IPA WEBINARS 2023
Exploring irrationality and belonging in (our) groups and organisations
Group Relations in the IPA
Theme
When analysts step out of their offices, they are part of groups and institutions, psychoanalytic and others. Unacknowledged group dynamics can have toxic effects, as we know from numerous instances in many societies, leading to injuries and splits. Group Relations conferences offer an experiential way to learn about these dynamics and one's role in them in order that fresh choices and new possibilities can emerge.
Moderator:
Shmuel Erlich, Ph.D. Training and supervising analyst in the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. Past IPA Board member, Chair of the IPA Institutional Issues Committee, Director of the planned first IPA GR conference for psychoanalysts. Co-founder of OFEK, a Group Relations organization in Israel, and PCCA (Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities), has designed and directed many Group Relations and PCCA conferences. Author, "The Couch in the Market Place".
Presenters:
Mira Erlich-Ginor, M.A. Training and supervising analyst in the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. Past IPA Board member, Chair of the Steering Committee, IPA in the Community and the World. Co-founder of OFEK, a Group Relations organization in Israel, and PCCA (Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities), has designed and directed many Group Relations and PCCA conferences. She is leading the project of implementing Group Relations in the IPA.
Presentation
We are at a point of the convergence of two distinct but interrelated processes at work:
1. Acknowledging the need to understand the nature of irrationality in systems, in societies and in training.
2. Embracing what psychoanalysis can contribute to the understanding and alleviation of societal problem.
Leslie Brissett, Ph.D. is Group Relations Programme Director and Company Secretary at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. He has directed the last 7 Leicester Conferences, the world’s original Group Relations conference, a development of Bion’s “experiences in groups”. In 2021 he directed the first Group Relations Conference for psychoanalysts, “Psychoanalysis in Transition” and is committed to psychoanalytically informed practice in organizations and society.
Presentation
1. Group Relations stemming from the confluence of psychoanalytic (Kleinian and Bionian) with systemic thinking.
2. The Group Relations methodology elaborated.
3. Group Relations conferences as spaces for LEARNING by experience represents a return to its psychoanalytic roots.
Petra Heymanns M.D. is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Specialist in Psychosomatic Medicine; Psychoanalyst (German Psychoanalytic Association, DPV/ IPA), Training Analyst and Supervisor for Psychotherapy. Member of the following working parties: DPV Heidelberg: Clinical and theoretical issues of the “German Disease; EPF working party on “Homosexualities”; DPV “Sexual Diversities” and “Analytic Infant Observation”. Has lectured and published on Homosexuality, Same- Sex- Parenting and Transgenderism.
Presentation
Having attended several Group Relations conferences, I would like to share the experience of opening a “playground with a deadly serious background". These conferences have, besides a personal benefit, a contribution to understanding processes that are going on in analytic institutions and the societies we belong to. Following the conferences, I could understand differently the roles I have in my society, the power of projections and issues of leadership. I appreciated the learning and discovery of these phenomenon not by lectures but through my experience.