Online & In-room | Adelaide Pavillion, South Australia

This 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 perspective to think through its psychic and relational consequences.

Paul Williams

Read more

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 Franciso Centre for Psychoanalysis.

John M Coetzee

Read more

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.

Gil Anaf

Read more

Gil Anaf is a psychiatrist / psychoanalyst in private practice. He was the founding President of the National Association of Practicing Psychiatrists which was involved in advocacy around mental health policy. He is a Training Analyst and Chair of the Adelaide Branch of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society, and has published papers on psychiatry and the community, on the interface between funding and psychoanalytic treatment, and on Aboriginal dispossession.

Matthew McArdle

Read more

Matthew is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst working in Melbourne. He is a Training and Supervising Analyst of APAS. He is past Melbourne Branch and Institute Chair. He is the current APAS President.

Rise Becker

Read more

Rise Becker is a clinical psychologist as well as a training and supervising psychoanalyst with the Sydney Branch of APAS in which she has held various positions. She currently serves as the chair of the National Education and Training Committee (NEAT). She is also vice president of the Australasian Confederation of Psychoanalytical Psychotherapies (ACPP).

Teresa Russo

Read more

Dr Teresa Russo is an Infant Mental Health Clinician, a Child and Adult Psychoanalyst and a Training Analyst with the Melbourne Branch of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. She is a faculty member of the Infant Mental Health Advanced Training (IMHAT) program offered through Mindful, The Victorian State-Wide Centre for Training and Research in Developmental Health. Teresa has a private practice in Melbourne, working with adults and young children.

Frances Thomson-Salo

Read more

Frances Thomson-Salo PhD, is a Training Analyst and past President of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. Frances trained with the British Psychoanalytical Society and is a member of the IPA Committee on Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies. She has a longstanding interest in infancy and is the author of Engaging Infants (2018).

Gloria Blanco

Read more

Gloria Blanco is an analyst in training with the Australian Psychoanalytical Society (APAS) and a member of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of Australasia (PPAA). She is a IPSO representative in the IPA in the humanitarian Field Committee. Gloria is a Clinical Psychologist, a registered Psychotherapist, and a Clinical Counsellor with the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA), as well as a certified Mental Health Practitioner. Additionally, she serves as a teacher and supervisor with the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance (CAPA). Her professional trajectory encompasses private practice, public health settings (hospitals), educational institutions (schools), and university teaching.

Shanthi Saha

Read more

Shanthi Saha is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in full time private practice in Adelaide She is a training analyst with the Adelaide Branch of Australian Psychoanalytical Society and is an accredited supervisor for psychotherapy for trainee psychiatrists. She has particular interest in educational activities of the Adelaide Institute of Psychoanalysis. She is involved in organizing as well as conducting seminars run by the Adelaide Institute including the seminar series on de-escalation of suicidal patients with BPD in the emergency department.

Roslyn Glickfeld

Read more

Roslyn Glickfeld is a psychoanalyst and psychologist in private practice. She began training as a marriage counsellor in the 1980s while completing a BA. After working at Anglican Marriage Guidance Council and Relationships Australia she became interested in psychoanalytic thinking and undertook psychoanalytic training. She is a member of the APAS Professional Assistance Committee and a member of the Board of the Australian Psychoanalytic Foundation.

Timothy Keogh

Read more

Timothy Keogh is an APAS training analyst, Associate Professor (University of Sydney), Visiting Professor to Tongji Medical College (Wuhan) and the Sixth Hospital, Peking University (Beijing). In his role as a couple therapist, he is also Co-Chair (Asia-Pacific) of the IPA Committee on Couple and Family Psychoanalysis (COFAP) the founding President of Penthos, a psychoanalytic charity for couples and a member of the International Editorial Advisory Board of the journal Couple and Family Psychoanalysis.

Lindy Per

Read more

Lindy came to train in Clinical Psychology and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from a background in Philosophy and Literature - interested in Existential Theory. In her University teaching work she participated in assisting Traumatised and Politically affected youth in South Africa focussing on Adolescents in turmoil.In Australia she trained as a Psychoanalyst in Melbourne and has been working Psychoanalytically - first in the Public system and then in private practice for 30 years. She retains a strong interest in working with young adults from diverse backgrounds - as well as in Applied Psychoanalysis – especially Geopolitical turmoil and change. Currently she Chairs the Psychoanalytic Assistance Committee of APAS and is a Board Member of The ACCP.

08:30 - 08:45

Welcome to APAS Conference

By APAS President, Matthew McArdle

09:00 - 10:30

IN-ROOM AND ONLINE

Notes on Dehumanization and Soul Murder

This is about a form of traumatizing experience that is, to a greater or lesser extent, likely to be universal - the phenomenon of soul murder. This intimate violence (physical or emotional) dehumanizes the other, children in particular, and in its severe forms involves cruelty, often sexual, and neglect of ordinary developmental needs leading to the destruction of joy in life. In less severe forms it can be times when we are denied the right to our own human feelings. Children and adults can perpetuate this attack on themselves. First identified in literature, soul murder has been investigated by psychoanalysts, including Ferenczi and Shengold. This paper looks at some of the ways soul murder sets up violation of the self from external and internal influences.'

A long march

This paper explores a view of how societal forces interact with early unconscious dynamics to produce an increasingly pervasive sense of alienation. This arguably carries implications for psychoanalysis as a whole.'

IN-ROOM AND ONLINE

"In Conversation"

Paul Williams and Nobel Prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee take part in a conversation about the complex psychological terrain explored in Williams’s upcoming novel, ‘Nothing Happened’. They will discuss themes of dehumanization, alienation, and redemption. Drawing on their respective disciplines, Williams and Coetzee 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.'

IN-ROOM AND ONLINE

Panel: Minds in Repair: Trauma, literature, and the analytic space

Rise Becker and Matthew McArdle offer brief reflections on trauma as it has emerged through today's presentations, before joining Gil Anaf and Paul Williams in open discussion. This closing hour is a space to pause, share and begin to digest what the day has brought.'

Closing remarks

By APAS President, Matthew McArdle

Welcome to APAS Conference

By APAS President, Matthew McArdle

CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Primitive Mental States- Psychoanalytic Understanding & Clinical Technique

This paper aims to explore the concept of primitive mental states outlining their core features and underlying dynamics within a psychoanalytic framework. Particular attention is given to the technical challenges that arise in therapy/analysis with these difficult to reach patients. The paper will examine key psychoanalytic techniques relevant to engaging such patients. Clinical vignettes are presented to illustrate and contextualise these techniques. Linking theory with clinical work, the paper aims to offer practical reflections for clinicians working with difficult to reach patients

Speaker: Shanthi Saha
Chair: Jenny Berg

CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Panel: Minds under siege: Defensive accommodation in couples and families

The workshop, in line with the theme of the conference, will focus on a family and couple intervention with a ‘living apart together’ (LAT) couple family who are trying to cope with the extreme distress of a lost pregnancy. In doing so it will examine how contemporary couple and family psychoanalysis is engaging with new forms of bonds in couples and families that have emerged in response to recent profound social and technological changes. It focuses in particular on the relevance of the concept of psychic retreats (Steiner, 1993) as applied to couples and families. It will consider how some families in response to the trauma of loss may regress to primitive underlying dynamics and use contemporary family morphologies as a means of psychically retreating from their crisis and camouflaging underlying core difficulties.

Speaker: Tim Keogh, Rosyln Glickfeld and Lindy Per
Chair: Rise Becker

CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Panel: Early ruptures and emotional development

The profound psychic and physical development that takes place over the course of infancy, childhood & adolescence provides a backdrop to the ongoing emotional growth of the child. It is in the intimate collaboration of mother and baby, connecting the baby to their emotional life, that a symbolic capacity evolves through touch, thought and language. If there have been disruptions to this process, the body may become the repository of experiences, unformed in meaning and language, leaving communication of emotional life to find somatic expression or eruptions in different forms at particular developmental junctures. This workshop, through clinical vignettes, looks at manifestations of these disturbances in babies, children and adolescents with particular emphasis on the nature and pervasive impact of traumatic early infantile ruptures that disturb the necessary and fundamental processes that nurture and encourage the development of a healthy sense of body and mind.

Speaker: Teresa Russo, Kate Kendall and Dimitra Bekos
Chair: Pam Shein

CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Panel: From dehumanisation to reparation: Psychoanalytic work in the community with victims of trauma

This panel examines psychoanalytic work in the community with individuals who have suffered experiences of trauma and forced migration. Central to these papers is the use of the countertransference to engage with states of mind that are expressed through the body, the voice, and within the analytic relationship itself. We will present work from the Australian Psychoanalytic Crisis and Responders Outreach (CARO), where the analyst uses the countertransference to enable patients to feel accompanied and heard.Clinical work with a woman affected by war reveals how trauma may be inscribed in the body when language fails. Through the countertransference, such silenced affects were gradually given voice. Case material of a refugee showing online work over a year will be discussed. Together, these papers examine the potential for reparation that may arise through psychoanalytic engagement in community contexts.

Speaker:Frances Thomson-Salo, Gloria Blanco
Chair: Vivienne Elton

Closing remarks

By Organizing Scientific Committee Chair Gil Anaf