Reactions to the 2018 IAPSP Conference in Vienna

Zeynep Atbaşoğlu
Anatolian Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies Association, Turkey

The Vienna Conference was an enormous gift for us, after studying and practicing self psychology under the supervision of Allen Siegel, an excellent teacher who guided, taught and contained the Turkish self psychology group for twenty years. Throughout our collaboration, our group and Allen never gave up despite the challenges we faced in the endeavour of initiating a new circle of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

The ‘crises’ are all around the world. It is particularly tough in our country in terms of social, political, economic conditions, in addition to the threatening of human values. The Vienna Conference gave us hope once again, making us feel that we are not alone, and that we can overcome the overwhelming hopelessness as we feel the presence of our mentors, friends, twins, and sisters and brothers. We are extremely grateful.

The conference program was excellent. We had an experience of intense training, sharing and the opportunity of exchange. Very special thanks to Eldad Iddan for sharing his time; to Jane Lewis, whose experience was from inside one of the most diabolical humanity crises.

Thank you Eldad and all former presidents of IAPSP, who have supported us for twenty years and still do. We would like to thank the Vienna Circle and IAPSP, Andrea Harms, Martin Gossmann, and express our gratitude to Allen once again.

Zeynep Atbaşoğlu
President of APPA
 

Li Xin
Li Institute, Beijing, China

We have been back to China with the most beautiful memory and marvelous experience of the 41st IAPSP Annual Conference in Vienna.

It was so well-designed, well-executed and so unforgettable. Please accept sincere congratulations from our team at Li Institute for the full success of this event.

Also, our team and I feel very grateful for the strong leadership of the IAPSP board team as well as the huge contribution by the Vienna Circle team.

As a younger generation of leaners and practitioners of Self Psychology and Intersubjectivity System Theory, we have acquired very much affective connection and energy through our communication and engagement in the IAPSP community, which is even far more valuable and inspiring than the theoretical learning and understandings in the academic part.

Each time when we are here at the conferences, we feel like we are at home and we can feel the affective bond between us and IAPSP. More importantly, our team and I are very much inspired and motivated by the strong support and encouragement from the IAPSP executives and senior experts. We feel thrilled and committed to dedicate ourselves to the development of Self Psychology and Intersubjective System Theory in China, despite the obstacles and challenges in the field in China. We are also more than happy to introduce IAPSP as well as its brilliant culture to a broader scope of membership in China.

Last but not least, we very much like the idea of IAPSP’s initiative of the Ernest Wolf Fund and we hope to support it with our donation.

We sincerely wish that our IAPSP community will grow and develop soundly and steadily and we very much look forward to the opportunity to invite you to visit China again.
 

Xiao Han
Li Institute, Beijing, China

All colleagues from the Li Institute of China were impressed by the 2018 Vienna Annual Conference. Congratulations on the success of the conference, thanks to the Vienna committee for their great efforts.

For the younger generation of Chinese learners and practitioners of Self Psychology and Intersubjective systems theory, the conference not only improved our professional and theoretical knowledge, but we gained a great deal from the communication among IAPSP members, which enhances the emotional connectedness, cohesion and confidence of our Chinese team. Every time we attended the meetings, we felt like we were back home. We feel grateful for the care and support from predecessors.

We will devote ourselves to the promotion and popularization of Self Psychology and Intersubjective systems in China. At the same time, we will also contribute to the promotion of IAPSP membership around China.

At the same time, we would like to donate the Paul Ornstein and Ernest Wolf Memorial Fund to make our contribution to the development of the IAPSP.

We wish IAPSP a great future and welcome all members visit China!
 

Monica Meerbaum, Ph.D.
Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in Washington, D.C.

I came to the conference still reeling from the Ford/Cavanaugh hearings and their painful reverberations- both for me and especially for my most traumatized patients. So the conference’s initial plenary and the ongoing focus on our embeddedness in the political/sociocultural surround spoke to my experience and concerns. However, what has stayed with me most from the conference, more than the presentations and papers, are the connections I made with our international colleagues, many of whom were first-time attenders. It was eye-opening to hear of their perspectives on events in the U.S. and, in some cases, to hear of environments that are far more oppressive, even dangerous to work in. It was a peak experience for me at the Saturday night dinner when women from Turkey and Israel, I believe, initiated a circle dance, with a corresponding change in the music, and a lot of us came forward. It was wonderful to take hands and join in, and it didn’t matter at all how well we followed the steps. At times we were stomping as we stepped, releasing feelings, perhaps, and then we were winding in and out of the lines, laughing, pulling each other along. It was joyous!
 

Donna Orange, Ph.D., Psy.D.

Shoah Memorial in Servitengasse

In memory of the Jews who were driven out and murdered in the time of the National Socialist regime.

[this was part of our tour before the Freud museum reception, but not all were able to attend]
 
The more than 400 keys are attached to the names of Jewish people who lived in Servitengasse, near the Freuds, until 1938.

 

 

A Personal Impression
Allen Siegel M.D.

Within its first hour, our remarkable Crisis and Creativity conference quieted the haunting ghosts of Vienna’s traumatizing past when Panel #1 courageously engaged the Nazi nightmare’s impact upon psychoanalysis in Vienna. For me, Roger Frie’s courageous discussion of his grandfather’s Nazi activities and the impact it has upon him as well as the impact the entire Nazi disaster had upon the innocent German children became unexpectedly personal.

I was deeply moved by Roger’s consideration of the German children’s material and psychological traumas. As I listened though, I realized what I had never before grasped. I realized that while I wasn’t there, and while I’d suffered no personal family loss, I had, as a Jewish boy, later youth, and even young man, experienced what I now think of as an unspoken, present, but unidentified, American post-Nazi trauma during the 40s and 50s. The trauma was our feeling unsafe and like an “other” in our America and we added to this alienation by our self-imposed division of the entire world into “them,” (the goyim) and us, (the Jews). Add to that traumatic mix the then covert, worldwide Jewish silence about the atrocities, and finally add our own voluntary movement into American Jewish ghettos where we preconsciously gathered in a feeling of safety against the “attack” of being excluded. Our frightened silence continued until 1967 when Israel triumphantly extinguished the threat to its existence in the “Six Day War.” With that seemingly decisive victory, Jews the world over felt redeemed from their horrific, humiliating victimization and began to talk about what had happened.

Had the Program Committee lacked the wisdom and courage to immediately step into the space that would have been filled with silence, that unspoken marker of trauma, the conference probably would have been an entirely different experience for me.

Instead, with the apparitions having been put safely in their place by the Committee’s articulation of their presence, I was able to enjoy the gemutlichkeit created by the exquisite care, sincere concern, and gentle warmth that emanated from Andrea and Martin, our delightful hosts throughout the week. The final panel seems to have shone a light on what I mean. Martin’s and Andrea’s shared, remarkably light touch, became evident as Martin humorously called for the panel attendees’ attention by gently clinking two wine glasses together as he stood in front of the podium and Andrea, with maternal gentility, silently orchestrated the hotel crew’s placement of a table lamp onto the podium to cure the presenter’s blindness when the lights had been turned out to show his slides.

Adding to the cozy nature of the entire week was the wonderfully warm architecture of Hotel Savoyen. Its contiguous open spaces, in which we dined and socialized, gave us something special as we could be alone with special friends, if we so wished, while simultaneously feel the non-intrusive presence of everyone else. And then, of course, was the generosity of the Vienna Circle who deliciously wined us and dined us at the meeting’s final banquet. And finally, my Turks. Feeling now a bona fide part of the self psychology community they unself-consciously helped joy break out as they, led by Serpil Vargel, brought their village dances to our Viennese banquet.

Allen Siegel, M.D.