By Chana Ullman (Israel)

Dear members of IARPP,

I am pleased to write to you in this last issue of the eNews for 2016 to let you know about recent developments and plans at our organization.

In recent months we have been intensely involved in planning our next international conference taking place next May 25-28, 2017, in Sydney, Australia. Cathy Hicks (Australia) and Sarah Calvert (New Zealand) are the co-chairs of the Conference Committee. Their excellent teams in Sydney and New Zealand, along with our International Conference Committee, have been hard at work planning the conference.

The program for the conference is already in place and we are delighted to have presenters from around the globe, including major IARPP thinkers as well as presenters new to IARPP, many attending our conference for the first time. The conference seeks to examine dialectical tensions between mainstream and innovative ideas from within many different contexts in the world of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. This promises to be an exciting meeting of minds at the center and the margins of the relational perspective, and extending into the contemporary world. Registration will open soon and we hope that you will join us in Sydney for this rich, diverse, and original event.

The recent colloquium discussing Sue Grand’s paper, “God at an Impasse: Devotion, Social Justice, and the Psychoanalytic Subject,” has been yet another passionate, stimulating, large group dialogue with members of our international community. The colloquium began just as we were all rocked by the US election and other world events, and continued with an open, curious, and collaborative spirit of inquiry into the deep issues raised by Grand’s paper. We thank Steven Knoblauch (USA) and Alejandro Ávila Espada (Spain) for their enormous contribution as moderators and co-chairs of the Colloquium Committee for the past three years, and we welcome Adrienne Harris (USA) and Rina Lazar (Israel) as the incoming co-chairs of the Colloquium Committee beginning in 2017.

The board of IARPP has recently established two new committees. The Membership Committee, co-chaired by Tony Bass (USA) and Sharon Ziv–Beiman (Israel), was established with several aims, such as reaching out to and promoting understanding of relational perspectives in communities with small numbers of IARPP members. This committee will also focus on enhancing communication between IARPP members and the board, as well as considering issues of inclusivity and diversity in our membership as our organization grows. I am certain that this development will bring us as a board in closer touch with our members and will enhance our efforts to advance relational perspectives into new parts of the world and within diverse groups.

Another committee which will begin work this January is the Relational Voices Committee, formed to establish a relational library of videotaped interviews with the founders of IARPP and other major thinkers from within the relational perspective. These interviews will be available on our website for use by our members. There will be an announcement of the inauguration of this new project in the near future.

Wishing you a happy and productive new year and a less tumultuous world for all of us.

Chana Ullman, PhD
IARPP President

Chana Ullman, PhD
17 Neve Matz
Rehovot 76100
Israel
Email Chana Ullman