Philip Ringstrom, Conference Co-Chair
Wendy Bauer
Simone Drichel
Malin Fors
Sevasti Gkioka
Lisa Lyons
Laura Molet
Peter L. Rudnytsky
Maria Saba
by Philip Ringstrom (USA), Conference Co-Chair
We are happy to report that the June 16-18, 18th International IARPP Conference in Los Angeles was a success beyond anything we could have imagined. This was the first time in our Association’s history (and hopefully last) that a perfectly crafted conference, which was set to occur in June 2020, had to be cancelled and postponed — first to 2021 and then again to 2022. Little remained intact of the original program. Between November 2021 and June 2022 — right up to the conference’s beginning — we were redesigning and rebuilding while attempting as much as possible to adhere to the original program.
Fulfilling this meant serious downsizing, creativity, and lots of help. We were seriously worried that the conference might exact a great financial toll on the Association. Instead, it was a huge success in every way.
This was our first in-person conference since 2019, having never missed an annual conference in the previous 17 years. We had more than 200 in-person attendees. By adding online registration to our five plenaries, we added over another 200. In addition we were able to include close to 200 Ukrainian psychotherapists!
Because of its size, the in-person atmosphere was very intimate, and the ratio of younger to older colleagues has never been higher, likely in part because of the relative risk factors of travel.
UCLA’s Luskin Conference Center is one of the most beautiful settings our conferences have ever had. Its top three floors have “hotel” rooms for attendees, with the floors below perfectly equipped for large academic conferences. The rooftop terrace — where the last night Gala occurred — looks majestically over the campus and out to the Pacific Ocean.
Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our conference organizer, Nilou Mostofi, constantly renegotiating the terms of our contract with UCLA, the conference came close to breaking even. Anyone familiar with conference creation knows that this is one of the key benchmarks of success. Adding to this was the addition of the CE-Go online sessions, which raised enough additional funds to create a small profit – something almost unheard of.
This latter success involved the extraordinary efforts of our Executive Office, including Elisa Zazzera, Valerie Ghent, Lucia Lezama and others, all coordinating with the Luskin Center to simultaneously broadcast our large in-person plenary sessions around the world.
The scholarship of the program remained extremely high and deeply appreciated. We had five pre-conference workshops, 38 paper/panel sessions, five plenaries, multiple breakout discussion groups, and a closing comments roundtable.
Plenary One, “Reckoning with Catastrophe: Will We Ever Be the Same?” featured Jessica Benjamin and Glen Gabbard, with Ilene Philipson as moderator. It also introduced Alyana Chukanova speaking live to us from Lviv, Ukraine. She spoke of the conditions on the ground and acknowledged the remarkable help provided to her colleagues through IARPP’s Ukrainian Psychotherapist Relief Fund (iarpp.net/iarpp-ukrainian-psychotherapist-relief-fund/).
Plenary Two, “Three Characters in Search of a Story: Empathy as a Complex Achievement,” featured Mal Slavin and Hazel Ipp with Francesco Andreucci as Interlocutor. Plenary Three:, “Mimetic Understanding: The Embodied Dance of Words and Actions,” featured Susanna Federici and Gianni Nebiossi with Estelle Shane as Interlocutor. Plenary Four, “The Emergence of Meaning from the Unformulated Experience,” featured Donnel Stern and Phil Ringstrom with Irwin Hirsch as Interlocutor. Finally, Plenary Five, “Clinical Implications of the Analyst’s Subjectivity – On the Impact of Culture, Psyche and Soul,” featured Stavros Charalambides and Sandra Toribio Caballero with Peter Maduro as Interlocutor.
To quote T. S. Eliot, the conference ended with “a bang and not a whimper.” Under the starlit sky of Luskin’s rooftop terrace, what began as “cocktail lounge” jazz, to not interfere with conversation, soon gave way to a “dance floor revolt” in which the power of youthful energy “forced” the DJ to change to raucous dance music which lasted until the Luskin politely “kicked us out.”
This conference, which against all odds worked out, will be celebrated for years, thanks to the efforts of so many pushing back against the crushing tide of the pandemic.
All that is left now is to say: See you in Valencia next June.
Cheers,
Phil Ringstrom, Hazel Ipp and Ilene Philipson
Conference Co-Chairs
Philip Ringstrom, Ph.D., Psy.D.
Encino, California, USA
Email Philip Ringstrom
Hazel Ipp, Ph.D.
Toronto, Canada
Email Hazeil Ipp
Ilene Philipson, Ph.D., Ph.D.
Oakland, California, USA
Email Ilene Philipson
In the weeks and days leading up to my first IARPP Conference, I felt both excited and anxious. Covid-19 cases in Los Angeles were rising. For more than 2 years, I had done telehealth from the safety of my home with only a few patients in-person, and it was with trepidation that I agreed to attend the conference and moderate a panel. Yet some part of me felt a longing, a need to be in-person, amongst like-minded people, to feel connected again. It had not helped that the current sociopolitical climate in the US had only intensified the feelings of disconnection. At the conference, I discovered I was not alone in my experience.
As I attended panels, plenaries, discussion groups, and ate lunches with colleagues and new friends, I heard a similar sentiment repeated again and again — how vitalizing it felt to be in the same room together, to have a felt sense, an embodied sense of being with one another. It was almost as if we had not known what was missing until we experienced it again at the conference. I struggle to describe it. Words seem inadequate, unable to capture the experience of being together fully. I felt enlivened. I realized how much I had missed feeling so known and understood as I sat and spoke with people who shared my ideas and perspectives about this work that I feel so privileged to do. I missed being a “human among humans.”
I felt particularly moved by the plenary on complex relationally-achieved empathy with Mal Slavin and Hazel Ipp which demonstrated the benefit and necessity of an embodied therapeutic experience. A pivotal moment in the treatment emerged when Mal riffed on his patient’s drumming, building a connection that transcended words, a moment that allowed for separateness and otherness to coexist. Could such a moment emerge in the two-dimensional space of Zoom?
I left the conference feeling both satiated and longing for more. I am so grateful to this inspiring community of people. I hope to see you all next year.
Wendy M. Bauer, Psy.D., MFT
Los Angeles, California, USA
Email Wendy Bauer
by Simone Drichel (New Zealand)
I am teaching Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway in my “Literature & Psychology” class just now, and it was Mrs Dalloway that kept pushing into my thoughts as I sat down to write these reflections on the recent IARPP conference in LA. This isn’t quite as random as it might seem. Woolf’s novel opens with Clarissa Dalloway’s preparations for a party, and when this party finally arrives—at the end of the novel—its frivolous gaiety is swiftly ruptured by the incongruous news of a young man’s suicide: “Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here’s death.” Death, the reader understands, has been present all along, lurking in the background like an uninvited, but important, guest.
To be sure, this is not what happened in LA, at least not in any direct or literal way. And yet this conference did arrive, after much delay and disruption, with some of the same giddy exuberance and celebration that we associate with parties. Perhaps it was the overflow of emotion at the first plenary—not to mention Jessica Benjamin’s impromptu performance of “Solidarity Forever”—that gave us all a sense of the long-delayed IARPP “party” finally getting under way. But it was a joyousness that was nonetheless haunted by the ever-present possibility of further catastrophic rupture, with the very theme of the panel, “Reckoning with Catastrophe,” reminding us that death—in the shape of Covid-19, the Ukrainian invasion, or a relentlessly unfolding climate catastrophe—was waiting in the wings here too.
And as I sit here thinking about the conference (and about Mrs Dalloway), I wonder to what degree we did indeed reckon with catastrophe during those three days. The first plenary asked, “Will we ever be the same?”, implicitly expressing a concern that we may not be. My own worry, perhaps counter-intuitively, is the opposite: that we may have stayed too much the same and did not allow “catastrophe” to be a force of mutability. It is a worry that is informed by a related concern the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas expresses about art and artistic enjoyment, which he likens to evasion, and to “feasting during a plague,” respectively. Is that what we were doing over those three days? Did we perhaps enjoy ourselves a little too much, feasting, as we did, on long-awaited togetherness, on conversation, on something called “normality”—quite apart from the actual culinary feasts that were, of course, also abundantly on offer? In every break, as we took to the tea and biscuits, my mind turned to Alyona. I kept wondering what kind of reality she was returning to while we were feasting. And I worried that some fundamental part of us—the part that wanted only to celebrate and enjoy, and to keep catastrophe at the door—would not allow itself to be impacted by the horrors she, unlike us, was unable to evade. Levinas repeatedly reminds us of our ethical responsibility not to let the other face death alone—and I worried that that might be exactly what we were doing. For although Alyona was “there” with us—in that complicated absent/present way that Zoom facilitates—I am not sure that we were really there with her. I was struck, for example, by the Q + A that followed the first plenary. All but one of the questions addressed the big thinkers, leaving Alyona and her political reality dangling: as a catastrophe we were witnessing from afar and were all-but-incapable of taking in and responding to. In the closing session, grappling with some of the usual Zoom challenges, Alyona asked, “Can you hear me now?” Although directed towards the mundane, this question could not have been more poignant: had we heard her, indeed? Were we capable of hearing her?
Similarly, so many important questions that were raised (by Charles Levin, Andrew Samuels, and others) about “the political” seemed to simply dissipate, or were redirected—as if they were a side issue—towards the discussion groups, where they may or may not have been taken up. In my group, they thankfully were. We asked ourselves a simple but powerful question: if we are acting in solidarity with marginalised, ostracised, or otherwise suffering others, who are we doing this for? Are we doing this for us or for them? Is this a narcissistic or an ethical project? Are we, in our efforts to “help,” using the other to shore up a certain image of ourselves, or are we allowing ourselves to be reached and enlisted for their needs and their purposes? Are we or aren’t we listening?
Perhaps it makes sense now that this conference has become so enmeshed with Mrs Dalloway in my head. It’s not just the matter of a party taking place against the foil of death. Much of the impact of Mrs Dalloway hinges on a question that is deliberately left open: does the momentary catastrophic rupture—“in the middle of my party, here’s death”—have a transformative effect on Clarissa, or will she quickly return to her dissociated state and banish once more all that she dreads? How do we answer this question for ourselves? Have we “grappled with catastrophe” in such a way that we are now better equipped to bear its impact? Are we able to look death in the face non-evasively, and without undue fragmentation? Or do we return to the party unaffected and unchanged? Perhaps the question is as open here as it is in Mrs Dalloway.
Simone Drichel, Ph.D.
Dunedin, New Zealand
Email Simone Drichel
A taste of normal letter by letter
Alive.
Beach.
Coyote.
Dialogues.
ESTA.
Facemask.
Gratitude.
Hugs (with facemask).
IARPP.
Joy.
Keynotes.
Los Angeles.
Memories.
New friends.
Old friends
Pool party.
Q&A.
Reunion.
Sun hat.
Tourist bus.
Uber.
Venice.
Wonderful.
X-ray security check
Yippee
Zoom
Malin Fors, Ph.D.
Hammerfest, Norway
Email Malin Fors
The main themes of IARPP’s last two conferences, in Los Angeles (2022) and in Tel Aviv (2019), kept coming to my mind while I was trying to give words to my experience from our community’s gathering and connection at this year’s IARPP Conference just over a month ago.
It seems to me that IARPP’s challenging yet self-evident decision to be in Tel Aviv in 2019 side by side with our Israeli colleagues was a valuable experience preparing us to deal with the traumatic events of the Covid-19 pandemic, the war situation on European ground, and all the aggressivity expressed through racial, gender, etc. discriminations in our societies. Discussing with colleagues how to keep our imaginations alive and our inner realities in connection with our social realities was an important asset to help me deal with the psychic numbness both my patients and I kept feeling the following years.
For sure the IARPP community was a safe and warm place, keeping us together and in connection with all the symposiums and webinars through these three years of successive postponements of our meeting in Los Angeles.
A great and humble “Thank you!” needs to be addressed to the Conference Chairs and the Organization Committee for making the IARPP Conference 2022 a reality! It was a relieving experience giving space and time for to express all the unspoken feelings of anger, disappointment, sadness and terror in response to the hardship of our times. All these years as well as the specific days of the conference we were able to stand once again side by side, mutually vulnerable yet full of hope for the future of our community!
Specific mention needs to be made for the live-streaming of the plenary panels, which was a crucial decision of inclusiveness and unity. As one of the onsite conference participants, I want to express my appreciation for the liveliness, enthusiasm, and support expressed through constant messages from our Greek colleagues participating online in the plenaries. I believe that the expansion of the hybrid sessions available in future conferences is an important issue to consider for all IARPP members facing extreme difficulties to attend the conference onsite not to be excluded.
Moreover, sharing my enthusiasm for meeting and exchanging thoughts, experiences and knowledge with colleagues in the early stages of their careers as well as with well-experienced relational psychoanalysts, I want to invite more young professionals and trainee members of IARPP to join us at the IARPP conferences in the following years. The conference structure creates a matrix for new ideas to be expressed, allowing us to evolve ourselves as professionals by being immersed in group relational experiences!
I am looking forward to see you all in person in next year’s IARPP Conference in Valencia!
Sevasti Gkioka, M.Sc., Pg.D.
Nea Smyrni, Attiki, Greece
Email Sevasti Gkioka
For me, a most wonderful part of IARPP 2022 was being in person with friends and colleagues and being able to sit down together, talk, hug, share ideas. It was so moving to gather at last with old friends and exciting to meet people I hadn’t known before. I had intriguing, warm, and inspiring conversations – in person! – with people I had seen on-line, read, wondered about – but never before met! So wonderful after two + years of Zoom!
But there was much more that felt special to me. The conference description invited us to consider “how we navigate the verbal and non-verbal, the perceptual and experiential and what is permissible and impermissible in our work” and to consider that “free association cannot occur without the analyst’s free association in her own unconscious mind.” I found my own mind travelling to new places, new ideas; bits of what had been unformulated began to coalesce. My panel on the work some of us are doing with Afghani students and refugees gave me space to reflect both internally and with my colleagues on how we have broadened what it means to be a clinician, and how activism has expanded our work and thinking beyond our consulting rooms. Our audience was small, allowing for intimate and personal conversations. I came away nourished by new thoughts and ideas.
I was also so moved to hear Alyona speak to us from Ukraine. It was not only her words that touched me but also the implicit, non-verbal celebration of Ukrainian culture that was proclaimed by her intricately embroidered blouse and beautiful necklace. I, and hopefully all who attended, was reminded that Ukrainians are fighting not only for freedom, land and autonomy, but also for their culture and language.
I additionally loved the chance to explore a part of LA that I don’t know well. One afternoon I took a long walk in the UCLA Botanical Garden. The gorgeous expanse of woods, exotic trees, plants, and streams, and the deep quiet was for me a place to gather myself and reflect on all that I had been hearing at the conference.
The day after the conference ended I went to the Hammer Museum to see Andrea Fraser’s video installation: This Meeting is Being Recorded. In this one-woman monologue she embodies the attendees at a women’s group which has come together to reflect on Whiteness, Racism and Gender. She plays the role of each attendee, in multiple conversations. But I also understood she was reflecting on her unconscious, alive with many self-states: inclusive, white, and complexly gendered, and heard her struggling to confront her own unconscious racism. Her performance felt deeply resonant with my own Relational and multiply configured mind. A powerful and fitting end to our conference.
And finally, my deep thanks to IARPP, the conference committee, and the attendees, who took risks and braved the pall of COVID to make this conference a reality! And a special thanks to the conference organizers for feeding us not only with friendship, words and ideas, but with glorious breakfasts and constant snacks – both filling our bellies and creating even more opportunities for connection and conversation.
Lisa Lyons, Ph.D.
New York, NY
Email Lisa Lyons
(haga cliq aquí para español)
After a long wait due to the pandemic, our Relational Family was finally able to meet again. Being back together in person was powerful for all of us. Many people didn’t come to Los Angeles because of Covid. I would like to let you know that we missed all of you.
Other traumatic experiences have occurred parallel to the pandemic: serious disruptions in our society, resulting not only from Covid-19 but also war, corrupt leaders, natural disasters. In her paper presentation, Ruth Lijtmaer (USA) asked: How do we process the loss of lives from all these traumas? All these disruptions have revealed various levels of resilience and transformation in ourselves and in our families, friends, patients and colleagues all over the world. The unspeakable or uncommunicable, to others and to ourselves, is when Trauma with capital T annihilates a person entirely. Lijtmaer again: “The space between violence and trauma is dangerous silence,” which intensifies trauma’s impact.
In my paper, “The Sound of Silence,” I shared that silence does not protect us. Many families hold the unspoken understanding that silence is the best way to erase what was unpleasant, with the assumption that what you don’t remember won’t hurt you. But what happens when what you don’t remember is, in fact, remembered in spite of your best efforts? (Atlas, 2022). I think it is time to disturb the sound of silence, creating a relational home where previously there was emotional orphanhood.
After the plague, as Glen Gabbard (USA) said in the first of the unbeatable plenaries, “A catastrophe has already occurred, and while we wait for the next jolt, we try our best to understand what is happening, with the full knowledge that partial understanding may be the best that we can do.” Traumatized and devastated, we are different persons now. As we don’t have a shared understanding of what we have been through, we need a coherent story line. The term “eco-anxiety” is very often used by our patients, but there is also hope for change. As Jessica Benjamin (USA) pointed out, “So often we felt not pain, but indignation.” From trauma, PTSD and microaggression to oppression, repression and subjugation, the intention to recognize our pain helps restore the moral third.
Susie Federici and Gianni Nebbiosi (Italy) talked about “communicative musicality,” the substantial interweaving of movement, speech and emotion. The words of therapy are spoken words, part of a communicative flow that takes place in the interweaving of multiple implicit and explicit channels involving all the senses.
What does empathy mean? It is a shared and felt experience: “What a therapist’s empathy means to the patient depends upon what it means to the therapist,” said Mal Slavin (USA), referencing Louis Sander. This allows a deep immersion in empathic attunement with our patients. At his side while he presented a clinical case was discussant Hazel Ipp (Canada) whose poetical words sounded as: “We think and feel along with this dyad through the many moments described by Mal, ranging in tone and affect and different levels of inter-penetrability, of meeting and mis-meeting … In many ways the story of [Mal’s patient] Adam and Mal is a story about mutual vulnerability and finding ways to be vulnerable together, an inevitability of profound analytic work.”
And I wish to commend Sandra Toribio (Spain) for participating in a moving plenary in which she dared to share some self-revelations, as she spoke with empathy about her younger self.
I would like to finish this summary with one of my favorite phrases from Donnel Stern: “The process by which unformulated experience becomes meaningful unfolds in a spontaneous way.” As spontaneous as this summary.
See all of you next year in Valencia, Spain!!
Laura Molet Estaper, Psy.D.
Barcelona, Spain
Email Laura Molet
por Laura Molet (España)
Un año más, tras una larga espera por la pandemia, nuestra Familia Relacional pudo reencontrarse. Volver a estar juntos en persona fue poderoso para todos nosotros.
Aunque mucha gente todavía no vino a Los Ángeles por el Covid, supongo que para muchos es difícil hacer la transición ya que aún persiste el miedo al contagio, y quizás les cueste adaptarse a esta nueva normalidad post-pandemia, algunos de nosotros pudimos participar en nuestra 18ª Conferencia de IARPP. Me gustaría hacerles saber que los extrañamos a todos.
Paralelamente a la pandemia han ocurrido otras experiencias traumáticas: graves trastornos en nuestra sociedad, derivados no solo del Covid-19, sino también de la guerra: líderes corruptos, desastres naturales… ¿Cómo procesamos la pérdida de vidas a causa del Covid, la guerra?, desastres naturales u otras violaciones de los derechos humanos? Preguntó nuestra colega Ruth Lijtmaer (EU). Todas estas interrupciones han revelado varios niveles de resiliencia y transformación en nosotros mismos y en nuestras familias, amigos, pacientes y colegas de todo el mundo.
Disfrutamos con plenarias inmejorables. Después de la plaga, como dijo Glen Gabbard (EU), “Ya ha ocurrido una catástrofe, y mientras esperamos la próxima sacudida, hacemos todo lo posible para comprender lo que está sucediendo, con el pleno conocimiento de que la comprensión parcial sea tal vez lo mejor que podemos hacer”. Hemos sido traumatizados y devastados, ahora somos personas diferentes. Como no tenemos una comprensión compartida de lo que hemos pasado, necesitamos una historia coherente. El término “Eco-ansiedad” es utilizado muy a menudo por nuestros pacientes en forma de culpabilidad, pero también hay una esperanza de cambio. Como señaló Jessica Benjamin (EU) “muchas veces no sentimos dolor, sino indignación-terceridad moral de reconocer nuestro dolor”, palabras como Trauma, TEPT, microagresión, son virtualmente reemplazadas por opresión, represión y sometimiento. La intención es restaurar la moral. 3er. ¿Qué significa Empatía? “Lo que significa la empatía de un terapeuta para el paciente depende de lo que signifique para el terapeuta”- La empatía es una experiencia compartida y sentida, introdujo Mal Slavin (EU), y permite una inmersión profunda en la sintonía empática de nuestro paciente. Un caso clínico expuesto lado a lado del lado de Hazel Ipp (Canadá), cuyas palabras poéticas suenan como: “A través de la Díada,, aumentando en tono y afecto y diferentes niveles de interpenetrabilidad de encuentro y desencuentro. Adam [su paciente, y Mal es una historia sobre la vulnerabilidad mutua y cómo encontrar formas de ser vulnerables juntos”. Susi Federici y Gianni Nebbiosi (Italia) hablaron sobre la “musicalidad comunicativa”, el entrecruzamiento sustancial del movimiento, el habla y la emoción. Las palabras de la terapia son palabras habladas y forman parte de un flujo comunicativo que tiene lugar en el entrecruzamiento de múltiples canales implícitos y explícitos que involucran a todos los sentidos. Lo indecible o incomunicable a los demás y a nosotros mismos es cuando el Trauma con T mayúscula aniquila por completo a una persona.
Me gustaría centrarme en algunos de los conceptos que más me interesaron: Experiencias silenciadas, Silencio y trauma, el sonido del silencio.
Como escribió Ruth Lijtmaer, “El espacio entre la violencia y el trauma es un silencio peligroso”. El silencio intensifica el impacto del trauma. El silencio se puede asociar con un fantasma. Los fantasmas son los guardianes de los secretos y son las manifestaciones de algo que salió mal. Y, como los recuerdos traumáticos, son atemporales.
En mi ponencia titulada “El sonido del silencio” compartí que: La ley del silencio es una ley no verbal, pero aparece implícitamente. Lo que nadie nos ha explicado es que el silencio no nos protege, y que el silencio crece como un cáncer, y susurra en el sonido del silencio.
Muchas familias pensaron en el entendimiento tácito de que el silencio era la mejor manera de borrar lo que era desagradable: la suposición era que lo que no recuerdas no te hará daño. Pero, ¿qué sucede cuando lo que no recuerdas es, de hecho, recordado a pesar de tus mejores esfuerzos? (Atlas, 2022).
Gente que habla sin hablar, gente que oye sin escuchar, gente que ve sin ser vista, gente que sufre sin recibir ayuda, gente que se siente sola y no lo está. .. y nadie se atreve a perturbar el sonido del silencio. Creo que es hora de perturbar el sonido del silencio, creando un hogar relacional donde antes hubo orfandad emocional.
Me gustaría terminar este resumen con una de mis frases favoritas de D. Stern: “El proceso por el cual la experiencia no formulada se vuelve significativa se desarrolla de manera espontánea”. Tan espontáneo como este resumen.
¡¡Nos vemos todos el próximo año en Valencia, España!!
Laura Molet
Barcelona (Spain)
laura-molet@hotmail.com
hogarrelacional@gmail.com
Hope and Dread in Los Angeles
When I traveled from Florida to New York to attend the inaugural IARPP Conference in January 2002, a gala affair held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the country was reeling from the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which followed George W. Bush’s contested election to the presidency, while the newly constituted relational community was gathering in the shadow of the death of Stephen Mitchell, at the age of fifty-four, on December 21, 2000. I had interviewed Stephen, and also Jessica Benjamin, for my book Psychoanalytic Conversations (Analytic Press, 2000), and knew I had to be there to pay my respects and show my solidarity with relational psychoanalysis.
Since Matt Aibel graciously invited me to write about this year’s conference for the Bulletin, I have been somewhat startled by the realization that my only other appearance was at the 10th Anniversary Conference, also in New York City, but this time at the Roosevelt Hotel, where, again, I went purely to soak up the experience. Although my presence has been limited and my role marginal, I can say that I have been to the tenth and now also the twentieth anniversary of that first gathering of the tribe.
As was true two decades ago, but to an even greater degree, this year’s meeting at the Luskin Center on the UCLA campus was imbued with a sense of global calamity and communal loss. There were sessions devoted to the work of Emmanuel Ghent and Muriel Dimen, but others who were missed and mourned include Philip Bromberg, Jeremy Safran, Ruth Stein and Lewis Aron, who so ably carried the baton of leadership which had been passed by Steve. Such deaths, even the most distressing, can somehow be assimilated, but the feeling of impending doom by which I believe we were haunted in Los Angeles is overwhelming. The combination of the Covid-19 pandemic, which had necessitated the suspension of IARPP conferences since 2019 and even now prevented many people from joining us, the ever-worsening climate catastrophe (about which Al Gore had tried to warn us in 2000), the blight of systemic racism epitomized by the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in March 2020, the overturning of a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion and abetting of the epidemic of gun violence by the United States Supreme Court, the literal assault on democracy carried out at the behest of Trump on January 6, 2021, the resurgence of authoritarian regimes around the world, and Russia’s genocidal war on Ukraine—even this admittedly very partial and ethnocentric list of disasters is soul-crushing and almost too much to bear, though we were aided, if not comforted, by the reflections of Glen Gabbard and Jessica Benjamin in their opening plenaries, and deeply moved by Alyona Chukanova who spoke to us from Lviv about the historical context and present realities of the devastation wrought by Putin’s imperialist megalomania.
Despite these grounds for gloom, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Ilene Philipson for proposing that we do a session on my book, Mutual Analysis (Routledge, 2022), without which I would not have come to Los Angeles, and for which she and Mark Gerald served as the discussants and Rose Gupta as the moderator. For nearly two years, Ilene, Mark, Rose, Gita Zarnegar and I have participated in an online study group on Ferenczi, but we truly bonded for the first time at the conference. Ilene likewise introduced me to a wonderful group of colleagues from the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP), who have welcomed me into their home. There is nothing better about psychoanalysis than the opportunities it gives us to form deep connections with kindred spirits, and my circle of friends has also been enlarged by Silvia Birklein, Deborah Dowd, and Lauren Levine. As I told the members of the Strategic Advisory Committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association, which is forming a task force to rethink its program at scientific meetings, the reception and dance on the last evening sponsored by ICP proved to me that relationalists have more fun!
Peter L. Rudnytsky, Ph.D., LCSW
Gainesville, Florida, USA
Email Peter Rudnytsky
This past Conference was extraordinary. Many of us had not seen each other for several years, most of us from before the pandemic. The sense of being together again, especially after difficult times for all of us, created a unique feeling. Our relational tendency encourages us to value encounters. The interest shown in attending and commenting on the speakers’ work, the questions and critical discussion is a necessary exchange that enriches us all. The papers generated a lot of discussions and a desire to go deeper into the topics.
If this profession has taught us anything, it is to value what is good enough. We know it is the only way to stop and smell the roses. But those of us who came to the conference can say that we benefited from the efforts of those who were not content with the expected but rather kept moving forward, looking for what could be even better for the attendees. I think they succeeded. The Luskin Center space provided everything we needed and quite more. The conference started early and ended relatively late. Most of us went outside the conference center only once or twice. It was very fortunate that we did not need to leave. Being able to spend a few days in such a pleasant environment allowed us to enter a unique atmosphere where we could take advantage of the activities and get away for a few days from the hustle and bustle of everyday life to enter a state where we could listen to and comment on the work uniquely. It was undoubtedly a great moment.
I had very much in mind the friends who, having organized and planned everything to go, could not make it because of unforeseen events that are part of life. Now I can only imagine how much we will enjoy next year. My friends, you better get ready: I’ll bet you anything it’s going to be a celebration we won’t forget!
See you next year in Valencia!
Marie Saba, MA
Lima, Peru
Email Maria Saba
