by Alejandro Ávila Espada (Spain) and Steven Knoblauch (USA)
Co-Chairs Colloquium Committee

This Spring IARPP experienced a unique opportunity as a community to consider a classic paper by Stephen A. Mitchell which later appeared in his well known text, Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis. The paper titled Varieties of Interaction became an opportunity to consider how a comparative perspective toward psychoanalytic approaches to theory and treatment might impact how a particular analyst comes to make clinical decisions.

Not having the opportunity to interact with Mitchell about his ideas, we invited a uniquely large panel representing an array of regions from around the globe to launch and guide the discussion. Many of our panelists knew and worked with Stephen for many years, as his ideas about relational psychoanalysis were developing. Others have been quite familiar with his work and brought a variety of considerations to the discussions, often different and expansive to the original text.

This panel sparked the largest participation we have ever recorded in a colloquium. A total of 148 people posted and there were 472 posts. We would like to thank all of our panelists for their contributions to the success of this unprecedented event: Dana Amir, Roberto Arander, Lewis Aron, Tony Bass, Emanuel Berman, Ken Corbett, Jody Davies, Nino Dazzi, Maria Eugenia Boetsch, Francisco Gonzalez, Adrienne Harris, Areil Liberman, Gianni Nebbiosi, Alejandra Plaza, and Andre Sassenfeld,

Our next colloquium will focus on a paper by Donnel Stern titled Relational Freedom and Therapeutic Action.  We are planning to invite a smaller number of panelists as Donnel will participate with us and be available to explain his ideas and expand on them in dialogue with panelists and all who participate. (All IARPP members automatically receive Colloquium posts) We hope to continue to reflect a multi-regional perspective in panel representation and look forward to another exciting and illuminating community event of shared wisdom. Keep the dates open: November 10 – November 23, 2014.  We look forward to hearing from many of you then.

Alejandro Ávila Espada
Co-Chair Colloquium Committee

Steven Knoblauch
Co-Chair Colloquium Committee