Dear IARPP Members,

This summer our organization dealt with a challenging event. As you know, because of the war involving Israel and Gaza many IARPP members sent messages to the listserv, beginning a discussion of this terrible event. It was not easy to decide to create a specific online discussion group to talk about politics within our community.  However, I thought doing so was an important opportunity for our professional community, whose psychoanalytic approach is focused on mutual recognition and on the central role of relationships in human development. Once again I want to thank Rina Lazar for her generosity as moderator of this group, and for dealing with the discussion process so well and for such a long time.  I invite you all to read her report about this important experience in this issue of the eNews.

In October we completed the process of reorganizing the Webinar Committee. It is co-chaired by André Sassenfeld from Santiago (Chile) and Allison Katz from New York (USA). André will be also the Board liaison. Committee members are Christina Emanuel (USA), Amanda Kottler (South Africa), Ilene Philipson (USA), John Skrovan (USA), Carmine Schettini (Italy), and Micha Weiss (Israel). On behalf of IARPP I want to thank them for their service on this committee.  I am sure that this group will be able to develop a creative and strong program, so keep an eye out for upcoming webinar announcements.

The Toronto conference is growing: the call for papers was a great success, so there was a lot of work for the co-chairs, the steering committee, and the local committee. The program is now almost complete and I can anticipate that this conference will be extremely interesting.  Relational psychoanalysis, since its beginning, has been based on a comparative approach among different models.  In this conference we will try to compare from within relational multiplicity in order to expand the meanings of what is relational.

I would like to conclude this brief communication with an invitation to participate in the next colloquium to be held from November 10 to 23.  In it we will discuss Donnel Stern’s article, “Relational Freedom and Therapeutic Action.”  It will offer another important arena for exploring similarities and differences, for sharing experiences, and thus enlarging our clinical practice.

Very warmly,

Susanna Federici-Nebbiosi