Steven H. Cooper, Ph.D.
About
Steven Cooper is a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in full time practice. He is also a couples therapist and a family business consultant. He is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He is a Clinical Professor in Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. He is also an Adjunct Clinical Professor at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis. In 2025 he became the Visiting Senior Erik Erikson Clinical Fellow at the Austen Riggs Center.
Books
Dr. Cooper is the author or editor of seven books and over one hundred journal publications in psychology and psychoanalysis.
Recent Presentations
2021
- Milwaukee Psychoanalytic Institute, David Black Memorial Lecture
- PANY, Psychoanalytic Association of New York
- Psychoanalytic Institute, Ann Arbor, Michigan
- Turkey Psychoanalytic Institute, Invited Speaker and Instructor in Istanbul (includes 2020)
- Toronto Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis
2022
- (March 19) SIPRe, Milan
- (March 26) Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Washington D.C.
2023-2024
- October, 2023 Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis
- December, 2023 Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute and Society, New Haven
- March, 2024 Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis, The Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. Ann Arbor, Michigan
2025
- The Winnicott Center, Tel Aviv
- Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, New York
- The Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute
Selective Recent Publications
Cooper, S. H. (2025) Living an Experience of Defence: Exploring Defensive Process within the Play Framework. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 106:11-26
Cooper, S. H. (2024) The Oedipal Virtual Citadel: Varieties of Isolation, Oedipal Conflict, and Cover-Up. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 72:613-635
Cooper, S. H. (2023) The play of mourning. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 71: 61-82
Cooper, S. H. (2022) The limits of intimacy and the intimacy of limit: Play and its relation to the bad object. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 70: 241-261.
Cooper, S. H. (2022) Shared catastrophe, resistance, and learning in the countertransference. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 91(1):39-61.
Cooper, S. H. (2022) The activity of neutrality. Psychoanalytic Quarterly,
91(2):355-369.
Cooper, S. H. (2021) Donald Winnicott and Stephen Mitchell’s Developmental Tilt Hypothesis Reconsidered. Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 31:3, 355-370.
Cooper, S. H. (2021) Toward an Ethic of Play. Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 90: 373-397.
Cooper, S.H. (2018). Playing in the Darkness: Use of the Object and Use of the Subject. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 66(4):743-765.
Cooper, S.H. (2015). Clinical Theory at the Border(s): Emerging and Unintended Crossings in the Development of Clinical Theory. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 96(2):273-292.
Cooper, S.H. (2015). Reflections on the Analyst’s “Good Enough” Capacity to Bear Disappointment, with Special Attention to Repetition. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 63(6):1193-1213.
Cooper, S.H. (2014). The Things We Carry: Finding/Creating the Object and the Analyst’s Self-Reflective Participation. Psychoanal. Dial., 24(6):621-636.
Cooper, S.H. (2010). Self-Criticism and Unconscious Grandiosity: Transference-Counter Transference Dimensions. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 91(5):1115-1136.
Cooper, S.H. (2008). Privacy, Reverie, and the Analyst’s Ethical Imagination. Psychoanal Q., 77(4):1045-1073.
Visit PEP for more scholarly articles by Steven H. Cooper
© 2025, Steven Cooper.