Plans for the 41st IPA Congress are under way. The gathering place will be beautiful Santiago, Chile, a mountain-rimmed and sophisticated international city that is one hour from skiing and one hour from Valparaiso and the sea to the west. After some deliberation concerning the significant issues that occupy analysts these days and the forthcoming 100th anniversary of the publication of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, the committee found a common issue that could attract the attention of analysts the world over: “Affect in Theory and Practice.” The subjects of the three major plenary sessions are “Affect and Psychoanalytic Technique,” “Affect and Development,” and “Affect, Language, and Communication.”
Each IPA region has a co-chair on the Program Committee: the North American chair is Henry Smith, and the Latin American and European chairs are Marcio Giovannetti and Daniel Widlocher, respectively. Our committee liaison in Santiago is Jose Antonio Infante, now president of the Chilean Society, who graciously keeps us abreast of the progress of the Local Arrangements Committee (LAC).
The committee has worked hard together since the close of the Barcelona Congress and has forged a simpatico working relationship. This turn-of-the-(20th)-century group has bonded via e-mail and has had the fortunate opportunity to meet face-to-face at three mini-congresses. One of the most meaningful events — shared with Bob Tyson, our representative in loco parentis to the Executive Committee and international meeting maven — was the January 1998 meeting of the LAC and the Chilean Society members in Santiago. There we were able to explore the various accommodations and the Casa Piedra, Santiago's convention center. Most significant for us was the warm welcome given by our Chilean colleagues and the intellectually stimulating meeting they arranged, attended by some 300 observers at the Casa Piedra. We participated in lively cross talk and shared points of view; we even were able to sharpen differences in clinical approaches while we enjoyed the dialogues and broke bread together. We anticipate that the Santiago meeting will likewise be a place to learn from each other and to exchange ideas and clinical dilemmas with friendly and intelligent compadres.
The process of getting a Congress together is a unique experience. Several issues have occupied me since IPA President Otto Kernberg asked me to lead the group. Finding a topic was the first step. Various forces lobbied to influence the choice in regard to the speakers and the topics to be covered during the Congress.
I was then introduced to the IPA Executive Council in New York, where I heard about everyone's wish list. There were voices for the new and the young, for the wise and the experienced, for the various regions, and for various intellectual camps. The committee has had to work its way through these requests toward creating a coherent meeting that is intellectually exciting while clinically relevant and appealing to the many visitors we expect from Latin America. We also had in mind the mission that the program be universal enough to attract the many interested in psychoanalysis from both America and Europe.
The joy of our work and the process of making decisions and solving the minor problems thus far have all been part of the process of getting to know each other. Through chat rooms and other distant vehicles of communication we have become proficient enough to look down at “snail mail” and to respond immediately via cyberspace in a process reminiscent of adolescent bonding. I wonder whether Freud would have found these exchanges unheimlich or aufregend, were he alive.
Each IPA region has a subcommittee of its own whose members offer suggestions to the IPA's Committee of Chairs. The regional subcommittees also undertake the important job of reading and assessing individual papers as they are submitted for the meeting. This process is now in motion. We welcome any papers on any topic that our readers might like to submit.
The third prong of our enterprise is the selection of panels and workshops. We have a surfeit of submissions and are in the process of selecting among them. Some of the topics already on the drawing board are “Dreams and Affect, 100 Years Later,”
“Darwin Revisited: The Phylogeny of Emotions,” “Clinical and Theoretical Uses of Bilogic: Presentations in Honor of Matte Blanco,” “Affect Regulation,” and “The Analyst's Affects.” These topics will be supplemented by sessions devoted to research, shepherded by Peter Fonagy and Bob Emde, and presentations on child and adolescent analysis chaired by Peter Blos, Jr. We also plan to have the annual Hayman Award presentation; special integrative presentations on the interface between biology and psychoanalysis; and workshops on the Holocaust, women's issues, integrative work with the U.N., and as many other topics as the facilities permit.
Deliberations about the format of the plenary sessions have stimulated much concern among the membership. Many report that long theoretical debates wear poorly and are better digested when read. Others report that they would like to hear how colleagues from elsewhere work with patients and to be able to listen to clinical presentations of psychoanalytic process. There is also a strong constituency that advocates small group discussions where colleagues from different areas can join together and learn from each other.
We want to please as many as we can, but our primary concern is to have a lively and intellectually provocative meeting. An effort to please everyone might end up pleasing no one. We thus will offer the following format. Each plenary will have one pre-published theoretical paper, which will be presented in summary form in 30 minutes. This presentation will
Theodore Shapiro, M.D., chairs the IPA's Program Committee. He is a training and supervising analyst with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, a member of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, and a professor of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College.
be followed by a one-hour clinical presentation offered by an analyst from another region than that of the theoretical paper. Three discussants from complementary regions, holding complementary viewpoints, will then have the opportunity to offer a responsive discussion of the papers. The audience will be invited to participate in small work groups. The final, fourth panel will include summary discussions form representatives of each of the regions.
We anticipate that we will have superb live, on-site translations in English, Spanish, French, German and, for the first time, Portuguese. We were very pleased with our work with the translation team at the January meeting.
Working to get this congress underway has been gratifying, but nothing could have been effected without the active work and participation of the Central Office at Broomhills. The guidance and know-how of our administrative aide, Janice Ahmed, has been superb. That is what we anticipate the 41st Congress will be too — superb!