CLASS INFORMATION
Description:
This course offers a psychoanalytic framework for understanding how digital technologies and artificial intelligence shape—as well as reflect back—patients’ inner worlds, emotional functioning, and relational lives. As clinicians, we are increasingly called to make sense of the psychological impact of these technologies—not as separate or novel concerns, but as integral to our patients’ everyday experience.
Rather than focusing on new techniques, this course is designed to help participants learn how to draw on familiar psychoanalytic concepts to help clinicians think more deeply about and engage with patients’ experiences of their digital lives. Participants will explore how to listen for traces of a patient’s digital life in the room, and bring curiosity and clinical relevance to the material that is in line with well-supported psychoanalytic technique and sensibility to patients’ engagement with technology, especially as it intersects with issues of identity, affect regulation, dependency, omnipotence, envy, and fragmentation.
We will also consider how certain personality organizations and relational patterns tend to manifest in specific ways of engaging with digital life, and how psychoanalytic understanding can guide our listening and conceptualization in these moments.
Finally, we will explore the idea of “Extra Possibilities” from the work of Stephen Mitchell to explore how, through technological discernment alongside psychoanalytic exploration, we can help patients find a way to relate to and use the technology in front of them—and as it changes—to access and inhabit new and health-promoting self states.
CME Objectives:
- Examine how patients’ interactions with technology may reflect their underlying personality structures and how those interactions can exacerbate, enhance, or alter their experience of suffering or relief.
- Apply psychoanalytic skills such as attunement and transference/countertransference exploration, as tools to help contain the overwhelm that many are experiencing in relation to rapidly evolving technology.
- Examine ways in which psychoanalytic understanding can guide clinicians in helping patients relate to and use digital technology to access more health-promoting self-states, as well as mitigate potential perils of certain technology use through the psychoanalytic process.
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PRESENTER BIOGRAPHY
Risa Muchnick, PsyD is a licensed clinical psychologist who works with adolescents and adults in individual, couples, and family treatment. Dr. Muchnick served as an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Professional Psychology (GSPP) at the University of Denver and the Morgridge College of Education (MCE) at the University of Denver. Dr. Muchnick also served as an assistant to the Latinx Psychology Specialty at GSPP during its development in 2015. Dr. Muchnick co-authored (with Dr. Peter Buirski) the article, “Social media as organizing but not transforming self-experience” (2016), and has maintained an active interest in the intersection between algorithm-based social technologies and psychology.
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REGISTRATION DETAILS
Date: December 1 & 8, 2025 (Two-session course on consecutive Mondays)
Time: 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM (MT)
Location: Virtual using Zoom. The Zoom link will be emailed to registrants 24 hours before the event.
Please note that many of our emails get filtered through secondary inboxes, so please do a search within your inbox for key words such as: Denver Psychoanalytic Society, DPS, Zoom link, and/or the name of the speaker or title of the event to find the email with the link. Once payment is made for this event, you will receive a confirmation email.
Cost:
- CME Credit - DPS Member: $125
- CME Credit - Non DPS Member: $150
- CME Credit - Student: $75 (Registration for this category is limited. Please list your training institution during registration).
Donations: Donations are welcome during registration to help keep our programs affordable. We appreciate your support.
Registration: Registration is required. The deadline to register is November 26, 2025.
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CME INFORMATION
5 CME Credits Available
CME Certificates: To receive a CME certificate, the attendee must: pre-register, pay in full, attend the session with your last name clearly labeled in Zoom, and complete an online evaluation within 7 days following the program.
An email with the evaluation link will be emailed after the program. Credit will be issued for actual participation time in 15-minute increments. CME certificates will be emailed within 2 weeks following the event if the evaluation is completed. Enabling your video while participating is strongly encouraged.
ACCME Accreditation Statement
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and Denver Psychoanalytic Society. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
AMA Credit Designation Statement
The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this live activity for a maximum of 5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Disclosure Statement
The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME's identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship. This activity does not have any known commercial support.
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POLICIES
Confidentiality: During programs, we will follow rules of confidentiality for clinical case material including disguising identifying information. Please do not discuss any case material outside of this program. No recording of case material is allowed.
Cancellation: There will be no refunds after November 26, 2025. Any refunds made before November 26th will be less a $10 administrative fee.
Certificate Replacement: If awarded a CME certificate, please retain for your records. There will be a $3 charge if the Society office must resend a certificate.
To contact the Society office, please email office@denverpsychoanalytic.org.
