Closing Ceremony Speech by the New Vice-President of the IPA
As Virginia Ungar and Sergio Nick pass the torch of administrative responsibility for the International Psychoanalytical Association to Harriet and me, we are humbled by the importance of the work entrusted in us and grateful for all that has been done by the administrations that came before us. This history of those administrations goes all the way back to the founding of the IPA in 1910 and the way the IPA endured through the world crises of the First World War, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War, the rise of authoritarian regimes, and now the COVID-19 pandemic. I want to thank President Virginia Ungar, Vice-President Sergio Nick, Treasurer Henk Jan Dalewyk, the entire board and all our fantastic staff, for the frankly heroic work they have done in managing the IPA in its various capacities during this time of crisis.
I want to add a special note of thanks to Sergio Nick for passing to me, the torch of the Vice-Presidency. He has been so very generous with his time and available to me whenever I reached out to him for guidance in preparing for my role.
I also want to recognize all the members of the IPA who have, under very difficult circumstances, made themselves flexible enough to help their patients in some very creative ways. Many of you have contributed to your local society, regional organization, or participated in IPA committees. The promise of the Ungar-Nick administration was to bring psychoanalysis to the community and they more than fulfilled that mission. Now it is time for this new administration to carry this work forward.
The COVID pandemic has foreclosed the possibility of meeting in person in Vancouver and limited us to an online conference instead. I am very honored to be with you today, closing this extraordinary and quite successful IPA Congress. Who could have imagined that Freud’s heirs could be gathered today in a virtual congress, each of us in our own homes, in so many different countries, speaking about the infantile in its multiple dimensions, in different languages, from different theoretical perspectives, while overcoming the adversities of this terrible pandemic? But here we are! Our passion for psychoanalysis made this miracle possible. Thank you so much, to all of you!
The history of IPA administrations meeting the challenges of world crises goes all the way back to the founding of the IPA in 1910 and the way the IPA subsequently endured the world crises of the First World War, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War, the rise of authoritarian regimes, and now the COVID-19 pandemic. I want to join Harriet in thanking Virginia Ungar, Sergio Nick, Henk Jan Dalewyk, the entire board and all our fantastic staff, for the frankly heroic work they have done in managing the IPA in its various capacities during this time of crisis.
The promise of the Ungar-Nick administration was to bring psychoanalysis to the community and they more than fulfilled that mission. Now it is time for the new administration to carry this work forward.
Harriet and I ran for office with the goal of continuing the development of the IPA for the benefit of its members and for the benefit of the world. Communication is an important function of the IPA and its importance has grown significantly in recent years, and especially during the pandemic. We want to be sure that the work of the members is conveyed in our communications to all of our members, to the mental health community at large, and to the general public, in order that we may amplify our voice in the world.
The IPA is an international association dedicated to the development and promotion of psychoanalysis. It is not a local or regional association but an international one. It is dedicated to promoting psychoanalysis as it is practiced in different ways and in different lands. If we think of psychoanalysis as a tree, it has a core theoretical and clinical structure we might see as the trunk of that tree. But it also has diverse theoretical and technical branches reaching out to different psychopathologies, populations, and cultural contexts. Our goal is to maintain the trunk and support the branches so that the IPA can continue to grow and bear fruit.
To the new administrative team taking the reins, I join Harriet in welcoming aboard all the regional representatives. Together, we will work and dedicate ourselves to achieving the goals of the IPA.
For the last two years Harriet and I have been working to assume the leadership of our organization and prepare our programs related to IPA for the “Benefit of its members and the World”. We restructured some of the main committees, while assuring their continuation. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to work with Harriet Wolfe. She has great integrity, receptivity and a confident while flexible leadership style, and during these two years of working as officers elect, she has become a very close friend.
The IPA is at the heart of our psychoanalytic identity. The benefits of belonging to the IPA are multiple: It gives us the opportunity for international dialogue, meeting colleagues who share our professional interests and yet think differently about them. In this way, we come together around our common interests and are enriched by our differences. This diversity is a treasure that assures our on-going growth and development.
The benefits of belonging to the IPA are multiple, but at its core is its international nature. The IPA gives us the opportunity for international dialogue with colleagues who share our professional interests and yet think differently about them. In this way, we come together around our common interests and are enriched by our differences. This diversity is a treasure that assures our on-going growth and development.
When Freud created the IPA in 1910, there were only a few dozen members and yet there were many differences between them, resulting in splits that could not be reconciled. Of course, out of these splits a number of very creative analysts left the IPA to establish new schools of thought. Today we are not just a few dozen. After more than 110 years of work and creativity, we have established an association with 13,000 members and 7,000 candidates, in more than 50 countries around the world. Our association draws together analysts from diverse backgrounds. Reconciling our differences is not always so easy, as it means we need to find ways to stand on our common ground, while leaving ourselves open to learning from others with whom we may disagree. That is why today, more than ever, we need to be able to own the identity of being “citizens of the IPA”, just as we are citizens of the world. We certainly encourage you to participate in the psychoanalytic goals of your local and regional associations, but involvement in the IPA means setting aside local and regional interests, while working with an international mindset, to achieve a different set of specifically international goals. When we leave the bubble of our offices and approach the world psychoanalytically some worry that we might be at risk of losing our psychoanalytic identity – losing the soul of psychoanalysis. Being psychoanalysts and entering the world does not threaten our analytic identity. It challenges it, by requiring us to face the external reality in which we live and discover how the world inevitably expands and reshapes it.
Our psyches were all shaped by our early childhood experiences, by the “infantile in its multiple dimensions,” but world history is also etched into each of our lives.
I went through the experience of having to emigrate twice, first from Argentina to Venezuela and later from Venezuela to the United States. I mention this because being a member of an IPA recognized institution opened the possibility for me to apply to another IPA society on a different continent and I am very grateful to NPSI, my society in the US for welcoming me with the same status I held in my society of origin. In the event you may want, or need, to emigrate, the possibility of reintegration into another IPA society is one of the benefits of belonging to the IPA.
Another important benefit of belonging to the IPA is the opportunity to share and exchange ideas concerning theory and practice with colleagues all around the world, serving to open the frontiers of our minds.
It is also a unique experience to participate on one of the IPA’s many committees dedicated to clinical issues, education, research, governance, scientific matters, publications, community outreach, the establishment of new societies, and so much more. There are now 111 committees. Participating on an IPA committee gives you the opportunity to share with colleagues from all around the world and maximize your impact on an area of special interest to you.
In addition to our IPA committees, we also have our international congresses. Psychoanalysts from so many cities around the world meet once every two years in a big congress and share not only our theoretical, clinical, and scientific interests, but also strengthen the bonds of friendship that we make and grow from Congress to Congress.
To enjoy this benefit of belonging to an international institution like ours, I want to invite you all to come to our next two international events: The next Asia-Pacific Conference in New Delhi, India, will be from January 4th to January 6th 2023. Having this conference in India will mark the culmination of the Indian Psychoanalytical Society’s centenary celebration. The theme will be “Containing Diversity, Bridging Difference”. This theme invites us to explore notions of diversity and difference in psychoanalytic theory and practice, in our clinical work, and in our communities. India is one of the most socially, culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse nations in the world, so it is well acquainted with the challenges and benefits of dealing with differences.
The program committee, chaired by Louíse Gyler, is working hard to create a very interesting and exciting program. After having to cancel our Asia-Pacific Conference in Sidney due to the pandemic, we look forward with great optimism to meeting in person in New Delhi.
And for the next IPA Congress in 2023, we are very pleased to invite you to Cartagena, Colombia. Colombia is in the northern portion of South America bordered by Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and the Caribbean Sea. We plan on being there live and in-person to discuss psychoanalysis in the warmth of the tropics. It’s a colorful city, full of poetry. Cartagena’s beauty and historical significance was recognized in 1984, when it was named a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site. We know you’re going to love it.
The venue we chose is a charming space only a few steps away from the old walled city surrounded by restaurants, shops and colorful streets with flowers hanging from the balconies. It is also located directly on the port from which you can take a boat to visit Caribbean islands with white sands and transparent waters
For the Program Committee we are counting with Adrienne Harris as chair, Harvey Schwarz as co-chair for North America, Claudia Spadazzi as co-chair for Europe, Ruggero Levy as co-chair for Latin America and Erika Lepiavka as an IPSO member representative.
The Program Committee will be working for the next two years organizing a fascinating program on the theme of “Mind in the Line of Fire,” which will give us the opportunity to develop our proposal of expanding our commitment from the IPA in the Community to the IPA in the World.
The local arrangements committee will also plan fun and interesting social and cultural activities. We invited Fabio Eslava, Maria Ines Nieto, and Luz Maria Orejarena from the three IPA societies in Colombia, to co-chair this committee. I am so happy to be able to count on Karina Gutierrez, our event manager, in helping us in each step along the way.
Colombia as well as Mexico, was home to the Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He lived in Cartagena, a place that inspired him early in his career as a journalist and a writer.
In one of his books, he wrote the story of a seven year old boy who was desperate for his father’s attention, while his father was busy trying to solve some important matters. Eager to get the boy out of his office, he pulled a page out of a magazine with a picture of the world on it, cut it up into pieces with a pair of scissors, and said to the boy. “You like puzzles. Put this map of the world together and come back when you’re finished.” The boy did like puzzles and immediately set to work. His father figured it would take him days to complete it. But only a short while later the boy announced he had put the world together. His father was shocked. “How did you do that, son?” he asked. The boy replied, “It was easy, Papa. When you cut up the map, I saw there was a picture of a man on the other side of the page. So, all I had to do was put the man together and the world came together with him.”
As analysts we help our patients to come apart and then reconstitute themselves and their worlds in a new way. At this moment in the 21 st century, the world is in an acute time of troubles, the mind is in the line of fire, and we, as analysts, have much to offer. Come to Cartagena, we have a great deal to discuss and share.
Harriet and I hope that all of you will be increasingly able to see that the IPA is YOU, YOU are the IPA, and that we ALL need each other for the ongoing growth and development of psychoanalysis. We are very much looking forward to working together!
