Susie Orbach (UK)

I was invited to keynote at the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Eating Disorders in August. With a twenty four hour trip it seemed mad not to meet with the relational therapists there. What a wonderful group. Or perhaps I should say, what wonderful groups of people I met with.

In Sydney, the Relational People and the Sydney Institute of Psychoanalysis put on two events for me to speak at: the first on new theoretical approaches to the Body and the second on the Politics of the Body. Although notionally the latter was for the relationals and the former for the analysts, the two groups cooperated and worked as one including involving major media – National Radio &, TV for me to talk about psychoanalysis. Mary Bayles, Marianne Kennedy, Annette Conradi from the relational side joined with Louise Hird and Sonia Wechlser from the Institute.

The relational turn is definitely of interest to the younger analysts. This is in part because of the very individual voice of Neville Symington who has made it possible for others to think out of the box. But it is also due to Mary Bayles, Marianne Kennedy,  Annette Conradi  and Margie Chodos who have been energising relational thinking in Sydney.

In Melbourne, I also spoke with the psychoanalysts and psychotherapeutically orientated psychiatrists and found the latter extremely enlightened and enlightening.

At the Anzaed conference, I participated in, inter alia, a case discussion from three perspectives with me representing a relational approach. It was gratifying, again, to see how people are gravitating towards the inter subjective and interpersonal.