Today e-jungian.com is reporting for you from the 3rd European Conference for Analytical Psychology which is taking place by the beautiful shore of Trieste. Traditionally it has been a place of the meeting of different cultures. Today, Jungian analysts and trainees from about 35 countries met here. We are happy to send you our impressions and news from the Conference. We hope it will be a stimulating experience and some beginning of the discussion about Encounters, Traditions, Developments and the cultural crossroad at which psychoanalysis stands nowadays.
The conference began with two great speakers – Giuseppe Dell’Acqua (History of the Madhouse City) and Henry Abramovitch (Working through Culture: Clinical Issues in Treating People from Other Cultures).
As Abramovitch noticed, in the global world of today, analysts are increasingly called upon to treat people from cultures that are both strange and unknown to them. Working across cultures raises new challenges. It is assumed that both analyst and patient will understand unspoken cultural codes, references and key metaphors, as well as the the differences between languages, where the same words do not always mean the same.
Similarly here, in a cultural mixture from so many regions, for four days we will be all trying to meet in the borderland that opens up in the place of intersection of our mutual influences. In this place there is not only a chance for us to understand each other. We can also understand ourselves in a new way – thanks to presence of the others.
