Dear Colleagues,

We look forward to welcoming you to the 45th annual Conference, and 3rd hybrid Conference – of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, to be held in Rome, from October 24th to October 27th, 2024. While we hope to see as many of you as possible in person, the live-streamed format and recorded virtual events, provide the opportunity for the attendees around the world to participate in the Conference.

The conference theme, Tragic Person Today:  Existence and Meaning in Life and Clinical Practice, reflects our belief that we are living in a very turbulent time. Our world is adversely affected by many challenges, among them, two wars, great divisiveness and polarization, and a climate crisis. Our very existence is threatened by these serious problems. In this Conference the IAPSP community will come together to address these challenges by engaging Heinz Kohut’s formulations about ‘Tragic Man’ as these ‘visionary’ constructs relate to this moment in time.

The Freudian ‘Guilty Man’ is governed by conflict and guilt, and the Kohutian ‘Tragic Man’ is striving, without ever completely succeeding, to realize in the course of his life the existential project that resides deep inside him. This differentiation between them is located at the very roots of self psychology. The Kohutian ‘Tragic man’ is therefore a concept deeply connected to the search for existential meaning, and the complexity of possible answers. While the difficulties of our time may seem daunting, we also believe they provide opportunities for growth and transformation in our clinical work, in our IAPSP global community, and in our personal lives.

The conference will host an opening night reception in order to joyfully greet old friends and colleagues, and develop new relationships.

The main Conference will begin with a dedication to the memory and recognition of Franco Paparo and Ingrid Pedroni, two core figures within the Italian self psychology and ISIPSÉ community.

The Opening night Keynote presentation, will be address by Paolo Vinci, a well-known Italian philosopher. He will provide an outline of the philosophical concept of the ‘Tragic person’ in tragedy and philosophy.

A fascinating and involving range of four plenaries will address a number of important themes, with specific attention towards the global conditions and times we are living in.

The first plenary panel, will explore the Kohutian concept of the ‘Tragic Person’ today from the perspective of four different countries. The ‘Tragic Person’ captures the despair, vulnerability, and uncertainty of the self. This panel will focus on the broader forces and contexts that impact our patients: the social, economic, political, and existential. We will be hearing how these context-specific issues impact groups and individuals. Panelists will explore this from their unique perspectives, taking this theme to a more global level of experience.

The second plenary panel, will explore the challenge of being adolescents and young adults in a world pervaded by uncertainty and digital and virtual communication. The everyday subjects that we see in therapy, conceive their own world of values, and their sense of self as uncertain. This panel will develop the influence of the cyberspace in adolescents and young adults in the light of Self Psychology. Particular emphasis is given to the technical changes and to the deep meaning that these evolutions have had in reference to the analytic relationship.

The Kohut Memorial Lecture will compare Kohut’s Tragic man to the Freudian Guilty man in which the major problem to bear is the guilt of our oedipal phantasies. The tragic situation instead is trying to find a meaning of life. Tragedy was created to make us aware of the difficulties of life. Along this concept it will be explored: a polarized, versus a dialogic, way of thinking; the tragic situation we are facing about contemporary climate issues; the dangers we face against democracy, equality and diversity.

In the third plenary panel, the essential tenets of complexity theory, or nonlinear dynamic systems theory, will be explored in relation to psychoanalytic practice. Its application to the clinical setting involves reimagining the origins of the intrapsychic, the intersubjective, the interpersonal, and the sociocultural domains of discourse. The application of complexity theory to the clinical surround includes positioning it as a retrospective tool, helping us understand how and why emotional life and meaning emerge, and grasping its prospective use, and usefulness, aimed at a therapeutic action that is most profoundly revealed through the action of our implicit and explicit attitudes.

In the final plenary, “‘Anima Mundi’ Environments and Psyche: their unity close connection with change” we will reflect on the feelings of disorientation, vulnerability, and climate anxiety. Today life rests on precarious balances, and it is precisely this awareness of instability that leads us as psychoanalysts to think ethically and ecologically. The focus will be to support a phenomenological attitude that overcomes Cartesian dualisms and promotes the dialectic between the assumption of responsibility towards the drama of climate change and a sense of belonging to the ‘Anima Mundi’.

The main conference will be preceded by a full day of pre-conference workshops where in-person attendees will have the opportunity for an in-depth exploration of an array of topics, related to the conference theme. We will also offer 25 paper sessions,  addressing a broad range of topics and clinical challenges.

We welcome you to the Saturday night party with dinner and dancing at the elegant ‘Royal Space Roma’ in the historical Palazzo Brancaccio.

To our virtual attendees: All four Plenary Panels, the Opening Night Keynote presentation, the Kohut Memorial Lecture will be live-streamed and recorded, as will one paper from each of the four paper sessions.

Finally, we would like to thank the members of the International and Italian Planning Committee, and the paper and pre-conference workshop co-chairs, for all their enthusiasm in having shared this wonderful adventure in bringing this year’s conference to life.

We are looking forward to seeing you there – one way or another!

Very warmly,

Susanna Federici, Valeria Pulcini

2024 Conference Co-Chairs