IARPP is pleased to announce the creation of its new Membership Outreach Committee chaired by board member Hilary Offman (Canada).
The mandate of this committee is to identify the needs of those who live in countries typically under-represented in IARPP who are interested in having more access to relational opportunities. The committee hopes to improve the benefits of IARPP membership for our increasingly diverse community around the world. In this respect, Covid has inadvertently had a positive impact in forcing us all to become (more) comfortable using Zoom and other online platforms, regardless of age or stage. Increased comfort with online work has meant a readiness to create teaching opportunities that may have felt daunting before.
The other members of the committee are Rocky Chu (China), Reema Felemban (Saudi Arabia), Morteza Gharavi (Iran), Temo Keshelashvili (Georgia) and Neetu Sarin (India). So far, we have focused on identifying the various needs of those in multiple countries, depending on their psychoanalytic pasts.
For example, in India, there is a long history of traditional psychoanalysis in which sociopolitical content has been eschewed, and clinical supervisors have predominantly been male. This group is eager to learn relational ideas that include how psychoanalysis is affected by culture, current events, race, class and gender. In China, there is a newly-developing interest in the individual in a society that has predominantly emphasized the collective. Chinese therapists are eager to learn more about what it means to think as an individual engaged in personal therapy and as a provider of therapy to others.
If you are from a country that you think would benefit from having representation on this committee, please reach out to Hilary Offman at offmanh [at] rogers.com. We are very excited about the prospects of expanding access to our amazing relational world.
Hilary Offman, MD, FRCPC
Toronto, Canada
Email Hilary Offman
Hilary Offman, MD, FRCPC (Canada) is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst with a private practice in Toronto, Canada. She is a lecturer and supervisor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. She is also a supervising analyst and Board member for the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (TICP). She is former co-chair of IARPP’s Candidates Committee and a current member of the IARRP Board of Directors, where she chairs the International Membership Outreach Committee.
Rocky Chu (China)
Reema Felemban, MD (Saudi Arabia) is a fifth-year psychiatry resident at University in Toronto. Originally from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where she lived most of her life, she came to Canada five years ago to complete her postgraduate education. Reema has a great interest in psychotherapy and working in women’s mental health and trauma. She has been greatly enjoying the psychodynamic part of her training and hopes to take the skills and knowledge she has acquired back home and to contribute to the rising movement there towards providing wider therapeutic options for people.
Morteza Modarres Gharavi, PhD (Iran) is a third-year candidate in psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute (NYC). He holds a PhD in clinical psychology from Iran. In 2010 he founded the Mashhad branch of the Freudian Group of Tehran. In 2012 he established, and currently directs, the Department of Clinical Psychology at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. He has also been an affiliate member of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society since 2018 and is an IARPP member.
Temo Keshelashvili, M.Sc. (Georgia) is a psychologist and registered psychotherapist in private practice in Toronto. He is a post-academic psychoanalytic candidate at the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, recipient of two psychoanalytic scholarships and two international psychoanalytic stipends, and has presented papers at several international psychoanalytic conferences. Temo is also a PhD candidate of Tbilisi State University in psychological anthropology. Before moving from Tbilisi to Toronto, he co-founded two mental health organizations in Georgia and worked for several international mental health organizations between 2007-2015.
Neetu Sarin, PhD (India) is Faculty at the School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi where she teaches courses on the body, listening, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and gender to graduate programs in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. A candidate at the Indian Psychoanalytic Society and an IPSO representative from India, she works with people suffering from personality disorders, autistic states and dissociative states. Neetu’s doctoral work is on states of dissociation and intergenerational transmission of trauma. She was awarded the prestigious Sudhir Kakar Prize (2016) for best psychoanalytic writing under age 40.
