The IPA 49th Congress will take place in Boston July 22-25, 2015. We invite you to a congress that aims to deepen our understanding of where psychoanalysis is heading and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
We are living in a fast-changing world, which challenges the psychoanalytic ideals of reflection and time for thought. The IPA Congress plays a unique role in providing and protecting such space for reflection and thought at an interregional level: European, North American and Latin American analysts can directly exchange their views.
Working on the theme of the congress, we came up with a number of questions that our time raises about psychoanalysis today. How does a fast-changing world affect the mind, our technique and our consulting rooms? How have we developed in terms of tools and theories? Have we more to offer today than 50 or 100 years ago? How have new technologies and other changes influenced our practice, and how are we answering these various challenges? And finally, what are the further developments in technique and how do we deal with the impact of technology and high mobility in our practice?
We are living in a fast-changing world, which challenges the psychoanalytic ideals of reflection and time for thought.
The clinical and theoretical presentations at this congress are designed to show how different analysts from Europe, North America and Latin America think about and work through the questions raised above. But there will also be a new initiative at this congress, the Boston Groups, where small, interregional groups of members, candidates and non-members will be able to meet online before and during the congress to discuss the main congress themes. We have aimed to distinguish the Boston Groups from the other discussion groups, and are convinced they will be an opportunity for you to participate more directly and actively in the congress proceedings and to benefit from the extraordinary diversity of participants at IPA congresses.
The idea behind the Boston Groups is to provide the possibility to meet people from other parts of the psychoanalytic world in a small and intimate setting, as a way of making it easier to express oneself despite possible language obstacles. As all who have been to an IPA congress may have noticed, the overwhelming size of the conference creates an apparent tendency to stick to the people we already know. As you move about you hear and see people chatting away in their own languages. It makes sense that we enjoy the company of known colleagues, and we certainly do not want to take that joy away. However, if size and language hinder us from also meeting “unknown” colleagues, we would like to counterbalance that.
By placing people together in groups of 15 to 21 people, we hope to create new “safe” groups, a “home” group within the vast smorgasbord of the congress. Each Boston Group will be composed of an equal number of people from each of the three regions and will have a facilitator, whose role is to do just that, facilitate the discussion within the group. The group should not be seen as a supervision group but rather a place to discuss clinical and theoretical material in an equal and intimate way, offering the chance to get to know psychoanalytic thinking in practice in the parts of the psychoanalytic world that are unfamiliar
The groups will be created as people register and announce whether or not they would like to be part of a Boston Group. The groups will start their work in January 2015. They will meet by Internet to discuss the material the keynote speakers have provided, abbreviated versions of their papers. This way the group will already be formed and working before they actually meet in person in Boston. During the congress there will be a slot after the keynotes for the Boston Groups to meet in person for discussion. For those who have not joined a Boston Group there will also be larger more traditional discussion group options provided.
Our hope is that the Boston Groups will present us with the chance to explore both how we differ and how we are alike in the way we work and think in different parts of the world. By defining and redefining the concepts we use and the assumptions we make, we will be enriched by others, and also be given the opportunity to further discover how we think theoretically and with our patients, not only by “the experts” and the people who offer their knowledge in panels and individual papers at the congress but also by our peers and colleagues in other parts of the world.
We really hope you will be part of and enjoy the work of the Boston Groups.
Stefano Bolognini is a training and supervising analyst at the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and president of the International Psychoanalytical Association.
Alexandra Billinghurst is a member of the Swedish Psychoanalytical Association and vice president of the International Psychoanalytical Association.