The world has changed since we initially prepared our report on the colloquium series several months ago, so what we are writing now covers a very different range of events. In response to the Covid pandemic, we recently created the Open Forum, which provided a unique space for our international community to meet and converse, in an experience of mutual holding that was both consoling and generative. We thank Matt Aibel  (USA) and Sandra Toribio Caballero (Spain) for their generous participation as co-moderators.

In terms of next steps: while we continue to work under the global shadow of the Covid crisis, we feel that attempting to engage in the next planned colloqiuium on Steve Stern’s (USA) paper, Airless Worlds: Sequalae of identification with childhood neglect, is ill advised. We believe that it would be difficult to give Stern’s paper and our discussion the focus and attention they so richly deserve. For that reason, we’ve decided to post-pone Stern’s paper until November and engage with it as centerpiece of our Fall Colloqiuum, scheduled for November 11-22.  In place of the colloquium on Airless Worlds, we will  recommence the Open Forum from May 13-24 and provide papers as background, so that those who would like to will be able to apply for CEU credits for their participation.

As a recap, the November 2019 colloquium engaged Mary Joan Gerson’s (USA) paper “Death of a Parent – Openings at an Ending.” The paper demonstrated how there can be intrapsychic openings at life’s endings and contemplated ways in which we can work with our patients towards the generation of new meanings in the face of mortality and loss.

The panelists, Manuel Aburto (Spain), Tamar Barnea (Israel), Cynthia Chalker (USA), Jody Davies (USA), Carla Fischer (Chile), Jen Fox (Australia), Shifa Haq (India), Gary Rodin (Canada) and Peter Shabad (USA), offered a range of theoretical, clinical, and cultural perspectives, and there was broad participation from the international IARPP membership. The discussion was striking in its immediacy and tenderness. The colloquium had an elegiac quality that was deeply personal and widely inclusive. While the themes explored involved mourning and loss, the conversation was hopeful and optimistic, affirming our life-long capacities for growth and change and the ways that psychoanalysis can potentiate this vitalizing process.

Contributors and panelists posted from a range of geographical, political, theoretical, clinical and emotional locations, reflecting together on the power and resonance of this paper. Mary Joan was able to deftly hold, contain, respond to and metabolize a diversity of reflections. She and the panelists created a healing and thought-provoking space in which the community came together in heart and mind.

We look forward to resuming the IARPP Colloqiuim series in November 2020, and more immediately we are happy to reconvene the Open Forum in May.

Until then, stay well and safe during these challenging times.

Warm wishes,
Amy Schwartz Cooney, Ph.D. (USA) and Cathy Hicks, Ph.D. (Australia)
Colloquium Co-Chairs

Amy Schwartz Cooney
Email Amy Schwartz Cooney

Cathy Hicks
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