Minh Tran will be mixing it up with our relational and object-relational friends for his first international “musical-lecture” presentation with the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education.
Tickets are available here: https://www.ifpe.org/2023-conference
October 26th – 28th, 2023
Sheraton Pasadena Hotel
Pasadena, California
Awardees:
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Hans W. Loewald Memorial Award
Francisco J. González, M.D.
Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educator
Stuart Perlman, Ph.D.
Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educator
David Naimon
Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educator
“Looking back, then, over the patchwork of my life’s labours, I can say that I have made many beginnings and thrown out many suggestions. Something will come of them in the future, though I cannot myself tell whether it will be much or little. I can, however, express a hope that I have opened up a pathway for an important advance in our knowledge.”
Sigmund Freud, An Autobiographical Study
“My “trance” isn’t necessarily different from the state of rapture or tumbling-into-language that many poets and writers feel, in the heat of composition. It’s a state of letting my mind be filled to the brim with words and phrases — and, at the same time, letting my consciousness float away from itself,…”
Wayne Koestenbaum, Diving into the Linguistic Unconscious:
Interview with Shoshana Olidort,
Los Angeles Review of Books
We hope you will join us at IFPE’s 33rd Annual Interdisciplinary Conference: “. . . but is it psychoanalytic?”
This year’s theme, “. . . but is it psychoanalytic?” is heard by some of us as an opening statement, not foreclosed by analytic tradition, but directing us to think of psychoanalysis in a new way, whereas others hear it as an admonition to not go too far astray.
If anything is clear about the state of psychoanalysis, it’s that theorists and practitioners understand key concepts differently and the differences must be addressed before discourse can be meaningful.
“. . . but is it psychoanalytic?” is a question that is intended to interrogate, differentiate and explore — that is, to the extent possible, to define — the most basic and all-inclusive term in our discourse: psychoanalytic.
The question posed by the theme is one that should be answered with a question, i.e., “What do you mean by ‘psychoanalytic’?”
Psychoanalysts have held that they actually can describe what each of us means when we say something is psychoanalytic. We tend to disagree, however, about what that is.
Now that psychoanalysis has become part of the cultural zeitgeist, we can expand the question even further. Do we need to mention psychoanalytic concepts for something to be psychoanalytic? For example, art, literature, poetry and dance can include aspects of primary process. Would we call these psychoanalytic?
This year, we invite you to think with us about the statement, “. . . but is it psychoanalytic?” When have you heard these words or delivered them yourself?
IFPE’s 2023 theme is meant to be a substantive question, but it’s also interesting to consider how often it’s used rhetorically, as a challenge that is or isn’t meant to be answered.
Our conference will be held October 26th – 28th, 2023, in Pasadena, California, at the Sheraton Pasadena Hotel. Attendance at our in-person conference will require “full vaccination”, and we will set guidelines based on the most recent data.
Questions?
Please click here to send an email to IFPEcontact@gmail.com
