By Rossanna Maria Echegoyén, LCSW
As former Co-Director of the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis (MIP), former Director of the One-Year Program in Psychoanalysis, and Founder of CORE, I feel compelled to spotlight the Institute’s new leadership and introduce the extraordinary individuals now steering the ship. What follows is both personal reflection and tribute.
Reflections on Our Cohort
It was cold in the city that night, the New York winter was trapped in my boots with no respite from the Arctic blast that would jolt me out of my reverie at the traffic light. I was on my way to group, which was an experience we had designed as a cohort for our 5th year requirement. In transit, I waited for the light, lost in my thoughts, ‘This is it. We are about to graduate.’ Standing in the cold, alone on the corner, I laughed to myself as I knew deep in my bones how Chanda and Julie would also get lost on the way to class. This became a running joke of ours: on our way to class they would follow me, until the first time I got lost. I’m remembering our dynamic fondly as the light finally turns green.
Before MIP had a classroom, classes were held in the offices of our faculty members, oftentimes located on opposite sides of town with only 30 minutes to travel from one place to the other. It was the norm to travel from our 6:30pm Dreams Class in Greenwich Village to our 8pm class way uptown in a yellow cab. The time we shared taxiing was a gift where we bonded as a cohort: we’d talk about our personal pursuits, difficult cases, the challenges of dating while in training, complained about agency life, and much more. Thus, I grew nostalgic as our classes had already ended and now our group was nearing termination. I already missed our collective, spontaneous conversations with the yellow cab drivers who were interested in our profession & sometimes even led to philosophical debates about mental health. I felt sentimental and longing for the laughs after our classes and the big conversations about why we are enough.
Early in our training, we lost two candidates – one left the program and the other took a leave of absence. We were five candidates, and then we were three. Worried that one of us would quit, our bond deepened just as training was starting to feel difficult to manage. I remember one night, after a particularly grueling class, we unanimously decided to regroup over a night cap. I will never forget this moment when we shared our own personal struggles and inner conflicts over a bottle of tequila and promised each other support to stay in training. At the end of the night, we made a pact to support each other and vowed to work through whatever was coming up that could prompt leaving the program. I daresay, out of the three of us, I was the one who was most likely to leave, which, of course I worked on in my analysis. After that night, we understood, early on, how pivotal it is to have a cohort in analytic training. We held each other, we laughed, we cried, and finished a bottle of tequila with the intention to look out for each other.
Over time, our cohort gained a reputation with some faculty and supervisors exclaiming, “I’ve heard so much about your class.” Some of our faculty enticed us with the historical roots of the interpersonal school, and one of the anecdotes about a social club amongst the founders of Interpersonal psychoanalysis really captured our attention! For those who do not know, Harry Stack Sullivan, Clara Thompson, Erich Fromm, and Karen Horney met on a weekly basis to discuss psychoanalysis and emergent ideas of the time. We learned about the Zodiac Club from one of our faculty members who was well-versed in the history of the founders of Interpersonal psychoanalysis. As time went on, and we all were still in training, we entertained the idea to start our own Zodiac Club, a multi-racial version with a black woman, Latina and a white Jewish woman.
At our graduation, in June of 2011, we toasted to our future as budding Interpersonal psychoanalysts with a shot of tequila amongst a crowd of MIP community members, Co-Directors, Directors, supervisors, our analysts, candidates and graduates. I’m not even exaggerating, it was Standing Room Only. Exuberant cheers and clinking of glasses celebrated our bright future as Interpersonalists! We are certain we did Harry proud! At that point, we did not have aspirations to write articles or present at conferences, instead we each focused on continuing to develop our analytic craft in our clinical work before considering writing or presenting. At the same time, we engaged and led committee activities. Given that we valued our psychoanalytic education and identified ourselves as Interpersonalists, we were (and continue to be) committed to the success of the Institute and remained engaged via Institute committee activities.
Chanda Griffin
Chanda will welcome you with a commitment and investment in your success as a candidate, faculty member and supervisor. Ever vocal of her appreciation for the rigorous psychoanalytic education at Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, she is a sharp clinician and teacher who challenges her supervisees to pay attention to disavowed parts in the consultation room. She teaches a class on race in the 5-year Certificate in Psychoanalysis Program (CPP) at MIP and is in high demand at other institutes in New York, and beyond. She comes to you with eleven years of experience teaching at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College where she finetuned her skills in facilitating difficult dialogues in a classroom. For a decade, Chanda has served as Chair and Co-Chair of the Committee on Race and Ethnicity (formerly Multicultural Committee) which was pivotal in developing and teaching a class on race in the analytic program. During her tenure, she engaged with many candidates who are now involved in committee work at the Institute. Chanda has also served on the Training Committee at MIP.
In 2019, I rejoined Chanda as Co-Chair of CORE – during that year, we collaborated with the former Director of the One Year Program in its new formulation. In 2020, racial tensions exploded in the US, and the onslaught of black violence motivated CORE into action mode. Thereafter, I worked with Chanda on various committee projects to carry out CORE’s mission. In partnering with Chanda, she has proven to be a mindful and methodical leader. She is hardworking, focused. If a conflict arises, you can be sure no stone will be unturned, alternatives are considered to solve a problem. In her collaborative work outside the Institute, she served on the Division 39 conference steering committee and Black Psychoanalysts Speak.
In the last five years, Chanda has been making a steady ascension in her contributions to the field of psychoanalysis via conference presentations, supervision & teaching at various institutes and pivotal writings on anti-blackness, internalized white supremacy, and the impact of anti-blackness on the black lived experience. She is a recent graduate of the Certificate Program in Trauma Studies, which informs her clinical work focused on racism, afropessimism and anti-blackness. Some of her writings include a short piece centering blackness in The Psychoanalytic Activist, co-author of “The Secret Society: Perspectives from a Multiracial Cohort” and the following clinical presentations are currently in press, “Who’s on My Couch? BIPOC patients by & the natural environment” & “The White Supremacist Within.”
We are all so proud of Chanda’s accomplishments and contributions to the field. Please join me in congratulating her on her new role as Clinical Co-Director, and her 2nd year of Co-Directorship of the OYP in the Sociopolitical World.
Julie Hyman
Julie will welcome you and will have your success in mind as a candidate and she is invested in the long term success of the Institute. Soon after graduation, Julie taught the transference/countertransference class in the 5-year CPP analytic training program. Thereafter, triage skills she gained as a high acuity clinician at an EAP practice were utilized to triage incoming referrals at the MIP Clinic where she served as Co-Director for several years. At one point, Julie was wearing several hats as Co-Director of the Clinic, Coordinator of the Seminar Series, which also eventually led to her current post as Chair of the Curriculum Committee.
Julie has a wealth of experience working in a variety of settings, in particular at an EAP practice where she managed high-risk clinical situations on a regular basis. Julie is very articulate, well-spoken and approachable – she is firm and able to hold tensions that arise in conflict. Similar to Chanda and myself, our cohort is very identified in our Interpersonal orientation in the psychoanalytic field. In 2014, Manhattan Institute and IPSS held a joint conference, “Discipline and Spontaneity: Different Perspectives,” which was designed to investigate how contrasting theoretical frameworks of the two analytic schools guide their understanding of clinical action and where their traditions converge and diverge. Julie presented a case from an interpersonal perspective to a packed audience filled with members from MIP and IPSS (The Institute for Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity). Her clinical acumen, analytic listening, and attention to transference and countertransference was beautifully demonstrated in her clinical presentation of a case, highlighting unconscious omissions in the dyad.
In the last 5 years, Julie has been a committed and active member of CORE – The Committee on Race and Ethnicity, where much of our groundbreaking work occurred between 2020-2022. In 2020, she co-authored, “The Secret Society: Perspectives from a Multiracial Cohort” with Chanda and myself. Her focus on the implications of whiteness in racialized dynamics led her to introspection and consultation with groups outside of the Institute. She has served as consultant at several institutes, one of which she provided institutional support on dismantling white supremacy at the Board level. Last year, Julie presented on “Jewish Experience and Racial Reckoning: Openings and Obstacles,” at the Washington School of Psychiatry on the duality of two subjectivities of whiteness and being Jewish inform racial reckoning in racialized dialogues.
Julie has long been a contributing member at Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis where she is incoming Clinical Co-Director of MIP, in her 2nd year as Co-Director of the One Year Program in Psychoanalysis and the Sociopolitical World, Chair of the Curriculum Committee, faculty and supervisor at MIP and PPSC.
We are very proud of Julie’s accomplishments and her contributions on the discourse of whiteness and the Jewish experience in the consultation room and institutional work.
A Word about CORE
In response to the murder of George Floyd, The Committee on Race and Ethnicity became a driving force in 2020. CORE moved swiftly into action and held a Town Hall meeting which organically formed into an ongoing racial dialogue group of 14 members over a period of two years. At the same time, CORE was solicited as a committee by the founder of OYP in the Sociopolitical World which had its inaugural pivot that same year. During the course of three years, CORE was very active in program development, BIPOC recruitment of faculty, case consultants for all programs and to the Board of Trustees. The OYP is an example of collaborative work to launch a program with intention and a focus on race, social justice and intersectionality. This period of intentional activism within our Institute contributed to our evolution as a cohort, as individuals, as racialized/ethnicized individuals, as participant/observers of systems within the institution of psychoanalytic learning and teaching. My experience of both Chanda and Julie is that they each evolved as individuals. As clinicians, they have earned the respect of fellow colleagues and future generations as they keep their finger on the pulse of racialized enactments in the clinical dyad and at the institutional level.
Looking Ahead
I have witnessed Chanda and Julie’s journeys from classmates to trusted colleagues to visionary leaders. Each has become a respected voice in the field, admired for their eloquence, courage, and ability to engage racialized enactments in both clinical and institutional spaces.
I could not be prouder to welcome this dynamic duo as Clinical Co-Directors of MIP. Their leadership promises a vibrant, thoughtful, and inclusive future for our Institute.
Rossanna Maria Echegoyén, LCSW is a Latina/Bilingual Psychoanalyst who has served as Co-Director of her home institute (Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis), Director of the One Year Program in Psychoanalysis and the Sociopolitical World and founder of CORE (Committee on Race and Ethnicity). She is the Co-Founder of Psychoanalytic Coalition of Social Justice (formerly Inter-Institute Task Force) which was an institutional collaborative of a dozen institutes in New York City to address white supremacy in analytic training, which led to various community building projects in analytic circles in NY and nationwide. She served on the Board of Division 39- Section 9 Psychoanalysis and Social Responsibility as one of the Co-Editors of the section’s newsletter, The Psychoanalytic Activist and as a Soliciting Editor for ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action.
She is co-author of “The Secret Society: Perspectives from a Multiracial Cohort,” with Chanda Griffin and Julie Hyman and author of “Abandoning the Analytic Frame,” in the Winter 2022 series on Community Psychoanalysis of Div 39’s Division/Review 2022, and her piece, “Legacies from the Trauma of Immigration, Violence, Loss & Shame,” appears in Salberg & Grand edited book Transgenerational Trauma (2024). She has presented on the topics of community psychoanalysis and immigration, maintains a private practice in New York City where she provides immigration evaluations to people in ICE detention. She is Faculty, Supervisor & Training Analyst at Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, NIP (National Institute for the Psychotherapies) and The Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center.
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