Wednesday 4th - Sunday 8th October 2023

In-room & Online | View Hotel, North Sydney

The APAS is pleased to invite you to our 50th Anniversary Conference. We wish to use this opportunity to remember, mourn and celebrate both our national and psychoanalytic culture. We want to explore how our socio-cultural threads influence the way we are and who we are becoming. To remember Freud, we are interested in understanding the shadows that have fallen upon our ideas and beliefs about psychoanalytic thought and practice. We welcome and invite you to join with us in this dialogue to re-imagine possible transformative developments in psychoanalysis.

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Invited Speakers   Wednesday Programme   Thursday Programme   Friday Programme   Saturday Programme   Sunday Workshops   Registration

Harriet Wolfe

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Harriet Wolfe, M.D. is President of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), Past President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, and Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. She has a private practice of psychoanalysis, and individual and couples’ psychoanalytic psychotherapy in San Francisco.

Darren Dale

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Darren Dale is the managing director of Blackfella Films, Australia's leading First Nations production company. He has produced acclaimed series and documentaries like "First Australians," "The Tall Man," and "Mabo." His ground-breaking drama series "Redfern Now" won numerous awards, including the TV Week Logie for Most Outstanding Drama Series. Darren's work extends to teen drama with "Ready for This," and investigative series like "Deep Water." His documentary "Maralinga Tjarutja" and series "Filthy Rich & Homeless" have been internationally recognized. Darren co-curated the Message Sticks Indigenous Festival film program and serves on the boards of NIDA, ACMI, the AFI, and the Sydney Festival.

Tim Alexander

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Dr Tim Alexander is a Psychiatrist and Member of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. He works in private practice in Melbourne, offering psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical psychotherapy. He contributes to educational activities for analytic candidates and psychiatrists in training.

Rise Becker

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Rise Becker is a member of the Sydney Branch of APAS. She immigrated from South Africa in 1990 to take up the position of Clinical Director of the NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors. She now works as a psychoanalyst in private practice in Sydney.

Gloria Blanco

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Gloria Blanco is a highly experienced mental health specialist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist with over 17 years of professional experience. She runs a private practice in the Gold Coast, Queensland. She is registered as a Clinical Counsellor and Mental Health Practitioner with the Psychotherapy & Counselling Federation of Australia and Australian Counselling Association and is currently a candidate with the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. Prior to relocating to Australia, Gloria worked as a university professor, clinical psychologist and psychodynamic psychotherapist in a public hospital and private practice in Venezuela. Gloria holds a Bachelor's Degree in Clinical Psychology and a Master's of Science Degree in Counselling and Psychotherapy. She was also a former candidate with the Caracas Psychoanalytic Society in Venezuela.

Vivienne Elton

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Dr Vivienne Elton is a psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, past president, and current training analyst of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. Vivienne has a deep commitment to psychoanalytic education and has written curriculum for psychoanalytic training, taught psychoanalytic candidates, infant observation and was Visiting Professor at the Wuhan Hospital for Psychotherapy, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. She supervises psychiatrists, psychologists, analysts, and candidates and works in humanitarian organisations. Vivienne is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association Sponsoring Committee for the China Study Group, Vice President of the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists, Overall Chair of the IPA in the Humanitarian Field committees and President of the Crisis and Responders Outreach Service. She lives in Melbourne, where she has a private practice.

Louise Gyler

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Louise Gyler, Ph.D. is a Child and Adult Training Analyst and President of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. She chairs the IPA Asia-Pacific Planning Committee and is a visiting professor at the Chinese - American Continual Training Program at Wuhan Hospital for Psychotherapy. She is an Associate Board Member of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. She authored The Gendered Unconscious: Can gender discourses subvert psychoanalysis? (Routledge, 2010) and is editing The Desiring Woman in the Asia Pacific: Ambiguities, Displacements and Contradictions (Routledge, forthcoming). In 2019, she won the 22nd International Frances Tustin Memorial Prize and Lectureship. She has a private practice in Sydney.

Louise Hird

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Louise Hird is a Clinical Psychologist and an Adult, Child & Training Psychoanalyst with the Australian Psychoanalytic Society. Louise is the founder and Director of the Winn Clinic - a psychoanalytic consultation and referral service. Louise was the Sydney Branch Chair of Training (2017 -2021). She is currently the Chair of the Progress Committee of the Sydney Branch and the Chair of the National Education and Training Committee of the Australian Psychoanalytic Society. Louise has presented paper(s) at the European Psychoanalytic Federation, the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPSO) and the Australian Psychoanalytic Conferences. She has a private practice in Sydney.

Maria Teresa Hooke

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Maria Teresa Savio Hooke, is a training analyst of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society, past President of the Australian Society, former member of the IPA China Committee, former Chair IPA International New Groups (ING), and past member of the IPA Task Force of Representation and of the Asia Pacific Planning Committee. Her interest is in developing psychoanalysis in new countries, and toward the formation of the IPA Asia-Pacific Region. She edited with Salma Akhtar: “The Geography of Meanings” and with Sverre Varvin and Alf Gerlach: “Psychoanalysis in Asia”.

Ken Israelstam

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Ken Israelstam is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada (In Psychiatry), a senior training and supervising analyst of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society, a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association, and a member of the European Psychoanalytical Federation. He has a special interest in analytical couples therapy, candidate education and the theories of transformation, with publications on these subjects in international journals.

Timothy Keogh

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Timothy Keogh PhD is a training analyst, past president of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. Amongst other roles he occupies, he is President of Penthos, a psychoanalytic charity for couples, Co-Chair (Asia-Pacific) IPA Committee on Couple and Family Psychoanalysis (COFAP), Chair of the Ethics and Professional Standards Committee of the Australian Confederation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists (ACPP), the inaugural chair of the newly established IPA Scientific Committee and member of the IPA Violence Committee.

Lahvinya Kulaendra

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Lahvinya is a psychiatrist in private practice in Sydney and a candidate training through the Sydney Branch of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. She is an Honorary Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine, Macquarie University. Lahvinya lectures psychoanalytic theory to Psychiatry Trainees at the Health Education and Training Institute of the New South Wales Ministry of Health. Lahvinya is lead supervisor in the Emotional Support Programme of the Sarcoma cancer NGO, Cooper Rice-Brading Foundation and consults to private health care organisations in the application of psychoanalytic principles in the workplace.

Matthew McArdle

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Matthew is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Melbourne. He is a member and training analyst of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society (APAS). He is past Chair of the Melbourne Branch of APAS and of the Melbourne Institute for Psychoanalysis. He has participated in the European Visiting Program, an initiative exploring the training models for psychoanalysis in various Psychoanalytic Institutes. He was a member of the research group for the Specificity of Psychoanalytic Treatment Today through Interanalytic Group Work, previously a Working Party of the European Psychoanalytical Federation.

Shahid Najeeb

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Shahid Najeeb is a psychoanalyst that lives and practices in Sydney with an interest in photography and spirituality. His deepening interest in psychoanalysis persuades a transcendence of geography, history and modality, to an ever-expanding appreciation of that many splendored thing called Life.

Richard Price

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Dr Richard Price completed his psychoanalytic training in Melbourne in 2022. He works in full-time private practice in Kew, working psychoanalytically with a wide range of long-term patients. Prior to this, since 1998, he trained and worked as a psychiatrist, predominantly based in a suburban community mental health service part of Monash Health. He maintains an interest in working with patients with trauma and psychotic illness. For the last 18 months he has been on the committee, as secretary, for CARO, establishing an analytic service for refugees, asylum seekers and front-line workers.

Joan Thompson

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Joan Thompson, is an experienced BPA-trained Psychoanalyst and Psychotherapist, working with adults in private practice in London. As Director of the Margaret Street Practice in London, she offers therapy for individuals and couples and supervises clinicians in England and Australia. Originally from Australia, she has spent 27 years in London and has a background in the film industry. She combines this interest with psychoanalysis through her role as former Film Editor of the IPJ International Journal of Psychoanalysis and founder of the BPA Film Society. She recently stepped down as BPA Board Member - Chair of Outreach and is a member of various professional associations.

9:30—9:45

Opening and Welcome by APAS President Dr Louise Gyler

9:45—11:45

The Body and Erotic Transference

Dr Harriet Wolfe
Chair: Dr Louise Gyler

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The experience of erotic feelings within a psychoanalytic treatment can be unsettling for both patient and analyst, yet its presence augers well for a treatment that leads to intrapsychic and behavioural change. The author will focus on the evidence and impact of erotic transferences during two in-person analyses and an online analysis during the pandemic. The experience of the body in the two different settings is considered. The metaphor of fire is used to capture the tension between threat and opportunity that erotic experience brings to the analytic couple. A scaffolding for the ethical responsibility of the analyst is presented using the concept of “matricial space” as developed by Chetrit-Vatine. It is proposed that the experience of erotic transference and countertransference is central to the generative liveliness and growth that is possible through psychoanalytic treatment.

11:15—11:45

Morning tea

11:45—13:45

Reflections on the Society: Remembering our past to think about our future (panel of past Presidents)

Ms Julie Meadows, Dr Timothy Keogh, Dr Vivienne Elton (via Zoom), Dr John McClean, Mrs Maria-Teresa Hooke
Chair: Dr Louise Gyler

13:45—14:45

Lunch

14:45—16:15

Erotic Transference and the Anxiety to Talk About Love

Dr John McClean
Chair: Dr Peter Smith

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We focus a great deal these days at our meetings on the earliest states of mind, such as autistic phenomena and unrepresented states. This is important, but we tend to neglect later states involving sexuality, erotic transference and oedipal phenomena. This workshop will address the anxiety we all experience when dealing with such material which I think is a reason for our neglect. Three papers will be circulated as an aid to discussion. They are only a sample of a large and sometimes confusing literature on these matters. I will briefly highlight what I think are the significant issues raised by the papers, then present a vignette to help us open up the meeting to clinical discussion. I invite any members who have a suitable vignette to contact me so we can include more clinical material into the sessions. Vignettes that arouse anxiety are especially welcome. By the end of the session I hope we can formulate an understanding of the reasons for our anxiety.

Ferro, A. (2000) “Sexuality as a narrative genre or dialect in the consulting room: a radical vertex”, in Borgogno, F et al (ed.) W.R. Bion, Between Past and Future. London: Routledge, p 37- 50.
Joseph, B. (1997) “Where There Is No Vision, From Sexualisation to Sexuality”, in Bell, D (ed.) Reason and Passion, A Celebration of the Work of Hanna Segal. London: Routledge, p 161 – 174.

If you do not have access to the references, please contact Richard Price: pricerichard@me.com

9:00-10:30

The analysis of a woman who thought she shouldn’t exist

Ms Julie Meadows
Chair: Dr Timothy Keogh

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Work with a professional woman now in her 60’s is presented as the termination of the 27-year therapy/analysis approaches. She cringed as she passed me at the door, lay motionless on the couch, her narrative devoid of elaboration, her voice denuded of feeling, unable to access her feelings or to trust her recollections. An atmosphere of imminent catastrophe pervaded the consulting room and actual catastrophe defined her life. In the analysis, she came to realize that this paralysis was a function of a deadly unconscious belief “I shouldn’t exist”. This realization formed the bedrock for a slow and painful development towards self-acceptance and personal agency.

10:30—11:00

Morning tea

11:00—13:00

Panel: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: Reflections on Psychoanalytic Practice

Dr Richard Price, Dr Cathy Bailey, Dr Ken Israelstam
Chair: Ms Libby Dunn

This panel will focus on different perspectives on psychoanalytic practice from three analysts who are at different points in their careers.

13:00—14:15

Lunch

14:15—16:45

Society Matters: Training Issues

14:15—15:30

NEAT Committee

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The NEAT Committee will focus on progress issues and how these are managed and communicated in the APAS training. This session will include a discussion about candidates having difficulty in their training and how they can best be supported by their local progress committee. It will also raise questions for discussion about how to manage ‘different feedback’ in relation to the progress of a candidate”.

15:30—16:45

Dr Peter Smith's Paper: Educational Goals of Training issues This will include a response paper from Dr Matthew McArdle.

Chair: Louise Hird

18:00 for 18:30

Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, Peel St, Kirribilli (Members only)

9:00—12:30

AGM (Members only)

12:30—1:45

Lunch for Members

14:00—14:15

Welcome to the Open Days

APAS Scientific Chair, Ms Sonia Wechsler

14:15—16:00

Panel: Trauma and Memory Considered

Dr Matthew McArdle, Ms Rise Becker, Dr Vivienne Elton
Chair: Ms Charlie Stansfield

Trauma, Memory and the Value of Witnessing

Speaker: Dr Vivienne Elton

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Abstract
This paper will discuss traumatic experience and memory with reference to the Holocaust, and the value of witnessing, both in taking testimony and in psychotherapy. Bearing witness shapes and informs our work as therapists and assists in the development of symbols derived from inner experience that was previously walled off and unacknowledged. The creation of symbolic thought allows for mourning to take place. The paper will then consider the experiences of traumatised refugees and the contribution that psychoanalytic thinking can make in assisting them. It will briefly mention the community committees of the IPA that work with traumatised people, and the Australian group of psychoanalysts, CARO (Crisis and Responders Outreach Service), which offers assistance to front line responders, migrants and refugees.

Corporate Remembering, Corporate Forgetting

Speaker: Dr Matthew McArdle

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Abstract
Whether it be a social, community, psychoanalytic group or the nation, registering, experiencing, forgetting and remembering are necessary for healthy development and growth. Difficulties with remembering and forgetting can occur in groups particularly when there is trauma and loss. The corporate inability of the group to contain traumatic events and difficulties mourning leaves the group in cycles of repetition where past traumas can neither be fully forgotten nor fully remembered.

Reflections on Juukan Gorge: The Limits of Reconstruction and Healing of Trauma and Loss

Speaker: Ms Rise Becker

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Abstract
Juukan Gorge is a sacred Aboriginal site in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It was destroyed by the mining company, Rio Tinto, in May 2020. Juukan Gorge, which had been occupied for over 46,000 years, was gone forever. It led me to think about some of the patients whom I have seen who have suffered from massive psychic trauma and despite all our efforts part of them may never fully recover. This paper considers the question: How does psychoanalysis help therapists face this reality?

16:00—16:30

Afternoon tea

16:30—19:00

Film ‘Deep Water’ and Discussion Panel

Ms Amanda Blue (via Zoom), Mr Darren Dale (via Zoom), Ms Joan Thompson & Ms Louise Hird

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In the 1980’s a wave of gay hate crime bloodied Sydney’s coastline. Attackers united by contempt, a community united by indifference and police united by homophobia. We will commence with a screening of the documentary film, ‘Deep Water’. This will be followed by a panel discussion featuring two psychoanalysts, as well as the film’s director and producer, who will examine the film from a psychoanalytic perspective. The audience will be invited to participate in a Q and A session.

19:00—20:30

Cocktail reception

The Foundation welcomes this opportunity to celebrate its first 21 years and acknowledge the contributions of its past Chairs, Mrs Maria Teresa Hooke and Dr Ron Spielman.

8:30—9:30

Welcome to 50th Anniversary Conference

Welcome: President of APAS Dr Louise Gyler

Welcome to Country: Uncle Brendan Kerin

9:00—10:30

Memory, Mourning, and Previously Unimagined Futures

Dr Harriet Wolfe
Chair: Dr Louise Gyler

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Abstract
Psychoanalysis offers individuals and groups the possibility of creative and previously often unimagined futures. With emigration, individuals and groups make a planned or abrupt move from their home country to another country. Such a migrational move entails both conscious and unconscious conflictual factors, in addition to environmental stressors, that make an intended move toward a safer space difficult. Early and transgenerational experiences of trauma travel with a person no matter the circumstances of literal travel. One’s original culture and one’s history are not left behind. In this presentation, the trajectory of change through an analytic treatment will illustrate how the intrapsychic reality of early life experience may be revisited in unimagined and constructive ways. Clinical evidence will be augmented by the consideration of memory and mourning on the collective level. Reflections from an international psychoanalytic think tank on the theme of resolution of intractable conflict will illustrate the parallel value of psychoanalysis for creatively re-imagining larger scale futures in hopeful and previously unimagined terms.

10:30—11:00

Morning tea

11:00—13:00

Panel: Mourning across the lifespan

Speakers: Dr Timothy Keogh, Ms Sonia Wechsler, Dr Shahid Najeeb
Chair: Ms Christina Millott

Mourning across the lifespan

Speaker: Dr Shahid Najeeb

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Abstract
This paper explores how the meaning of mourning changes across the lifespan as we move through living largely in fantasy, to engaging with reality and finally coming to understand something of the inherent significance of our existence, much like water cycling through sky and earth, becomes a river, that inevitably merges with the eternal, unlimited ocean.

Life after loss: a struggle with mourning

Speaker: Ms Sonia Wechsler

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Abstract
The interplay between psychic life and death is always precarious. For some this is a battle being waged in their body and through their identity. This paper explores clinical work with a patient with profound loss and trauma and her struggle to mourn these losses to begin to live.

Psychoanalytic understandings about shared grief and mourning

Speaker: Dr Timothy Keogh

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Abstract
Unmourned losses can contribute significantly to a rupture in a couple relationship when the couple is faced with the loss of a child or pregnancy. Psychoanalysts working with such couples benefit from the enduring value of the seminal ideas about mourning put forward by Freud and others, notably Klein. Their continuing influence has been reflected in research during the last two decades on what has been termed Complicated or Prolonged Grief, the latter of which became a distinct diagnostic entity in the DSM V TR in 2022. This brief paper will describe the application of a short-term psychoanalytic intervention based on an integration of these ideas and this research for couples presenting with unresolved grief.

13:00—14:00

Lunch

AFPA - Australian Forensic Psychotherapy Association Meeting
Chair: Dr Gerard Webster

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The meeting will provide the opportunity to meet with the Executive Committee of AFPA who will discuss the membership requirements and the educational activities we will be offering. Anyone interested in forensic psychotherapy is welcome to attend.

14:00—15:00

National Isolation and its Impact; The Significance of ‘Things Edo-Like’

Dr. Naoki Fujiyama
Chair: Dr Shanthi Saha

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Japan, originally an island nation with a relatively isolated history, adopted a policy of National Isolation for 250 years during the Edo period from the 17th to the 19th century out of fear of Christianity. 'Things Edo-like' that emerged during that period, which is of pre (non) Oedipal and even apparently perverse quality, not only profoundly defines the mentality and culture of the Japanese to this day but also, paradoxically, strengthens Japan’s ties with the rest of the world.

15:00—16:00

Reflections on Identity and Change in Australia and Psychoanalysis

Dr Louise Gyler & Ms Louise Hird
Chair: Dr Shanthi Saha

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As APAS celebrates its 50th anniversary, it is important to pause and reflect on our identity and development by asking a series of questions. They include: what do we stand for? Who are we? How does the socio-cultural history of Australia reverberate in our identifications and contemporary ways of being? These are complex questions with responses that resonant differently depending on the location of our perspective. In our presentation, we invite reflection and dialogue from both inside and outside APAS to open spaces for thought.

16:00—16:30

Afternoon tea

16:30—17:30

Panel: Reflections on the Future

Dr Harriet Wolfe, Dr Naoki Fujiyama, Mrs Maria Teresa Hooke, Dr Tim Alexander, Dr Lahvinya Kulaendra
Chair: Mrs Elizabeth Kerr

17:30—17:45

Closing

President of APAS, Dr Louise Gyler

8:30—10:15

Room 1: Psychoanalytic approaches to mourning in couples (Sponsored by the IPA Couple and Family Psychoanalysis Committee [COFAP] and the APAS Couple and Family Psychoanalysis Interest Group)

Ms Mary Morgan (via Zoom), Dr Ken Israelstam, Dr Timothy Keogh
Chair Ms Roslyn Glickfeld

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In this workshop invited international guest speaker Mary Morgan (British Society) will present a paper focusing on the relevance of mourning in couples therapy which will be followed by a discussant paper from Ken Israelstam. As this workshop is a part of the 50th APAS Anniversary conference Timothy Keogh will also provide an outline of the history of couples and family psychoanalysis in the Asia-Pacific region. A large group discussion will provide a space to workshop all the material presented.

9:00—10:15

Room 2: Crisis and Responders Outreach (CARO)

Ms Charlie Stansfield, Ms Gloria Blanco, Dr Richard Price
Chair Dr Vivienne Elton

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The psychoanalytic community in Australia is recognizing the importance of addressing social crises such as the displacement of refugees. This paper explores the role of psychoanalysis in creating a safe space for people who have experienced trauma, including those affected by political persecution, wars or terrorist attack. Psychoanalysts and trained analysts are well-equipped to provide support and understanding for those in need. Through case examples, the presenters highlight the ways in which psychoanalysis can be used to respond to crises, outbreak and provide ethical care.

10:15—10:45

Morning tea

10:45—12:30

Room 1: Child & Adolescent Workshop

Adolescence: a journey into the unknown – An exploration of a young adolescent whose disruption in puberty impacted the course of her analysis

(In-room only - limited to 25 - 30 pax)

Ms Pamela Shein
Chair Ms Charlie Stansfield

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A clinical case is used as a starting point for an exploration of a young girl in the throes of an upheaval who presents the kinds of difficulties where the Child Analyst finds herself navigating fluctuating mental states. The analysis I want to discuss is marked by features which help us question our ability to understand the way the most primitive relationships manifest themselves in any particular analysis.

In this analysis the particular countertransference reactions and enactments that developed became my most important guide to understanding this adolescent’s painful situation.

Room 2: Encounter With The Other

(In-room only)

Dr Craig San Roque

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In a series organised under the banner of Two Way (2021), Mishel McMahon, a Yorta Yorta woman from rural Victoria, encouraged people attending to start with themselves. This seems an apt place to begin. How does the encounter between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians affect us? The Two-Way Committee is offering a reflective space for participants to consider these relationships. The focus of the group will be on the impact these encounters have on us. The group will be facilitated by Dr. Craig San Roque and is open to anyone interested in this discussion.

Room 3: ‘Memories in feelings’ and the Symbolising Function in Child Analysis

(In-room & online)

Dr Louise Gyler

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Children needing psychodynamic therapy often present in disorganised ways without any coherent narrative of their anxieties and dilemmas. Their vulnerabilities are expressed in action and as ‘memories in feelings’. In this presentation, a child’s idiosyncratic expression of ‘working through’ their internal void is described, demonstrating a transformation from action to thought. This clinical account helps to elucidate questions about the nature of the symbolising process in child work.

12:30—12:45

Closing

Ms Sonia Wechsler & Dr Louise Gyler