By Steven Kuchuck (NYC) and Galit Atlas-Koch (NYC)
Co-Chairs IARPP Online Colloquium Committee

For two weeks in October, we had the good fortune of spending time with Dianne Elise’s rich and important paper, “The Black Man and the Mermaid: Desire and Disruption in the Analytic Relationship”. Together with an expert panel: Tony Bass, Andrea Celenza, Janine de Peyer, Jill Gentile, Hillary Grill, Sara Hill, Irwin Hirsch, Hazel Ipp, Jonathan Slavin and Cleonie White. Our community was challenged to question formerly and currently held notions about theory and clinical work. Among numerous other topics, we discussed the Oedipal, wondering how much and in what ways this original theory or even more contemporary reworkings still informs our work. We raised issues of race, color, otherness, female sexuality, self revelation, disclosure, visibility/invisibility, reality and fantasy. Additionally, hiding and silence vs. wanting to be seen were themes that informed our discourse, as did thoughts on public and private space.

From the beginning, we as moderators asked ourselves what it meant to consciously choose a paper that holds a secret, and what the nature might be of a conversation that emerges from such a paper. We wondered if it would prevent us from addressing certain topics or, conversely, if it would spur us on to explore multiple angles of multiple themes. In retrospect, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise to us that in various ways and at various points in the colloquium, both things seemed to be true.

One of the major challenges in every on-line colloquium is how to deal with thoughts and feelings stirred by sending messages into space, and not knowing what touches whom, who hears, feels, or sees, and whether or not we are seen at all. It was our sense that given the themes in Dianne’s paper around invisibility, otherness, self-disclosure, and revelation, it was inevitable that experiences always felt in this forum became amplified. And perhaps even more than in previous colloquiums, we witnessed a heated exchange of diverse and contentious perspectives. We understood this as evidence of the maturation of our still relatively new, international relational community, to a place of feeling more comfortable and secure enough to risk the recognition of such differences.

In conclusion, we were thrilled to take on the challenges and possibilities a paper this important and controversial presents. We remain grateful to Dianne and our panel for accepting our invitation, and to the entire online community for joining us.

We look forward to seeing everyone online again May 6th-19th   2013, when we will meet with Irwin Hoffman and an international panel now in formation to discuss his article, “Therapeutic Passion in the Countertransference”.

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