The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences will host the 19th Robert S. Wallerstein Lecture in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, from 1:00–4:00 p.m. PDT at the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building. The event's keynote lecture, "On the Double Provenance of the Unconscious: Psychic Life at the Intersection of the Individual and the Group," will be delivered by this year's honoree, Francisco J. González, MD.
Immediately following the keynote presentation will be a discussion led by Oluwatosin Adebiyi, MD, MPH, followed by a question and answer session for audience participants.
An expert on the intersection of the individual and the collective
Francisco J. González, MD
González is a personal and supervising analyst, community psychoanalysis supervising analyst, and faculty member at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC), where he also helped found and serves as co-director of the Community Psychoanalysis Track. He is also a faculty member at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis.
For over 20 years, he has worked as staff psychiatrist and consultant at Instituto Familiar de la Raza, a clinic for Latino immigrants in San Francisco. He also practices privately in San Francisco and Oakland.
González is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and book and film reviews. His teaching and writing focus on the articulation of the social within individual and collective psychic life, including in the domains of gender, sexuality, racialized difference, immigration, film, and groups, and has been the recipient of the Symonds Prize (2009), the APSA Ralph E. Roughton Paper Award (2017), and co-recipient of the JAPA Award for the Best Published Paper (2019). González serves on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and Parapraxis, and served on the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis.
Annual lecture series honors psychoanalytic pioneer
Each year, the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences invites a distinguished scholar to speak on campus as part of its special lecture series is held in honor of the late Robert S. Wallerstein, MD (1921–2014). First held in 2006, the annual series focuses on showcasing psychoanalytic knowledge and clinical expertise that influence psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis. Past speakers have included featured noted clinicians and researchers such as Otto Kernberg, MD; Beatrice Beebe, PhD; Mark Solms, PhD; and Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD.
Wallerstein was a distinguished psychiatrist, psychotherapy researcher, and psychoanalytic leader who left a legacy of a widened scope of theory and technique in the psychological sectors of psychiatry. He was an administrator who advocated for cooperation between psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers in achieving academic excellence and sought to develop a new profession, the Doctor of Mental Health. Wallerstein also developed a departmental structure that worked across professional lines, leading to new ideas on research centers, educational plans, and high quality service delivery.
He trained at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, rising to become the foundation’s director of research and conducting a pioneering study called the Psychotherapy Research Project. He moved to the Bay Area in 1966 as the chief of psychiatry at Mount Zion Hospital, then joined the faculty of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry as a professor. Wallerstein served as department chair and director of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute from 1975–1985, as well as a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, and president of both the American and International Psychoanalytic Associations.
In addition, he was a prodigious and influential author who penned 20 books and more than 400 scholarly articles. His books included Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: Theory, Practice, Research (1975), Becoming a Psychoanalyst (1981), Forty-Two Lives in Treatment (1986), The Talking Cures: The Psychoanalyses and the Psychotherapies (1995), Lay Analysis: Life Inside the Controversy (1998), Psychoanalysis: Clinical and Theoretical (1999), and Psychoanalysis: Education, Research, Science, and Profession (2003). In recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of psychoanalysis, he received the prestigious Sigourney Award in 1991.
Free tickets now available online
This Wallerstein Lecture is free and open to the public, but is geared towards a professional audience. It will also be streamed live online via Zoom. Registration is required. For further information, visit psychiatry.ucsf.edu/wallerstein or email [email protected].
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a focus on providing unparalleled patient care, conducting impactful research, training the next generation of behavioral health leaders, and advancing diversity, health equity, and community across the field.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Health medical centers and community hospitals across San Francisco; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
