Publication and Presentation Announcements by Danielle Knafo (USA)

Unraveling Psychosis: Psychoanalytic Treatment of Extreme States

Knafo, D. (2025). Unraveling psychosis: Psychoanalytic treatment of extreme states. Modern Psychoanalysis, 49(1): 27-44.

Through close clinical observation, this paper considers how psychotic symptoms may serve as efforts to manage unbearable affect and relational dislocation. The author offers detailed vignettes to illustrate a treatment stance rooted in responsiveness to the patient’s experience, where safety and attunement take precedence over interpretive urgency. Particular attention is given to the ways hallucinations and delusions can convey psychic meaning, often reflecting underlying needs for contact, protection, and continuity. Rather than imposing a unified theory, the paper outlines a flexible, patient-centered approach that privileges collaboration, respects the logic within the symptom, and views the therapeutic relationship as a potential site of anchoring and repair.

Wonder Woman’s Kinky Secrets

Knafo, D. (2025). Wonder Woman’s kinky secrets. Clio’s Psyche, 32(2): 195-205. https://doi.org/10.70763/c17028c9b6e0c5deaad29665d582284a

This article explores the creation of Wonder Woman through the lens of her creator’s unconventional life. William Moulton Marston’s polyamorous relationship with his wife Elizabeth and their partner Olive Byrne directly influenced the comic book character’s themes of female empowerment, bondage, and submission. The 2017 film Professor Marston and the Wonder Women illuminates how this relationship shaped one of popular culture’s most enduring feminist icons.

The Commission on Artificial Intelligence Report

Knafo, D. (2025). Free association in the age of AI. The CAI Report [American Psychoanalytic Association President’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence], Issue 4. apsa.org/thecaireport/

Knafo, D. (2025). The cyber-savvy analyst: Meeting adolescent patients in their natural habitat. The CAI Report [American Psychoanalytic Association President’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence], Issue 6. apsa.org/thecaireport/

The American Psychoanalytic Association’s President’s Commission of Artificial Intelligence (CAI) Report offers psychoanalytic perspectives on issues involving AI’s uses, applications, risks, and benefits to individuals and in society. The CAI supports and leads efforts across APsaA to address the impact of AI on psychoanalytic care, education, theory, and professional life. It also considers AI’s broader cultural effects, including transformations of self-experience, intimate relationships, and human desire. Through active study and project development, the CAI works to respond nimbly to rapid change, helping to ensure that psychoanalysis remains vital and responsive in the emerging AI age. Danielle also writes a monthly column featured in the CAI Report that responds to letters inquiring about Human-AI relations.

Review of Your Mum and Dad

Knafo, D. (2025). Review of Your Mum and Dad. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 42(2): 116–118.

This review of Your Mum and Dad (2019), a profoundly moving film written by Klaartje Quirijns and Boris Gerrets and directed by Quirijns, examines the intergenerational transmission of trauma through two stories and their healing using psychoanalysis and art, respectively. The first story brings us into the clinic as we observe an interracial analysis of a Jewish man whose mother lost her family in the Holocaust. The second story is that of the filmmaker, Quirijns, whose parents maintained a 50-year silence over the death of her sister who drowned at the age of 4. The film artistically dramatizes the search for truth being both painful and liberating.

Speaking Engagements

Knafo, D. (2025, April 26). Working with psychosis [Lecture]. Oklahoma Society for Community Psychoanalysis, Oklahoma City, OK.

Knafo, D. (2025, July 21). From breakdown to breakthrough [Lecture]. Shalvata Mental Health Center, Hod HaSharon, Israel.

Knafo, D. (2025, August 1). The cyber-savvy analyst: Meeting adolescent patients in their digital habitat [Keynote discussant]. International Psychoanalytic Association, Lisbon, Portugal.

Knafo, D. (2025, September 21). Desiring castration: A reformulation of castration theory illustrated by a transgender case [Lecture]. Michigan Council for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, virtual.

Knafo, D. (2025, November 7). Psychodynamic treatment of psychosis [Keynote address]. Dutch Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Knafo, D. (2026, January 28). The psychodynamics and psychological impact of misogyny [Lecture]. American Psychoanalytic Association, San Francisco, CA.

Knafo, D. (2026, February 28). Psychoanalysis and AI: The next generation [Lecture]. Southeast Florida Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology, Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Knafo, D. (2026, March 6). AI on the couch [Lecture]. The New School for Social Research, New York, NY.

Knafo, D. (2026, April 11). AI on the couch [Keynote address]. New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, San Francisco, CA, virtual.

Knafo, D. (2026, April 27). Gods and monsters: The psychoanalysis of AI [Keynote address]. International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) Asia Pacific Conference, Seoul, Korea, virtual.

Knafo, D. (2026, May 7, 14, 21, 28). Sex, gender, perversion and technology [Course]. International Academy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, International Russian Language Program with simultaneous translation, virtual.

Knafo, D. (2026, May 30). Gods and Monsters: The Psychoanalysis of AI [Keynote address]. International Psychohistory Annual Conference, virtual.

Danielle Knafo, Ph.D.
Great Neck, New York, USA
Email Danielle Knafo
www.danielleknafo.com