I hope you will share your reactions to the most recent conference in Vancouver by sending your comments to me at: eforum@iapsp.org. Let your colleagues know what you liked or didn’t like about the conference, what you found most meaningful or what you would have wanted to be different.

In her closing remarks to the Vancouver Conference, Amy Eldridge, the president of IAPSP offered her reflections on the conference. With her permission, I post some excepts of it below:

Amy Eldridge, Ph.D.

Chicago, USA

In the conference description, our Conference organizers wrote:

“We… hope that the conference will open pathways to empathic dialogue and transformation not only for the therapeutic dyad, but also potentially in the surrounding political/cultural environment. Furthermore, by attending to the multiple dimensions of difference and sameness, as they emerge in the therapeutic process, we hope to put a definitive end to the comforting illusion that our consulting rooms can be kept separate from our troubled world.”

I think I can safely attest that the illusion has ended! We have had the privilege of hearing from speakers from within IAPSP who have presented outstanding clinical and theoretical papers that have, in familiar terms, provided examples of engaging the world within our practices. We have listened to speakers who are working within their fields on the issues of sameness and difference and who have enlightened us with new perspectives to carry into our work. We have listened to moving and heroic presentations of the horror of genocide, carried out against the first nation’s people, on whose land we respectfully stand today. We have been implicated as being complicit with the structures of society that allow atrocities, on micro and macro scales. We have been called upon to more actively address these structures in the clinical setting and beyond.

I do not know where, when and how the influence of this experience will lead me, but I do know that I leave this conference with a changed perspective and awareness that will change my course as a psy practitioner.
 

Susan Smith

Ottawa, On. Canada

I think I can say with certainty that I have not experienced a conference that I have found more stimulating – both emotionally and intellectually. It has been most inspirational and invigorating and the experience will require much further contemplation and discussion with colleagues at home.
 

Koichi Togashi, Ph.D., L.P.

Kobe, Japan

Although I was not able to attend the first two days of the conference unfortunately for personal reasons, I feel that the conference was amazing and successful. I express deep gratitude to Max and Annette’s leadership.

Thank you so much for everything.