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation. Dr Zellner is a member of National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis and an adjunct faculty member at The Rockefeller University. She is also editor of Neuropsychoanalysis, an interdisciplinary journal for psychoanalysis and the neurosciences.
To view Dr Zellner’s profile, please click here