In this, IARPP's 20th online colloquium (archived online for those who wish to review the paper and posts), we were privileged to present Sam Gerson’s hauntingly beautiful paper “When the Third is Dead: Memory, Mourning and Witnessing in the Aftermath of the Holocaust” with a distinguished international panel that included Lew Aron, Juan Francisco Jordan-Moore, Adrienne Harris, Susi Federici-Nebiossi, Leanh Nguyen, Andrew Samuels, Daniel Shaw and Chana Ullman. For close to two weeks, we bore witness to and attempted to contain, hold and process an ongoing conversation with members, author and panelists about the impact of the Holocaust and other catastrophic traumas on survivors and examine the impact of witnessing in our offices and in the colloquium. With this, as in any colloquium, we saw our role as facilitative and  reflecting on the process. With material this sensitive, raw and affect laden, it moved but didn’t surprise us to hear from many who posted publicly and privately that they felt themselves to be walking a line between retraumatization and healing. As in a treatment where revisiting trauma laden or any difficult material can be therapeutic but also painful and at times too much to bear, so too in this colloquium. But part of the effectiveness of the IARPP colloquium series and this most recent one in particular, is the opportunity it provides to deeply immerse oneself in often complex and intense material. The colloquium presents an opportunity to have a profound discussion with the benefits and limitations of the virtual world.

It was our sense that many of the themes and conversational threads concerned topics that most of us have not had enough of a chance to discuss and process, and certainly not within the far reaching but safe parameters of an online, international professional community.  It is often noted that clinical work is private and by necessity isolating. Understandably, this takes a toll on all of us in our day to day work, but perhaps even more so when the material being addressed is of a highly traumatic and sometimes difficult or impossible to symbolize and articulate nature. We hope that this colloquium provided some opportunity to break through the negative effects of this isolation and witnessing role and offer thanks and tremendous appreciation to Sam Gerson, the panel and all IARPP members who participated actively or from the sidelines. It was deeply moving and meaningful for us.

After taking some deep breaths and still reflecting on an experience that continues to linger in significant ways, we have begun to plan for the next colloquium. From October 1st to 14th 2012, we will have the honor of presenting Diane Elise’s paper “The Black Man and the Mermaid: Desire and Disruption in the Analytic Relationship”.

Galit Atlas-Koch and Steven Kuchuck
IARPP Colloquium Committee Co-chairs and Moderators

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