Is there a place for dynamic psychotherapy in the age of genes and neurotransmitters? This roundtable will attempt to situate the role of intensive psychotherapy among the various options available today for the treatment of serious mental disorders. Panelists will present and examine different viewpoints and assess the efficacy of divergent approaches.

Brian Koehler is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst with a strong neuroscience background. He is in the private practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in New York City and on the teaching faculty at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, at the School of Social Work at New York University, as well as at a number of other psychoanalytic training institutes in New York City and State. Dr. Koehler is a scientific advisor and former reviewer for the journal, Schizophrenia Bulletin, and a reviewer for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

Ze'ev Levin is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Residency Training in Psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine. He received his medical degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and was a resident in Psychiatry and Chief Resident at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. A graduate of the Columbia Psychoanalytic Centre for Training and Research, he has been the Associate Director and Director of the residency training in-patient unit at Bellevue Hospital Center. In addition to his training job, Dr. Levin has a private practice in Manhattan.

Charles Marmar is the newly appointed Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center. Most recently, Dr. Marmar served as Professor and Vice Chair at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the Associate Chief of Staff for Mental Health and Director of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Research Program at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He has served as the President of both the Society of Psychotherapy Research and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and served as a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Psychotherapy Research and Practice and the Journal of Traumatic Stress. He has been a reviewer for The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, The American Journal of Psychiatry and The Journal of Psychiatric Research.

Ira Steinman is a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco. He is the author of Treating the "Untreatable": Healing in the Realms of Madness, a chronicle of the successful, at times curative, out-patient intensive psychotherapy of 12 previously "untreatable" patients. Steinman has focused on schizophrenia for 45 years. His early training ranged from working with R.D. Laing to running the psychiatric drug component of the National Academy of Sciences' Drug Efficacy Study, which evaluated all the antipsychotic medications available at the time to studies at Chestnut Lodge and Mount Zion Hospital.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.