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Since February 2020, Covid-19 has kept the global community alert and subject to tremendous changes in everyday life. Many familiar activities, like meeting friends or going to the office, have become distant memories. At the same time, unseen connections have become visible. Many have learned to utilise technical solutions to the problem of connection, which were already there but neglected because of a reluctance to use them. By now, online therapy and webinars have become an everyday means of helping patients and professionals to reach out to one another. What before was unfamiliar has now become commonplace.
An awesome endeavour to make the best of prevailing circumstances was made by the organisers of the 9th IACFP Congress, originally planned to take place in Panama in October 2020 but shifted into an online event owing to the pandemic. It consisted of fifty-seven pre-recorded panels and theoretical/clinical workshops. The congress was appropriately named “Advances in couple and family psychoanalysis in the contemporary world”. This was a congress that focused its attention upon the crossroads of time and space.
The congress was executed by allowing participants to follow presentations via Zoom video link, publishing a number of panels and workshops daily, and enabling the sharing of thoughts and questions in closed Facebook groups. The challenges set by time zone and language differences were addressed and overcome. The team of translators did great work by allowing participants to form several language groups to understand each other and publishing the pre-recorded presentations online day by day, which made it possible for everyone to follow the programme at the most convenient time. As a result, couple and family psychotherapists and analysts from all over the world were able to connect, ponder, learn, unlearn, and relearn together how to meet the needs of families in the contemporary world.
I, myself, attended the congress in Finland, in a remote part of Eur