The international interdisciplinary conference “Women and Power: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women in Relationships, Groups, and Hierarchies,” which took place in Atlanta February 25–27, 2000, was a resounding success. It was jointly sponsored by the Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis (COWAP) of the International Psychoanalytical Association, Emory University's Psychoanalytic Institute, the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of Emory's School of Medicine, and the Psychoanalytic Studies Program in conjunction with the American Psychoanalytic Association. The symposium was the first of a series of conferences sponsored by COWAP in North America. Participants came from North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.
The program included panel presentations and discussion of ideas and speculations on what power is and where it resides in women, men, and our non-human primate relatives. Speakers were Alcira Alizade, Fahima Charafeddine, Nancy Chodorow, Susan Gantt, Robert Glick, Otto Kernberg, Eleanor Maccoby, Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Helen Meyers, Robert Michels, Malkah Tolpin Notman, Robert Paul, Joan Raphael-Leff, Gail Reed, Arlene Kramer Richards, Steven Roose, Ethel Person, Beth Seelig, Brenda Solomon, Zachary Stowe, Miriam Tasini, Phyllis Tyson, Kim Wallen, and Elisabeth Young-Breuhl. Among the topics discussed were developmental aspects of power and gender; creativity and gender; dominance, hierarchy, and gender; and the neurobiology of disempowerment.
There were stimulating discussions between analysts and related scholars from various disciplines. More than 250 people attended the conference. Some of the sessions were “standing room only.” The proceedings of the conference will be published in book form, and selections from some of the talks will be available soon on audiotape through Audiodigest.