IPSO President
Charles Baekeland holds a bachelor’s degree of science, is a licensed clinical psychologist, and a candidate at the Asociación Psicoanalítica de Madrid, in Spain. He worked at the Centro Madrileño de Psicología Aplicada Hospital with psychotic and borderline patients for several years, while training as a child and adolescent psychoanalytic-psychotherapist at the Sociedad Española de Psiquiatría y Psicoterapia de Niños y Adolescentes, and training in psychosomatics at the Instituto de Estudios Psicosomáticos y Psicoterapia Médica. He has published a number of papers in psychoanalytical journals on child psychoanalysis, inner life, autism, the mental functioning of fanatics, and the effects IPSO has on training and practice. Charles has lectured nationally on depression, loss, regression, the Oedipus complex and narcissism, and has presented cases internationally. He has participated in Visiting Candidate Programs in the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, the Société Psychanalytique de Paris, the Asociación Psicoanalítica del Uruguay, and the Asociación Psicoanalítica de Buenos Aires. His areas of psychoanalytic interest lie in deepening psychoanalysts’ acquaintance with the field of psychoanalytic epistemology, and in pooling the wealth of knowledge to be found in IPA Institutes across the world in order to advance psychoanalytic training. He works in full-time private practice.
IPSO-President@ipso-candidates.org.uk
IPSO President Elect
Erika Lepiavka was born and raised in Mexico City. She is a licensed Clinical Psychologist who holds a Specialty Degree in Psychoanalysis as well as a Master’s degree in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Erika is a Psychoanalyst-in-training at Sociedad Psicoanalítica de México.
Some of her background as a fieldwork Psychologist includes treatment of Hospital Syndrome with children and infants at the burns unit of Hospital Pediátrico de Tacubaya. Erika has worked at detainment facilities, providing psychoanalytically oriented spaces for convicted men considered unimpeachable, due to severe mental illness. She created workshops that aim to promote mental health for indigenous children in Chiapas.
Erika has been a University Professor, teaching subjects such as Psychoanalytic Concepts, Theory of the Neuroses, Theory of the Psychoses, Child Development, Clinical Interview Methods, and Projective Testing.
She has been a local and internationally selected speaker on topics such as Suicide Prevention, Time Notion and its Psychic Placements, Gender Construction in Mexican Culture, and Poetry as a Psychic Wrapping. Erika is fluent in Spanish, English, and French. She is the author of the poetry book titled Videotape.
Erika works full-time in her consulting room with patients from different backgrounds and levels of psychic functioning. She is committed to the development of Psychoanalysis, its adaptation into hypermodern times, and its potent capability to transform human pain.
IPSO-PresidentElect@ipso-candidates.org.uk
IPSO Vice President For Europe
Monica Bomba is an analyst at the Società Psicoanalitica Italiana and is actually working in full-time private practice. She worked as a child and adolescent psychiatrist at a hospital and as adjunct professor at the Università di Milano-Bicocca, Italy. She had been appointed head of research at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and coordinator of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health hospital ward. She was IPSO representative in Milan and was part of the organizing team of the 24th IPSO European Meeting that took place in Milan in 2018, entitled: Transformations in Psychoanalysis. She has published many papers in international journals and presented her work at national and international congresses of child and adolescent psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Her focus of interest is the study of archaic states of the mind, psychopathology in children and adolescents, and couple and group dynamics. She participates in numerous study and research groups in the psychoanalytic field, with a particular attentiveness for the dialogue between psychoanalysis and art. In Milan she founded a small and heterogeneous group, of analysts and musicians, who discuss psychoanalysis and music. Monica is also a passionate photographer and video-poetry maker.
IPSO-Europe@ipso-candidates.org.uk
IPSO Vice President Elect For Europe
Johanna Velt is an analyst in training at the Paris Psychoanalytic Society. She works and lives in Nice, France, and works in private practice as a Psychiatrist, a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and an Analyst. She has been working previously for several years in a children’s hospital with children, adolescents, mothers and babies. Her interest in analysis lies in classical cures with adults but also in therapies with children and adolescents. She is interested in many ongoing topics including language, transgenderism, online therapy and the non-verbal in the session. She enjoys working with colleagues in several settings: Clinical discussion groups and various committees such as the website team of her society and the IPA podcast team in order to explore different psychoanalytic perspectives. She is also interested in the field of culture and its relationships with psychoanalysis. She is currently the IPSO rep in the IPA in the culture committee. As Vice-President Elect for Europe, Johanna wishes to continue to enlarge her commitment to international exchanges and help her peers by promoting group work, for instance with the Meet the Analyst webinars, and the Visiting Candidate Program and also by contributing to the dialogue between IPSO and IPA.
ipso-europe@ipso-candidates.org.uk
IPSO Vice President For Latin America
Florencia Biotti is a licensed clinical psychologist. She graduated in 1995 and did her clinical internship at the Hospital Materno Infantil Ramón Sardá in Buenos Aires from 1996 to 2001. There she worked in mental health care for adolescent pregnancy and neonatal intensive care –– she then continued for a year as a grantee in the area of obstetrics. During that time, while training psychoanalytically, she took postgraduate courses in systemic therapy. In 2005 she started her career as a teacher at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) teaching a course called Developmental Psychology: Childhood, and then became the director of studies. Meanwhile, Florencia cooperated in two research projects at the Secretaría de Ciencia y Técnica de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, where she participated in the presentation of a number of projects in several congresses, and publications in journals of the UBA. Her training at the Asociación Psicoanalítica de Buenos Aires (APdeBA) started in 2015, after she had done postgraduate studies on prevention and psychological support in infancy and childhood. She currently belongs to the children and adolescents’ team, and one of the adults’ teams, at the Liberman Center, the Clinic of APdeBA. She has been working in private practice since 1997.
IPSO-LatinAmerica@ipso-candidates.org.uk
IPSO Vice President Elect For Latin America
Susana Maldonado has a bachelor´s degree in psychology at Universidad Anáhuac México Norte. She performed her social service at “Hospital Español” in Mexico City in the psychology department of the psychiatric area, conducting a theoretical review of intelligence, projective and neuropsychological tests, qualification and interpretation of those tests and supervision of rehabilitation workshops. She has a master´s degree in psychoanalytic research at AMPIEP A.C. (Institute of the Mexican Association for Psychoanalytic Practice, Training & Research A.C.) and right now she is about to finish her training as psychoanalyst also at AMPIEP A.C. Susana has been an IPSO representative at her institute for 3 years, encouraging new students to participate and become more involved in the IPSO activities. In 2017, she participated with AMPIEP in the emotional support project with crisis intervention groups after the devastating earthquake that took place in Mexico City, as well as participating in brief therapy groups aimed for parents who have children with Turner Syndrome. She is coordinator at a private psychological clinic and has her private psychoanalytic practice with children, adolescents and adults. She has also participated in national and international congresses organized mostly by IPSO and OCAL. In addition, she has a publication in the Latin American magazine of Psychoanalysis “Calibán”. Finally, she is a trilingual woman who speaks Spanish, English and French, which helps her to communicate more assertively with colleagues around the world.
IPSO-LatinAmerica@ipso-candidates.org.uk
IPSO Vice President For North America
Gerard Sobnosky is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in Los Angeles. He holds two Master’s degrees in psychology, from Antioch University Los Angeles, and Walden University, and is completing his PsyD degree in psychoanalysis at the New Center for Psychoanalysis (NCP) in Los Angeles, where he is an advanced clinical associate. He serves on the Education Committee at NCP, and regularly leads psychoanalytic discussion of films with the public, as part of their Mind and Film series. He teaches dream analysis workshops for clinicians, and is an active member of the International Psychoanalytic Association’s new Subcommittee on Addiction. Gerard is active in the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), where he is treasurer of the Candidates Council, serves on the Finance Committee, and serves on the American Psychoanalytic Foundation, which funds projects that implement and disseminate psychoanalytic thought. He has taught psychodynamic psychotherapy as part of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s China-American Psychoanalytic Alliance to build a psychoanalytic training program in China. He lived and worked in Turkey for 3 ½ years and speaks conversational Turkish. He enjoys singing and playing in his local rockabilly trio.
IPSO-NorthAmerica@ipso-candidates.org.uk
IPSO Vice President Elect For North America
Cynthia Palman is psychiatrist and in her fourth year of analytic training at the Oregon Psychoanalytic Institute in Portland, Oregon. Originally from New York, she did her training at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University where she focused on the mental health needs of adolescents and college students. She then developed a private practice with a focus on reproductive psychiatry such as postpartum depression, infertility, miscarriage and menopause. She also worked with cancer survivors who discovered the desire to improve the quality of their pre-cancer relationships. After switching coasts and moving to Oregon she worked at a university student health center and developed a psychiatry program for a community counseling center before returning to private practice where she works in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. She teaches through the Oregon Psychoanalytic Institute and supervises psychiatry residents at the Oregon Health and Sciences University. She serves as the candidate representative on the Executive Committee for her institute as well as on the continuing education committee. Some areas of current interest include understanding and improving psychoanalytic training and the body in psychoanalysis.
ipso-northAmerica@ipso-candidates.org.uk
IPSO Treasurer
Joe Behrmann is a psychiatrist and candidate at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. Working at his outpatient private practice for 16 years, he treats people with medication management, psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy, or both. Joe volunteers some of his time to the local institute by providing medication management for patients who are treated at its low fee clinic. As a graduate of his institute’s psychodynamic psychotherapy program, he recognizes the importance of this training for clinicians and its overall benefit to the psychoanalytic community. Accordingly, Joe teaches several courses in the psychotherapy program, including Psychodynamic Neuroscience, as he possesses a particular interest in the interplay of the mind and brain in intrapsychic workings as well as external behavior. His interest in psychoanalytic education extends further to ideas about modernizing analytic curricula. Joe is a member of his local institute’s Curriculum Committee and contributes at the national level as a candidate member of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Institute Advisory & Consultation Section (IACS) of the Department of Psychoanalytic Education. The IACS is a group that identifies and shares best practices and didactic resources and is available to assist all of the 32 APsaA-affiliated institutes in the United States in an advisory rather than regulatory manner.
IPSO-Treasurer@ipso-candidates.org.uk
IPSO Treasurer Elect
Liliana Castro (MD, M.Sc., Ph.D.) is a psychiatrist and candidate at the Institute of Porto (IFTP) part of the Portuguese Society of Psychoanalysis. She graduated in Medicine from Oporto University, completed a Master in Affective Neurosciences from Maastricht University and a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology in Minho University. During her specialization in Psychiatry she did a training scholarship at the Maudsley Hospital/Kings College London in the Department of Eating Disorders. She has been working at a public specialized psychiatric hospital for the last 10 years and also in her outpatient private practice as psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Liliana also collaborates giving psychiatric and psychotherapeutic consultation to Oporto university students. Additionally, she teaches psychiatry to pre-graduated medical students, supervises phD and Master thesis and collaborates in the training of psychiatry residents. Liliana is currently IPSO representative in Oporto collaborating in several IPSO initiatives. She participates in the study group on women and psychoanalysis of the Portuguese Society of Psychoanalysis. Her main study and research interests are psychiatric and psychanalytic training/education, psychoanalysis and literature, women and psychoanalysis, eating disorders and personality disorders.
IPSO-Treasurer@ipso-candidates.org.uk
IPSO Editor
Thomas Marcacci lives and works in Bologna. Before dedicating himself fully to psychoanalysis, he graduated in moral philosophy in Florence, and worked on business ethics and corporate social responsibility as adjunct professor at the Università di Napoli, as well as in private contexts. He graduated in psychology in Cesena and he specialized in psychoanalytical psychotherapy of children and adolescents at Centro Studi Martha Harris of Bologna, where he is now a professor. For several years he collaborated as a researcher with the Università di Bologna, focusing on two fields of interest: the group and organizational dynamics within clinical institutions, and the etiology of psychosis. He participated in the EUGEI research program, a European network which studied the interaction of gene and environment at the onset of psychosis. He is currently a candidate at the Società Psicoanalitica Italiana in Rome and is working in full-time private practice. In 2017 Thomas opened a psychoanalytical clinic in Bologna, Centro Evo, where he leads a team of psychoanalysts, psychiatrists and educators, with the aim of studying and healing psychic affliction throughout the individual’s lifespan, from pregnancy to senility. He is committed to combining passion for clinical activity with the attempt to enhance psychoanalytical thought, through scientific research as well as dialogue with artistic and cultural productions, and social experiences of our times.
IPSO-Editor@ipso-candidates.org.uk
IPSO Editor Elect
Dr Valerie Curen (MA Law Austria, MSc, MA, D Ch Psych Psych) grew up in Vienna and completed a Master’s Degree in Law. She has lived in the UK since 1994 and trained as an adult psychotherapist, a child and adolescent psychotherapist and a parent-infant psychotherapist. She is currently a candidate at the British Psychoanalytical Society in London. Valerie has worked for 25 years in the National Health Service and NGOs with children, adolescents and adults with complex presentations. As a child and adolescent psychotherapist in training, Valerie worked at the Cassel Hospital and adolescent and young adult service at the Tavistock Clinic. Valerie’s doctoral thesis focused on clinical decision-making when assessing adolescents and young adults for intensive treatment. Valerie has taught at the Institute of Psychiatry, the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at Essex University and at the Anna Freud Centre. Valerie was the co-editor of the ACP bulletin for 3 years. The last 5 years Valerie specialised in expert witness assessments of children and parents at the Anna Freud Centre and Great Ormond Street Hospital. This includes working with patients who are severely dysfunctional for example in cases of fabricated and induced illness, homicide, maltreatment and neglect, and parental alienation. She also works with children and their parents who experienced medical trauma. Valerie’s psychoanalytic interests lie in intergenerational processes, psychoanalytic technique, theories about the death drive, and psychoanalysis in the political arena including the climate crisis.
IPSO-Editor@ipso-candidates.org.uk
