This conference brings together the two worlds of psychoanalysis and literature – particularly through a psychoanalytical reading of literature, as powerful sites of truth-telling, healing, and transformation. The conference will centre on women’s voices, through the works of Han Kang, an acclaimed Korean novelist, and other Asian-Pacific female writers - as a literary lens for delving into themes of personal and collective trauma and repression.

Literature, as a custodian of history and the culture of our times - articulates trauma, suffering, and historical erasure. This engagement with female authors and their writing, can help clinicians in reimagining narcissism in female subjectivity through love, loss, and the reshaping of identity, by offering a deeper understanding of how language, storytelling and metaphors shape feminine expression, the silences, and the reclamation of voices. Six presentations from Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will illuminate the therapeutic potential of narrative reconstruction and symbolism in processing of psychic wounds, through these texts and clinical work.

These diverse cultural and psychoanalytical perspectives on feminine subjectivity from the Asia-Pacific region, will trace the path from the loss of voice to a love of self, and from internalised suffering to creative resistance.

Event Title: From Wounds to Words: Women’s Voices
Date: 27th April, 2026
Time: 1 pm to 5 pm
Venue: JW Marriott Hotel Seoul, 176 Sinbanpo-ro, Seocho-gu, Seoul, Salon 6
Who can attend: This event is open to IPA members and candidates as well as professionals interested in this topic.
Registration details: Registrations now open, here.
Contact email address: Gunjan Chandak Khemka at [email protected] 
Download the event programme here.
Visit the 5th Asia Pacific Conference Seoul 2026 website here.

Programme