Beyond Trauma

International Online Meeting

Chairs: Susanna Federici, Gianni Francesetti, Michela Gecele, Gianni Nebbiosi
 

THE CONFERENCE IS ACCESSIBLE IN THE FOLLOWING LANGUAGES: ENGLISH, SPANISH, UKRAINIAN, ITALIAN

This conference is the outcome  of dialogue and collaboration between two training institutes—IPsiG and ISIPSÉ—that intend to promote engagement and debate between different clinical approaches that, while building on their own specificities, consider it crucial to engage with other approaches that share the same fundamental principles and are thus a source of mutual theoretical-clinical enrichment.

Thinking about trauma in clinical practice seems to be particularly significant today. The relevance of the concept of trauma has shifted widely over the history of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, from the central importance it held at the origin of the disciplines to then become a secondary construct for a long time. In recent decades, it has returned to the fore, becoming one of the most widely used hermeneutic references both for the understanding of psychopathology and for the conceptualisation of therapeutic processes. Its return to the forefront, however, arguably risks suffocating other visions, approaches, and working methodologies in the clinical sphere, oversimplifying the relationship between the complexity of life and psychic suffering.

The conference will explore the topic from a number of different perspectives—historical, cultural, psychopathological, clinical and considering the findings of recent Infant Research, with contributions from many international researchers and clinical practitioners, including Beatrice Beebe.

Through the conference we will explore various questions raised by this development:

• What has prompted contemporary clinical thinking to place trauma in such a central position again?

• Does this centrality derive from a more widespread traumatic condition (social, economic, political, climate, vision of the future) in which the contemporary world has come to find itself, or does it also depend on other underlying cultural and social forces, ways of decoding and defining experience, and visions of the human dimension that help shape the evolution of various psychotherapeutic approaches?

• What are the advantages and what is the point of this development, considering that it risks becoming 'pan-traumatological'?

• Are there clinical dimensions, both psychopathological and therapeutic, that the centrality of trauma risks neglecting or obscuring?

• Can trauma in itself be considered a psychopathological event or does it somehow express the very condition of existence?

• Is there any risk in considering only the traumatic dimension in clinical practice?

• Does the traumatic vision tend to divide the world too radically into 'traumatisers' and 'traumatised', unwittingly promoting a dichotomous mindset that is disinclined to see the complexity of what lies in between?

• What else should clinical practitioners consider besides the trauma history of the clients they work with?

PROGRAM

Part 1

Welcome and opening remarks : Susanna Federici, Gianni Francesetti, Michela Gecele, Gianni Nebbiosi

Trauma in the History of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

Keynote speaker: Paolo Migone

Discussant: Bernd Bocian

Questions & Answers

Trauma in Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

Keynote speaker: Beatrice Beebe

Discussant: Lynne Jacobs

Questions & Answers

Panel of discussion on the lectures

Paolo Stramba-Badiale

Peter Philippson

Jan Roubal

Part 2

Beyond Trauma: a psychoanalytic perspective

Keynote speakers: Susanna Federici, Gianni Nebbiosi

Monica Botelho Alvim

Questions & Answers

Beyond Trauma: a Phenomenological-Gestalt Perspective  

Keynote speakers: Michela Gecele, Gianni Francesetti

Discussant: Carlo Carapellese

Questions & Answers

Panel of discussion on the lectures

Dan Bloom

Maria Tammone

Lika Queiroz  

Part 3 

Discussion of a Clinical Case

Clinical case presented by Antonino Costanzo

Discussant: Sandra Toribio Caballero

Discussant: Giovanni Salonia

Discussion of a Clinical Case

Clinical case presented by Miek van Dongen

Discussant: Hazel Ipp

Discussant: Michael Vincent Miller

Small groups sharing

Conclusions: Julianne Appel-Opper, Inna Didkovska, Miriam Munoz Polit, Carmen Vazquez Bandin, Susanna Federici, Gianni Francesetti, Michela Gecele, Gianni Nebbiosi