APAS OPEN DAYS - Adelaide 29-30 August 2026

MINDS UNDER SIEGE: DEHUMANISATION & REPARATION

Saturday 29-30th August, 2026

The conference brings together psychoanalytic reflections on extreme suffering, experiences of endurance, and the conditions under which transformation and redemption may become possible. Across presentations and discussions, it engages with the causes and consequences of turbulent inner lives, drawing on psychoanalytic perspectives to think through its psychic and relational consequences.

The Open Days will feature papers on aspects such as destructiveness and possibilities of reparation through complex processes of listening in psychoanalytic treatment. A special session, "In Conversation", will take place on Saturday afternoon, 29 August 2026.

Paul Williams and J. M. Coetzee will take part in a conversation about the complex psychological terrain explored in Williams’ upcoming novel, Nothing Happened, which addresses themes of dehumanisation, alienation, and redemption. Drawing on their respective disciplines, they will consider how the novel’s main character illuminates the psychic consequences of profound relational injury, known as soul murder. They will explore how the narrative can serve as a site for witnessing and understanding the nature of this injury, and the conditions necessary for an analytic experience of hope and the potential for transformation.

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FEATURED SPEAKERS 

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Paul Williams

Dr. Paul Williams trained as a Psychoanalyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society where he was a Training and Supervising Analyst. He was awarded the Rosenfeld Essay Prize for the treatment of severe disturbance, was joint editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis with Glen Gabbard between 2001 and 2007 and worked as a Consultant Psychotherapist for the British National Health Service in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

He lives and works in Northern California and has published many books and papers on the subject of severe disturbance, including psychosis. He is joint editor of American Psychiatric Publishing’s Textbook of Psychoanalysis. He has published a literary trilogy depicting severe disturbance as seen from the inside: The Fifth Principle, Scum and The Authority of Tenderness. His first novel, ‘Nothing Happened’, depicts the experience of soul murder and the possibility of redemption from it. He was recently awarded the 2025 Haskell Norman Award for Psychoanalytic Excellence by the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.

John M. Coetzee

J. M. Coetzee was born in Cape Town in 1940 and educated at the University of Cape Town and the University of Texas, where he earned his PhD in 1968. During a lengthy academic career, he held professorial appointments at the University of Cape Town and the University of Chicago, as well as visiting appointments at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, and the Universidad San Martin (Buenos Aires).

He has published twenty works of fiction, as well as literary criticism and translations. Among the awards he has won are the Booker Prize (twice) and, in 2003, the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lives in Adelaide, South Australia, where he is Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide.

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Look out for future emails soon to register.