Prologue: Emerging Analytic Voices

The articles in this issue were presented at an Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) Symposium that took place on February 20, 2015, in Los Angeles, California. The meeting was conceptualized and sponsored by the then current candidates of, and recent graduates from, the ICP in Los Angeles. Entitled “Complexity and the Relational Unconscious: A Symposium for and by the ICP Community,” the program represented for all of us candidates and recent candidates, “a field of dreams.”

The idea for this program emerged organically from conversations among members of the Long Distance Committee of ICP. This committee was comprised of candidates and recent graduates of ICP’s Weekend Program for Psychoanalytic Training, and included current and former candidates representing five different states in the United States, as well as Australia. Within less than 2 months from the original “Call for Papers” soliciting submissions from current candidates and recent graduates, 33 fully completed papers were received.

As is premised in complexity theory, when a system arrives at a tipping point, the system itself morphs into new ways of being in the world, and something quite unexpected and unpredictable happens. So, it seems that in this systemwide effort to hold an ICP symposium, unanticipated innovations from candidates and recent graduates crossed that threshold. Although one’s candidacy may well be the most thoughtful and creative time in a prospective analyst’s career, as demonstrated here by the rapid response to the call for papers, frequently a lack of self confidence in the candidate can impede such efforts to consolidate and share ideas. In this case, the proposed symposium provided both motivation and opportunity for the ICP population, demonstrating that when encouraged, independent thought can yield abundant results.

One theme that emerged in the papers that were presented in the symposium was a sense of freedom; that is, there emerged an exhilarating release from fal