The Erikson Institute Turns 30
Psychoanalysis meets the world at the Austen Riggs Center
By Aaron M. Beatty
Collage by Austin Hughes. Photographs courtesy Austen Riggs Center archive.
“Psychoanalysis studies psychological evolution through the analysis of the individual. At the same time it throws light on the fact that the history of humanity is a gigantic metabolism of individual life cycles.”—Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society, 1950
For Erik H. Erikson there was more to psychoanalysis than individual psychology; he viewed humans as social animals existing in relationship to the people, culture, and society around them. This perspective grew out of his work in Vienna with Anna Freud, followed him to California where he taught at UC Berkeley, and stayed with him when Dr. Robert Knight recruited him to the medical staff of the Austen Riggs Center in 1951. He remained at the center for nearly a decade and provided clinical consultation to its staff into the 1980s.
Erikson’s sense that we both shape and are shaped by the world around us, and that who we are depends on our individual psychology, our experiences, and the social context in which we live, would become a critical organizing principle for Riggs; the mark he left was indelible.
In recognition of Erikson’s legacy, Riggs became home to the Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy (EI) in 1994. The EI’s recent 30th anniversary provides an occasion for reflection on the power of a psychoanalytic approach that is grounded in the social world.
“The work of the Erikson Institute enriches our understanding of society, culture, and history, and enhances our ability to understand patients based on the recognition that the consulting room does not exist in isolation but is inherently a part of the world”—Thomas A. Kohut, PhD, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Professor of History Emeritus, Williams College
An Outlier in Mental Health Treatment
The Erikson Institute’s goal is to learn from others’ perspectives and impart knowledge from the clinical learning that happens in Riggs’s residential program in a mutual effort to understand and respond to problems individuals, groups, and society face. Edward Shapiro, MD, who is Riggs Medical Director/CEO starting in January 2025, stated, “We named the institute after Erik Erikson because of his groundbreaking ability to bridge different disciplines and apply the ideas from Riggs’s clinical work to the social issues around us.”
The EI exists alongside the clinical system at Austen Riggs, which has a unique approach to treatment. The fact that the Austen Riggs Center has existed for more than a century, with a firm psychoanalytic foundation since the late 1940s, is a testament to the transformative power of psychoanalytic treatment, and related therapeutic treatments like psychodynamic psychotherapy work—there are decades of robust empirical evidence to support it.
Every aspect of the Austin Riggs Center is informed by three principal tenets:
Relationships are central in life;
symptoms have meaning that can be understood; and
patients have authority in their lives, including in their treatment.
These principles make Riggs an outlier in the world of mental health treatment. Our open campus resembles a small New England college where nearly 60 adult patients at any time have the freedom and the responsibility to come and go as they please. There are no locked doors or privilege systems; rather, it is the relationships between and among staff and patients that hold people in treatment and keep them safe.
At Austen Riggs, patients see a doctoral-level therapist four times a week for intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy, benefit from the resources of an interdisciplinary treatment team that follows them from admission to discharge, are immersed in a dynamic therapeutic community program, work with psychiatrists trained in psychodynamic psychopharmacology, and have access to a full continuum of care. They are also agents in their treatment, with countless opportunities to engage in groups, paid work, activities, patient government, and more.
Led by the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Director, Jane G. Tillman, PhD, the El seeks to study the problems that bring patients to treatment and to help better understand the world around us, offering new insights, understanding, and solutions, particularly in conversation with other disciplines. In the same way Erikson viewed the individual as innately part of culture and society, the Erikson Institute seeks to apply psychoanalytic ideas broadly to areas related to education, research, and advocacy.
The EI was to be a “portal,” says Yale sociologist Kai Erikson, “through which findings and inspirations and ideas that originated within Riggs can flow out to the larger world, and through which findings and inspirations and ideas originating out there in the larger world can find their way here.” One way that portal is manifest is in the EI’s Council of Scholars, an interdisciplinary group of experts with a focused interest in psychoanalysis that consults to the director of the EI or medical director/CEO with specific projects.
“The opportunity ... to get a sense of the clinical work that underlies psychoanalytic theory just does not exist anywhere else in the country. On a daily basis I had conversation with clinicians interested in my work and in helping me elaborate and deepen my ideas. For an academic, this is a real gift. I ended my time as an Erikson Scholar having learned that the EI is an exceptionally intellectual, vibrant, and important place.”—Anne Dailey, JD, former EI Scholar; Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Intellectual Life and Ellen Ash Peters Professor of Law, University of Connecticut
Clinical Training, Research, and Advocacy
The psychoanalytic lens of all the EI’s educational offerings allows for a truly open, curious, and vibrant exchange of ideas. Riggs takes what it learns through the treatment of complex patients, many of whom have not found success in other treatment settings, and shares that knowledge as it relates to broader issues in behavioral healthcare and society. At the same time, the EI is the conduit for learning from other scholars, academics, artists, communities, and cultures to inform our understanding of human suffering and its alleviation, as well as the systems and structures that contribute to and get in the way of recovery.
The EI’s Scholar-in-Residence and Visiting Senior Clinician Program is a primary example of this conduit, allowing academicians, clinicians, and other professionals into the clinical and intellectual life of the center through participation in seminars, lectures, case discussions, and other learning activities. The EI’s other training offerings include
an Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program and Fellowship in Hospital Based Psychotherapy, which is an approved institute of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) and is accredited by ACPEinc;
an elective for medical students and psychiatric residents;
undergraduate internships;
a nine-month practicum internship for Smith College School for Social Work MSW students;
a robust and searchable online library and archive; and
more than a dozen annual free live webinars and an online catalog of more than 60 free, on-demand CE/CME courses.
Riggs has also long supported clinical research, starting with its first study of factors related to therapeutic change in a sample of over one thousand patients. The research program has specialized in the use of multimethod longitudinal approaches to the study of complex clinical phenomena. Studies focusing on suicidal and self-destructive behaviors, personality psychopathology, and long-term predictors of psychological change and resilience have made important contributions to the field of mental health, expanding understanding of treatment-resistance and other barriers to clinical progress.
Today, the EI manages several research initiatives both internally and in collaboration with other scholars and institutions under the leadership of Research Director Katie C. Lewis, PhD. These projects incorporate innovative methodology in pursuit of deepening our understanding of the social determinants of mental health, evaluating the many biopsychosocial factors that contribute to adaptation and resilience over time, and examining what psychoanalysis and psychodynamic approaches can contribute to our knowledge base.
Finally, the EI supports advocacy and outreach initiatives that range from supporting local community partnerships to work at the national level promoting equitable access to care, reduction of health disparities, and full implementation of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. Though diverse in scope, these efforts share a common theme: finding ways to improve the lives of people who struggle with mental disorders.
The Next 30 Years
In 2021 the Erikson Institute received the major psychoanalytic recognition of the Sigourney Award, established by Mary Sigourney to honor the expansion and connection of psychoanalysis to many fields of study and experience. While this was certainly a high-water mark for the EI, it also felt like a natural progression in an ongoing story about how psychoanalysis continues to matter to the world—how we need it in order to understand who we are, where we are, and how we can help one another survive and thrive.
“The Sigourney Award recognizes the critical role that the Erikson Institute plays in shaping public conversation about crucial issues of our time, especially those that sit at the at the intersection of clinical theory, the humanities, neurosciences, and the social and political sciences—that is to say, human experiencing in a world of turbulent change.”—Kimberlyn Leary, PhD, MPA, Associate Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital
Where the EI goes from here will be built both on what has proved successful and an openness and curiosity to explore new avenues to remain a leading national and international hub of psychoanalytic education, clinical training, research, and advocacy.
Director Tillman says, “I see the EI continuing to stand for something in the world that is very important and that has to do with how to understand identity and community, both individual problems and how they are related to history and the systems in which people are embedded.” Indeed, given the current state of mental healthcare and society, former EI Director M. Gerard (Jerry) Fromm, PhD, ABPP, calls the continued work of the EI a “social responsibility.”
Aaron M. Beatty, MA, is the communications officer at the Austen Riggs Center, where he writes and edits content, analyzes data trends, and helps to develop and maintain editorial and brand standards.
Published December 2024.