Call for Papers and Panel Proposals

The 2027 IARPP Conference invites us to step through the looking glass and enter a new landscape of human experience – one where the familiar coordinates of presence, embodiment, and relationality have undergone profound transformations, driven by interactive devices, artificial intelligence, and digital environments.

In contemporary clinical thought, the body is no longer viewed merely as a container for experience but is widely recognized as a fundamental participant in the co-construction of meaning. Research into implicit relational knowing, embodied cognition, affect regulation, and trauma invites us to continually re-examine how the body communicates, remembers, is inhabited, and inhabits experience.

We are ceaselessly immersed in worlds where technology increasingly permeates our relationship with otherness – with the human and the non-human, with challenge and surrender, with life and death – and where the body is traversed, extended, manipulated, and reshaped by interfaces, images, and information flows. Furthermore, the digital transformation of human experience is reshaping how communities are formed, how social bonds are maintained, and how collective identities are negotiated. These changes invite us to think not only about the shifting nature of individual subjectivity but also about the unconscious processes that organize our sense of belonging and interdependence.

The consulting room is no exception. The rapid spread of online psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, as well as of artificial intelligence platforms, alongside developments in neuroscience, challenges us to rethink what it means to encounter the other in analytic work. How do we understand presence when bodies are physically absent yet visible and audible – affectively alive – within the therapeutic space? What is created, what is transformed, and what is lost or gained when analyst and patient meet across a screen? How does the digital medium shape experience, relationship, and narrative within the analytic field? What kind of nostalgia might arise at the end of analysis, when shared spaces had only been virtual? What happens when a person relies on dialogue with a chatbot to share their lived experiences, analyze dreams, or entrust parts of their therapeutic journey to AI platforms? And what if the therapist does so? What are the implications – not only for space and bodies, but also for time, the therapeutic setting, creativity, responsibility, and ethics? Should we not, then, speak of a new form of complexity?

This conference aims to explore the possibilities and tensions, the fears and enthusiasms, inherent in the dilemmas of the multiple embodied and disembodied forms of presence. We invite reflections on the role of the patient's and analyst's bodies in the therapeutic encounter; on the challenges and opportunities offered by online therapies; on the impact of digital technologies on subjectivity and intimacy; and on how contemporary relational psychoanalysis can continue to engage with embodied and experiential approaches, whether in shared or virtual spaces, without losing its commitment to complexity and mutuality in rewriting the forms of meaning that define our humanity.

The IARPP Conference – hosted for the third time in Rome, a city that has always been a crossroads of eras and cultures where layers of history and collective memory are constantly renegotiated – urges us to take further steps amidst continuity and change. Like Alice stepping through the looking-glass, crossing a threshold that allows her to enter a different space-time – inverted and devoid of logic – we are invited to enter territories that may initially seem unusual, disorienting, or paradoxical. Yet, it is often precisely in these liminal spaces – between presence and absence, virtual reality and physical reality – that the exploration of new forms of understanding, connection, and transformation becomes possible. After all, Rome reminds us that every transformation stems from an engagement with the past, offering a rich and complex backdrop for exploring how new digital forms of subjectivity and mutuality are transforming human relationality.

We invite contributions that explore these themes from clinical, theoretical, interdisciplinary, cultural, and social perspectives, with the aim of charting paths for psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic practice.

We welcome all IARPP members to submit proposals only for individual papers and/or panels pertaining broadly to the conference theme. We encourage those who would like to submit to join IARPP.

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To be considered, proposals for individual papers must be between 500 and 600 words in length.

Panels should include two papers on a chosen topic. Proposals for panels should be no longer than 1200 words in total, and should consist of both an overview and abstracts of the individual papers.

Quality of writing, originality, integration of theory and awareness of current literature, clinical implications, and contribution to the field will all be considered.

The Conference Committee may group individual papers that are accepted for presentation with other papers in any session. Interlocutors / discussants for panels may be suggested, but cannot be guaranteed.

Please note that while multiple proposals may be submitted, only one presentation per participant will be allowed due to the limited time slots. Proposed submissions cannot have been presented at a previous IARPP conference.

SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL

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Proposal Submission Process

No names should appear on your proposal submission, as reviews are anonymous.

Please use this link to submit your proposal:
iarpp.ce-go.com/call-for-presentation/form

To be considered, please follow the guidelines below. Your submission must include:

• Presentation Title — list the overall title if submitting a panel; list the individual paper titles in the abstract section for all papers in a panel submission.
• A one-paragraph Abstract and three Educational Objectives for your presentation. These must clearly describe what the learner will know or be able to do as a result of attending, and must be observable and measurable (e.g. list, describe, apply, analyze, assess, utilize, critique).
• A current Curriculum Vitae and a one-paragraph Bio Sketch of your current professional work.
• Content References for your presentation: a minimum of 5 resources (within the past 5 years) used to research the topic and/or for further reading. At least 3 of these (within the last 10 years) must have consistent, credible empirical support in contemporary peer-reviewed scientific literature. References must be formatted in APA style. At least 5 content references are required.
• The completed proposal, with the author's name removed.

Before submitting, please note:

• Each prospective presenter should use one email address. Whichever email the primary presenter enters for the co-presenters when adding them to the proposal form is the one those co-presenters must use to access the form.
• If a presentation is submitted before co-presenters have had the chance to add their information, it will need to be withdrawn so they can complete the form accurately. Please contact the Conference Manager at nilou@km-direct.com if you encounter this issue. The platform saves all your information, so you can withdraw and resubmit as needed without losing your progress.
• Due to continuing education application requirements, all of these materials must be submitted in order for your proposal to be reviewed. Presentations submitted without all of the above items cannot be considered. All submissions will be reviewed by the Program Committee.

If you have any questions, please contact IARPP Conference Manager Nilou Mostofi at nilou@km-direct.com.

Paper and/or panel submission deadline: Monday, October 5, 2026.