21st International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP) Annual Conference

21st International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP) Annual Conference is organized by The International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP) and will be held from Jun 19 - 22, 2025, at Wyndham Grand Athens, Athens, Attica, Greece.

Description:
The Paradox of Freedom in Relational Psychoanalysis: Democracy and Tyranny In and Out of Therapy
Relational psychoanalysis continues to be a democratic endeavor. Since its inception, it has encouraged a dialogue about the paradox of theoretical freedom, technique, and varied areas of psychoanalytic encounter that each clinician, in their subjective way, brings to the consulting room. While eschewing positivism and rigid rules, Relational psychoanalysis also continues to invite an ongoing engagement with intrapsychic processes, interpersonal relations, and the outside world’s impact on conscious and unconscious dynamics. As geopolitical, social, and environmental catastrophes mount, it becomes ever more crucial that we at least attempt to track and navigate potential enactments of existential anxieties, aggression, and sequelae of tyranny in the consulting room. How we understand and implement all of this will be a large part of our conference focus. It’s not by coincidence that we plan for this dialogue to take place in historical Athens, the birthplace of democracy.

Event Learning Objectives:

• Understand Relational psychoanalysis as a democratic endeavor: Participants will explore the various ways that relational psychoanalytic understanding embraces an open and inclusive dialogue among practitioners as well as among practitioners and their patients. Participants will learn to engage in critical thinking about how to understand, avoid, overcome and process tyrannical enactments with their patients.
• Integrate theory and practice, applying the paradox of theoretical freedom, with technique, and the various aspects of psychoanalytic encounters: Participants will learn to balance the freedom to explore theoretical ideas with the practical application of relational psychoanalytic techniques. They will also be able to recognize the diverse and dynamic nature of psychoanalytic encounters, where each interaction can bring new insights and challenges.
• Link intrapsychic processes with interpersonal relations and a recognition of the impact of the outside world: Participants will focus on the multiple conscious and unconscious ways that turbulent factors such as wars, poverty, climate crisis, class, gender and authoritarian leadership can manifest in traumatic ways as reflected in intrapsychic development and interpersonal dynamics.
• Explore how relational psychoanalysis enhances the dialogue on the horizontal and vertical axes in institutions: Registrants will recognize how contemporary psychoanalysis perceives representations of social structures that emerge in the analytic dyad. Psychoanalysts will be encouraged to decode institutional transferences and link them to ruptures and repairs in the dyad and socially, both inside and outside of the institute.