the 5^th "Three Section" Conference in Stockholm
4–6 July 2003

SUMMARY OF THE FIFTH EFPP THREE-SECTION CONFERENCE IN STOCKHOLM 4-6 JULY 2003

When we invited to the conference under the theme "Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Our Time - When, Where and for Whom?" our hope was to inspire colleagues to contribute from the richness of their work within the psychoanalytic psychotherapy field. We can now conclude that many responded to our invitation, and indeed a wide range of experiences and topics were presented.

The death of Ludvig Igra was a great loss to the psychoanalytic profession as a whole, and for the conference. We, his Swedish colleagues, were extremely proud and happy that he had responded positively to our request to be the first day's main speaker. This loss was related to, right through the conference in a mindful way, especially in the opening address by Siv Boalt Boëthius and by the first day's main speakers, who had been invited to a panel presentation chaired by Margareta Mörner.

We were very pleased to have Monica and Carl-Axel Dominique, two highly reputed Swedish musicians as part of the introduction to the conference. They opened with a moving musical composition by Monica and finished with a really playful performance on the piano. Lars Sjögren followed by giving a bantering introduction to Sweden and the Swedish language.

Serge Frisch from Luxembourg, Luisa Perrone from Italy and Luc Michel from Switzerland talked to the conference theme from different perspectives. Serge Frisch reflected that our contemporary society and our patients are marked by a narcissistic pathology, where there is a tendency to externalise inner conflicts which then creates a confusion of the patients' perception of the inner and outer world. He stressed that the classical form of interpretation does not work for this kind of dilemma, and consequently we need to discuss new ways to develop our work without loosing the essence of psychoanalysis. Luisa Perrone talked about the fact that clinicians nowadays meet new and more severe types of disturbances in their work. This means that empathetic subjectivity is important and maybe crucial. She said that it is a question of being open to a continuum along an expressive - supporting psychotherapeutic scale, when meeting these patients. Luc Michel pointed to the different psychological meanings of a language - it is not just a question of speaking your mother tongue or not. We have within our separate languages a variety of references, interpretations and point of views as they exist within established psychotherapeutic theories. He stressed the importance of being open and not to get stuck in rigid defences and reported from his experiences from psychotherapy training programmes for young psychiatrists. Psychoanalysis has, he claimed, a strong attraction for young medical students. The students recognise themselves in the theory and it presents a global outlook, which is different to diagnostic instruments and systems, such as for instance DSM.

On the second day Maria Rhode from U.K. presented a paper on child psychotherapy. She described her work with two autistic boys and the difficulties she had encountered in treating them. Both of these boys would have been considered untreatable thirty years ago when she did her training. Maria Rhode was taught that children with such severe disturbances needed supportive and stable homes to be able to profit from therapy. Today, she said, with our increased knowledge about children, who have been exposed to extremely painful experiences, we know that the most important therapeutic tool is the therapists' counter transference. The children communicate the pain to their therapists through non-verbal means and this is a crucial part of the therapeutic communication. In the case stories she stressed the importance of the therapist being part of a multidisciplinary team. This turned out to be crucial for her as therapist, as it helped her to maintain her own balance in the intense powerful emotions, which she was drawn into while doing this work.

Maria Rhodes paper was discussed by Jean Pierre Vidit from France. He started by referring to Maria Rodhes emphasis on countertransference experienced by herself as therapist but also extended to an institutional dimension. He pointed to that she had showed the painful and trying aspect of countertransference as well as how it can be a useful aid to enhance the therapist's and the team's ability to understand the child. He referred to René Kaës (France) concept of "transitional analysis" as a period of rendering psychic containment - prior to working on psychic content liable to be interpreted. Maria Rhodes, he said, had shown when theory can function as stimulating help or as a strict superego and the therapist's struggle for the survival of therapy in both cases. He said that theory can sometimes take the form of an ideology meant to protect ourselves for fear of the unknown and to take care of our need for compliance and he suggested that she might agree with René Kaës when he proposed that ideology is a form of resistance against archaic fantasy? He concluded that Maria Rhode clearly expresses how important it is that the therapist remains on the side of hope and consequently on the side of life instincts.

On the third day Daniela Moggi from Italy gave a presentation on the theme "The Significance of the Experience in Groups: Between therapy and Professional Training". Daniela Moggi invited the audience to think about the way in which we work with groups. She made a distinction between the psychodynamics in groups and group psychoanalysis based on Bionian theory. She quoted F. Carrao: "Individual therapy and group psychoanalysis serve the same purpose; that is to observe and investigate the same objects. Hence we can say that the analytical function is operating either at a dyadic setting level or at a group level. The difference between group analysis and a two person setting is how we work with transference. Group analysis specifically uses multiple, mutual and simultaneous relationships which are related to subjects who are objects at the same time and vice versa." Daniela Moggi added that both two person analysis and group analysis deal with objects as analytic objects extended to the fields of Senses, Myth and Passion.

In Elisabeth von Salis from Switzerland discussion of Daniela Moggis paper she used Enrique Pichon-Rivières and his concept "Operative Groups; Groupos Operativos" as her frame of reference. (A domineering Argentinean concept for working with groups for the last 50 years). She referred particularly to, in her opinion, a useful concept offered by Pichon-Rivière namely "scheme of reference". A concept that entails "one's knowledge, experience and theoretical background which one's knowledge refers to". This also includes a notion of "the inner group". Psychotherapy training, she said, can from the perspective of this concept use group and group process as a most favourable context to expose one's own scheme of reference to reality. Elisabeth von Salis spoke about learning- processes as being dialectic and principally continuous and interminable. She said that the group creates a network of relations and triangulations as a precondition for group-members to learn anything new.

The conference theme, as mentioned previously, invited colleagues to share a wide range of experiences. One of the very important aspects of arranging an international conference such as this was to offer a place where colleagues from different professional cultures could meet and exchange experiences. The professional presentations on Friday and Saturday gave us a good map of the work that is currently being done in different countries. We would particularly like to mention the important multicultural work done in afternoon sessions like "Research Workshop - fields, goals and methods" chaired co-jointly by Imre Szescödy, Sweden and Olivier Nicolle, France. The paper in that session was presented by Swiss colleagues each of them representing different traditions. Another workshop with a related theme was "Training and Research" with two subsequent sessions on Friday chaired by Imre Szescödy, Sweden and on Saturday two subsequent sessions chaired by Dimitris Anastasopoulos, Greece. In total four sessions with papers were given by colleagues from Denmark, U.K., Hungary and Sweden. The workshops about "Infant observation" were presented in English and French and chaired by Effie Lignos, Greece and Britta Blomberg, Sweden. The presenters came from Italy and France. Other sessions with an international perspective that we like to mention was "Couple and Family Psychotherapy", where different traditions in for example France, UK, Sweden and Italy were discussed. The latest EFPP conferences have invited to workshops with the theme of "Trauma and State Violence". The idea has been to offer a space for colleagues who work in this area. In Stockholm presentations came from South Africa/Switzerland, Sweden and U.K., We are particularly pleased that so many French speaking colleagues came and we were happy to have in the programme several Francophone presentations in each of the parallel sessions. We are also very pleased that so many of our Swedish colleagues presented a lot of interesting and much appreciated papers.

It is important to specifically mention discussion groups, which are an important part of all EFPP conferences, and we have a separate feedback from Pia Litzell- Berg and Anna Malmquist-Saracino (see report from discussion group meetings). Their task was to assemble all group convenors to formal meetings during the conference. We would also like to call upon the fact that this was the first time a considerable number of colleagues choose to be in a mixed language group. Participants were particularly asked to state a choice of preferred language, English, French or mixed language in a form sent out before the conference. This made it possible to form a mixed language group. The mixed language group evidently had to struggle with the communication problems in an international assembly, and we think it is very encouraging for the future that some colleagues were prepared to strive with this important issue.

We would like to express our satisfaction with and pride over the fact that 98 papers were presented, many of them held a very high standard and that more than 400 colleagues attended, representing 27 countries. We were much relieved that after a Thursday of absolutely horrid weather it changed, and from Friday onwards Stockholm showed itself from its' very best.

As some of the papers were not available at the conference, anyone who wants to get hold of a paper presented please contact the author directly. Most of the email addresses to authors can be found on the participant list. If you come across any problems or questions please contact Inger Larsson email address: efpp.sthlmskonf2003@compaqnet.se or efpp.konf@enigma.se.

Finally, we would like to thank everyone, who contributed in so many ways, with papers, chairing sessions, discussion group convenors, hostesses and all participants for helping us to make the conference a success and give rise to so many good memories. 

It has been a great pleasure and very rewarding working with the conference. We are looking forward to meeting all of you at future EFPP conferences such as 8-10 October 2004 in Lisbon, Portugal (group-section), 2004 on Syros, Greece (workshop), 2005 in Dresden, Germany (adult-section), 2006 in Berlin, Germany (child-section), 2007 in Copenhagen, Denmark (three-section).

We also want to thank everyone who filled in the evaluation form. This gives valuable feed-back and contributes to making EFPP conferences even better. (See evaluation report and report from Discussion Group convenors meetings)

Welcome greetings »»
Summary (with photo's) »»
Report from Discussion Group convenors meetings »»
Evaluation »»

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last updated: 2018-12-18