The Israeli chapter of IARPP initiated several new activities this year. Some of them are described below:

Trapped in the Web – Psychotherapeutic Issues in the Digital Age:

In recent decades we have witnessed a dizzying technological development that permeates all aspects of life, shaping, mediating, and transforming our modes of thought, experience, and emotion. These changes force us to deconstruct and rethink, change our rhythm and language, and recognize the world of virtual meanings where the screen sometimes appears to be an entity in itself, challenging the limits between real and virtual. Our new lectures aim to examine the way we think about the psyche and the therapeutic relationships within the technological-cultural context, taking into consideration the inevitable mutual permeability of the virtual and the real into the intrapsychic and the interpersonal. The initiators and moderators of the series are Gili Katz Ben Sheffer, MA and Sara Mulia, MA, members of the Israeli Relational Forum.

Meeting of Minds – Reconnecting with the Writings of Lewis Aron:

In memory of Lewis Aron, the Israeli Relational Forum has recently begun a series of meetings.

Six of the leading members of our community will each discuss one of Aron’s papers. Our hope in these sessions is to create an open dialogue in Lew’s spirit. Each session focuses on one of Lew’s papers, and the speaker offers his or her own personal reading of the paper as well as clinical implications. Each presentation is followed by a discussion by the group.

The series offers six meetings, led by Roni Baht, Ph.D., Ilana Laor, Ph.D., Boaz Shalgi, Ph.D., Chana Ullman, Ph.D., Rina Lazar, Ph.D., Udi Chen, MA, and Yoav Antman, MA.

Udi Chen and Yoav Antman, members of the Israeli Relational Forum, are the initiators and the moderators of this series.

New Reading Groups:

In recent months, two new reading groups were offered under the auspices of the Relational Forum: a group on relationally informed couples’ therapy with Dr. Irit Kleiner Paz, and a group on the subject of the therapist’s creativity with Dr. Mitchell Becker. Dr. Kleiner Paz drew primarily on Philip Ringstrom’s book, “A Relational Psychoanalytic Approach to Couples Psychotherapy.” In Dr. Becker’s group, currently underway, participants are encouraged to share their own writing, in addition to discussing texts by Searles, Winnicott, Milner, Bromberg, Shalgi and other authors.

The reading group series is being organized and coordinated by Esther Rapoport, PhD, member of the Israeli Relational Forum.

Ilana Laor, IARPP-Israel, President
on behalf of the relational chapter of Israel:
Udi Chen, Noga Guggenheim, Esther Rappoport, Micha Weiss, Yoav Antman,
Sara Mulia, Gilly Katz Ben Sheffer, and Daniella Dankner

Ilana Laor
Email Ilana Laor