EPF Annual Conference - Vienna 2022

CALL FOR PAPERS

For the IPSO writing award
within the 35th European Psychoanalytical Federation annual conference, Wien, July 2022

IPSO call theme:
“Which horizons for psychoanalysis”

Dear IPSO members,
As IPSO Ex-com officers, we are committed in fostering the value of IPSO members’ written works. We are convinced that analysts in training could bring a particular contribution to the whole analytic community. During their training, candidates are very committed to treating patients in analysis and this may likely encourage them to welcome complex clinical situations and stressful settings. Moreover, analysts in training, for their average age and stage of life, may have direct contact with the mainstream productions of their social and cultural environments.
Therefore, the experience they do gain during their training could, and maybe should, be a precious witness of a contemporary analytical approach and a privileged observatory of which horizons psychoanalysis has. This could regard the training experience in itself, the clinical work, the cultural and scientific considerations.
In such a difficult period, with the pandemic which has impacted heavily on almost everything, therefore on analytical experiences as well, candidates’ witnesses will be precious.

In our opinion, bringing this experience into dialogue with other colleagues of every age, origin and level of experience, could be enriching for the whole analytical community. With this in mind, we established for the first time an IPSO writing award, linked to the EPF Congress, as it happens already for the IPA-IPSO biannual Congress and for the FEPAL-OCAL Congress.

The winner will present her/his paper at the EPF Congress, in Wien, next July.
The winner and the runner up papers will be published in the IPSO Journal 2022.
The winners will be awarded a certificate of recognition and a cash prize of $400 (four hundred US dollars) for the first place and a cash prize of $200 (two hundred US dollars) for the second place.

Paper Submission guidelines

We welcome papers on any psychoanalytic topic of interest. The paper must be an original work that has not been previously published.

Who can submit a paper? Only IPSO members can submit papers for this call. If you are not a member yet, you can become one by getting in contact with the Vice-President of your region (see at the end of the document the email addresses) and by paying the IPSO dues.

How to submit a paper. Papers should be submitted by email to ipso-Editor@ipso-candidates.org.uk and to ipso-mail@ipso.world sending two different files, one with the title and the author’s name, one with title, abstract and full paper without the author’s name.

Language of the paper. Papers can be submitted in any of the 4 IPA/IPSO official languages: Spanish, English, French, German. However, we strongly encourage all candidates to present in English. In any case, an English version will be needed to be projected during the presentation and to be published in the Journal. If you would like someone to proofread your English version, the IPSO Editors will be glad to facilitate the contact between you and any IPSO member who voluntarily makes himself available.

Paper requirements: Submissions should include a title, a short description (max. 500 words) and the full paper (max. 5000 words). If the submission doesn’t follow these rules, the paper will not be reviewed.

Deadline for submission: 8 May 2022

Reviewing process

The reviewing process follows the same as a scientific journal one. The reviewing process is double blind, which means that the reviewer doesn’t have access to the author’s name. The author will receive an email informing about the result by the end of May.
The applicant will be notified about the day, hour and room of the presentation, in advance. The presentation should not take longer than XX minutes, that’s the reason we strongly encourage authors to resume the paper into a maximum of 1500 words (4-5 pages), for the presentation.

The organizers of the IPSO Congress and of the Writing A\ward,

Monica Bomba. IPSO Vice President for Europe
Johanna Velt. IPSO Vice President Elect for Europe
IPSO-Europe@ipso-candidates.org.uk

Thomas Marcacci. IPSO Editor
Andy Cohen. IPSO Editor Elect
IPSO-Editor@ipso-candidates.org.uk

Argument of the EPF Annual Conference 2022 in Vienna: IDEALS

Dear Colleagues

We have chosen the theme of Ideals for the EPF 35th annual conference to be held in Vienna, the birthplace of psychoanalysis. As many of you will remember, EPF was due to hold the 33rd annual conference in Vienna in 2020 but due to the pandemic we were obliged to cancel the event at very short notice. However, we did not cancel the programme on the theme of Realities and were obliged to arrange an online conference in 2021. Now we are going to Vienna with this new theme. Let us first of all take a brief look at the etymology of the term ‘ideal’. Jorge Canestri, in the EPF Bulletin 55, 2001, observed that the term ‘ideal’ had a common root with ‘idol’ from the Greek word ‘idéa’ meaning to ‘see’. The literal meaning of the Greek idéa is “…aspect, shape, appearance…and even though this term was already used in philosophy by Democritus with the meaning of ‘shape or visible schema’ the word is a direct consequence of Plato’s philosophy, when it took on the meaning of abstract model and ideal that we look upon as a measure of comparison”. Canestri’s reflection posited an emphasis on ‘the inevitable oscillation between seeing and thinking, form and representation, image and abstraction…’ and turning to Freud’s Moses and Monotheism he cited Freud’s well-known proposal concerning the human discovery of the mind related to the infant turning from one parent to the other: …this turning from mother to father points in addition to a victory of intellectuality over sensuality… an advance in civilization, since maternity is proved by the evidence of the senses while paternity is a hypothesis…in this way a thought-process in preference to a sense perception has proved to be a momentous step. (Freud 1939 p. 114)

Freud first conceptualized the term ‘Idealich’ in 1914 in his paper On Narcissism: An Introduction and later in 1923 in The Ego and The Id, but he did not differentiate between ‘Idealich’ (ideal ego) and ‘Ichideal’ (ego-ideal). Followers of Freud began to propose certain distinctions. For example, Lacan (1966) differentiated the Ego (Moi) from the Ideal Ego (Moi idéal) and Ego Ideal (Idéal du Moi). The Ego as bodily go is mediated by the infant’s mirror stage, while the Ideal Ego is a bodily model of idealized others which causes a tension with the Ego. The subject measures his ideal not against himself, but against the image which in his mind is desirable for Another. This image is his Ideal Ego. A third party thus mediates recognition or denial of recognition (“the Other with big A”). When the subject identifies with this Other and his judgement regarding the Ideal Ego, The Ego-Ideal emerges.
The Ego-Ideal provides for the regulation of the relationship between the Ego and the Ideal Ego. And through the Ego-Ideal originating from the Other, symbolization arises. Thus, the Ideal Ego as an image belongs to the imaginary register, while the Ego-Ideal as the result of an also linguistically mediated identification with a significant Other belongs to the symbolic register (we will refrain here from discussing the relationship between Moi and Je). These differentiations relate to the question of how ideals can serve the formation and maintenance of libidinal and object- related goals or how they can be used for goals on the level of defending a primary narcissism in both individuals and groups which are potentially destructive.

Following the evolution of psychoanalytic theories on ideals since Freud we can ascertain that for everybody ideals help to structure psychic life, but they can also become tyrannical and tormenting, while on the other hand a lack of ideals can lead to feelings of disorientation, emotional emptiness and despair.

For the psychoanalyst there is an optimal way to practice psychoanalysis that came about from Sigmund Freud’s consulting room in Vienna. He devised the most favourable way to treat the hysteric. While his setting evolved in an almost accidental way it soon became the standard way to practice psychoanalysis. The structure of analytic sessions and the mode of being with a patient became the methodology: because it functioned well. Could we concur that this established way of practising clinical psycho- analytic work has become the ideal of psychoanalytic practice?

The pandemic of 2020 changed the way analysts customarily treat patients in a radical way and in a way that Freud, and the majority of us, would never have imagined remotely possible. Analysts who had long maintained a serious criticism of so-called ‘remote analysis’ and who dismissed it as a distortion of psychoanalysis were obliged for the first time to ‘see’ their patients ‘remotely’. Many were resistant but the majority of analysts all over the world had to face a grim reality when their governments instructed us all to lockdown and to stay at home. Each analyst made the difficult decision to either work online or on the phone or to continue to see patients while taking all the necessary safety measures like wearing a mask and ensuring distance and open windows.

Rather quickly analysts started writing about the new situation and the pressures it was putting on their practice. Some analysts had already worked with patients who were living abroad and so it was not such a strain for them as it was for those who had never considered it possible to work analytically online without the patient in the room. During that time each analyst would have to rely on the patient to be responsible for the control of the setting and each analyst was exploring the issues concerning psychic work in the treatment of a patient who is not in the room with them. Are these changes calling into question an ideal of psychoanalytic work?

Turning to the outside world how do we apply our psychoanalytic theories, arising from clinical practice, to understand the other kinds of pandemics such as, for example, the rise of populism on an international level? Already, before the Covid-19 pandemic, the world was witnessing the horrors of climate change alongside a U.K. Brexit plan that was based on an ideology of ‘taking back control’. And this ‘idealization’ of human values reminds of us German history and its dark chapter of the prevailing Nazi-ideology that showed the danger in which idealization is used as a defence against the unavoidable disappointments in human experience. Over-idealization can so easily become a perverted form of creating so called ideals which lead to destructive processes and out- comes. The ideology at the root of Brexit threatens to divide a united Europe that had emanated from the ashes of two terrible world wars that had taken place on Europe soil.

A look at our contemporary world, especially adolescents and young people, shows a tension and gap between a search for ideals, a lack of ideals and a fundamental dependency on ideals that amount to ideologies. Does an ideology arise due to a lack of resources and opportunities? There is a strong argument to suggest that the alarming populism in the Western world in the past decade is indeed related to the difficulty of tolerating the tensions between feelings of insecurity with respect to the validity of personal and social ideals and goals.

But psychoanalysis is not free from creating its own ideologies stemming from historical conflicts about what constitutes the ideal theory and practice of psychoanalysis. What is the optimal way to train psychoanalysts? How do we ideally assess the analyst-to-be and continue to monitor the analyst-who-is-becoming? In examining our own divisions within our psychoanalytic organisations is it possible to address the issues of prejudice that threatens to destroy the heart of psychoanalysis? Might that be a solution to understanding the rise of populism? How can psychoanalysis cure the ills of our contemporary world? We are looking forward to inviting you to Vienna to discuss these questions and themes in person we sincerely hope for the EPF’s 35th Annual Conference.

Heribert Blass – President

Jan Abram – Vice President and Chair of the Scientific Committee

Ewa Glód – General Secretary

All references available from heribert.blass@epf-fep.eu

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