Eldad Iddan

I am delighted to report on the proceedings of part two of IAPSP international virtual conference series, which took place on Saturday, November 21 2020, and had a truly international attendance of 211 participants. They gathered from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey, South Africa, Israel, as well as from Brazil, India, Japan, Canada, and the United States. They all shared a profound interest in Kohutian legacy as it manifests in their clinical lives and work, and met via on-line technology, given the circumstances of the pandemic.

This part’s title was “Conference of Europe, the Mideast and South Africa: A Challenging case in Challenging times – Subjective Body Experience in the Treatment“.

Edna Lahav served as moderator with the assistance of Martin Gossmann, and we leaned on Christina Emanuel’s clear and simple instructions to help us guide everyone through the complicated technical task required by the online zoom conference. Clearly, thanks to the growing experience from the Conference of the Americas, this second part in the series went smoothly with hardly any glitches.

The program featured Paolo Stramba Badiale’s presentation of an intriguing and beautiful clinical case of a patient with severe damage of her face, covered by a mask, long before Covid 19. Paolo shared with us a meticulous unfolding of this treatment process as trust grew deeper. The rise of the pandemic in Italy and worldwide dramatically changed the conditions of the analytic setting. However, a turn of removing the barriers was made possible, in the most gentle and openhearted way we can find.

Paolo’s description left the listeners breath taken, as they constantly became immersed in the story, absorbed with gentleness and compassion to both Paolo and Marica, his patient.

Paolo’s case presentation was followed by four discussants.

Amanda Kottler from South Africa demonstrated her and Koichi Togachi’s understanding of twinship\alter-ego selfobject experiences, which is a recognition of the similarities and differences of both patient and analyst between them. Amanda showed how that contributes to a construction of an “I-thou” dialogue, to use Buber’s term, in Paolo’s case presentation.

Neslihan Ruganci from Turkey shared with us with deep honesty her own tantalizing experience facing, if that is the right word, Marica’s face. She referred to vast array of related literature and recounted the different aspects of the “somatic self” (Kohut), at the crossroads of psyco-soma.

Gudrun Prinz from Austria considered intersubjective and developmental aspects in Paolo’s work. She showed how vulnerability, self-regulation, contagion, guilt and shame, of both Paolo and Marica, slowly gave way to Maricas’ coherent self-experiences to rise from a state of emergency and despair.

Karina Goldberg from Israel added a spiritual component to our joint understanding. She saw Paolo and his patient as a whole, and their work as an expression of oneness. She claimed that being kept in-sight equates being kept in mind and offered the concept of virtual selfobject – a total empathic awareness, which anticipates existence, anticipates the going-to-be self and its face. She argued that when the analyst’s stance is such, it enables the emergence of self as a whole, as a totality.

Paolo responded gratefully to his discussants, and in the conversation that ensued, which also included questions and comments from all the participants, many clinical and theoretical issues were discussed. It was fascinating to witness how the clinical material evoked such varied and rich perspectives from the discussants, and how they were yet complementing each other in such concert. Since all discussants alluded directly and indirectly to philosophical issues, implicit and explicit in the material and in their own consideration of it, the question was raised whether we need philosophy in our daily dealings with our patients. Many found the new concept of “virtual selfobject” intriguing and wondered about its possible affinity with Winnicott’s concept of “subjective object”. Due to time restraints, many of the audience’s responses were not addressed by the panelists, and hopefully were pursued in the small discussion groups that followed the main part of the program. We intend to post some of these questions and comments in IAPSP website eForum, hoping they will evoke a continued discussion.

In retrospect, and in light of the feedback we keep getting, we feel this was a great success, and as many have told us and written to us – a truly self-psychological conference.

Part 3 of the series, Conference of the Pacific Rim (Asia, Australia, New Zealand) will take place on Sunday, January 31, 2021. Save the date and look for further information in your mailboxes and on iapsp.org

Following the conference, the conference panelists engaged in a discussion about their participation. Here is a link to a recording of that conversation. If you attended, we would love to hear your own reflections on the conference.