Annual Conference 2026 - O Brother (and Sister), Where Art Thou?

O Brother (and Sister), Where Art Thou? Searching the Shadowy Terrain of Sibling Bonds and Horizontal Relationships

Speakers

Cynthia Medalie, LCSW

Johanna Dobrich, LCSW

Shari Appollon, LCSW-R

4.5 CE Contact hours for APA, NYS Social Workers, Psychologists, and Licensed Psychoanalysts

Siblings play a critical if not foundational role in many of our patients’ developmental histories. Shaped by the crucible of childhood, where experimentation with love and hate, kinship and envy, and compassion and aggression are often enacted in their most unmediated forms, siblings develop their own relational patterns that profoundly influence their psychic development. Even so, siblings remain a markedly underexplored subject in our field. All too often they act as shadowy figures in the consulting room–present yet unseen–as explorations of parent–child dynamics take center stage.

This year, NIP’s annual conference, O Brother (and Sister), Where Art Thou? Searching the Shadowy Terrain of Sibling Bonds and Horizontal Relationships, aims to center sibling dynamics within the context of relational treatment. How do our idiosyncratic and often complex sibling bonds affect the analytic process? What is missed if we reduce these bonds to mere extensions or derivatives of parental influence? And how are the particular features of these dynamics enacted in the transference and countertransference?

Through panel discussions, case presentations, theoretical explorations, and audience interaction, our three distinguished panelists, Cynthia Medalie, Johanna Dobrich, and Shari Appollon, will examine the varied roles that siblings play in our psychic evolution. Shifting our focus away from the Oedipal, or vertical, axis of development to the horizontal, they will explore how all patients–even only children–carry an intrapsychic expectation of a sibling presence, just as they expect a parental one. By emphasizing the critical significance of horizontal relationships, this conference seeks to foster a vital expansion of relational psychoanalysis, providing new frameworks to both understand how sibling dynamics can contribute to our patients’ deepest psychic despair, and provide opportunities for transformation and healing.

Shari Appollon, LCSW is a Haitian-American psychoanalyst located in Brooklyn New York. She is a 2024 graduate of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies and a 2019 graduate of the OYP at The Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center. She currently serves as the Associate Director of Clinical Services at NYC Affirmative Psychotherapy group practice. Shari is the recipient of NIP’s 2020 Educator’s Award for her paper ‘The Triple Entendre’ and runner-up for Division 39’s 2020 Candidate Essay Contest for her paper ‘The Parable of the Sower’. She has since published ‘My Mother’s Haiti’, ‘My Mother’s Haiti, Redux’ and in progress ‘The Analytic Space’. Shari writes primarily about culture, psychoanalytic theory and enjoys engaging in herbalism in her free time. She is on faculty at The Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center and supervises at NIP.

Johanna Dobrich, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst, author, and educator based in New York City. She teaches and supervises at ICP, NIP, PPSC, and the Certificate Program in Trauma Studies at MIP. Her work focuses on trauma, dissociation, and relational psychoanalysis. Her award-winning book, Working with Survivor Siblings in Psychoanalysis, explores sibling loss, disability, and psychic survivorship. Her forthcoming book examines the use of psychoanalytic practice to support social and collective healing. Johanna received her MSW from NYU and her MA in Political Science from Rutgers University. She completed her four-year psychoanalytic training at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in 2013.

Cynthia Medalie, LCSW, graduated from the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health Psychoanalytic Program in 1987. She is a faculty member and supervisor at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies and the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center. She is a former board member at NIP, as well as former Co-Director of Supervision for the Adult Training Program in Psychoanalysis and Comprehensive Psychotherapy. She taught a course in 2019 on sibling relationships at the Stephen Mitchell Center. She has a private practice in NYC where she sees individuals and couples.

Continuing Education

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education credits for psychologists. The National Institute for the Psychotherapies maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0018.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #Psyan-0004.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0131.

Personalized CE certificates will be distributed at the end of this event. Due to New York State requirements, persons arriving more than 15 minutes late or leaving more than 15 minutes early will not receive a CE certificate.

Refunds, & Cancellation Policy

Cancellation requests made more than a week prior to the event will be given a full refund of registration fees. Refunds will not be granted for cancellation requests made within a week of the first day of the event or for no-shows on any of the days event take place.

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