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The thirty-first annual conference was a first for at least two reasons. The first is that it never stopped pouring with rain—morning, noon, and night—so those of us who flew to Italy thinking, “Who'll need a coat in Turin in May?” (like me) got wet! The second “first” was that our IAFP founder and lifetime president, Estela V. Welldon, could not be with us this year due to ill health. In day one's large group, her absence was high on the agenda and it seemed to me that for both IAFP lifers and first-timers alike, she was very much alive in our minds.
We kicked off the conference with plenary 1 and 2 which featured two venerable clinicians with over eighty years of experience between them. Psychiatrist and psychotherapist Dr Felicity de Zulueta shared her wisdom accumulated over four decades of exploring the effect of disorganised attachment on personal development, whilst group analyst and GP, Dr Alfred Garwood, used his own personal history as a child survivor of Bergen-Belsen to explore themes related to loss, trauma, and healing. When he described being put into foster care at just three years old, there wasn't a dry eye in the house. I couldn't help observing that his definition of, “Happiness as the release from fear of annihilation anxiety”, a state which necessitates feeling close to others and cared for by them, was extremely hard-won.
Fortified during the break by some delicious Torinese espressi and homemade apple cake care of the barista's mum, we returned to the Grand Hall of Turin's Environment Park for plenary 3 which got us thinking about violence at a societal level. Psychologist Will Linden has been a lynchpin of Glasgow's remarkably successful Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) for over twenty years. Keen readers of this journal will remember my interview with the lawyer, Ian Smith, whose advocacy of smart justice was profoundly influenced by the work of the VRU. Linden described the public-health approach they have taken to violence; how policing