We are glad to announce the first European Conference on the topic of adolescence that will be held in 2024, from 28th to 30th of August in the fascinating Sicilian city of Siracusa, Italy. We see it as a special and hopefully thought provoking opportunity for child and adolescent analysts and trainees, but also for those who – even working exclusively with adults – are confronted in their everyday clinical practice with adolescence as a state of mind and as an always challenging cultural and anthropological dimension.
We would like to stimulate the active participation of all analytically-trained therapists interested in sharing their reflections on the contemporary developments in the theory and practice of the analytical approach to adolescence. The title of the Conference, Adolescence: Anxieties and Forms of Resilience, is meant to address a dramatic polarity: Anxiety – on the one hand – is a hidden or at times overwhelming everyday companion of adolescents, leading them to a variety of manifestations of their psychic pain, ranging from living in the alienating dimension of a disembodied (cyber)-space to the disruptive dimension of self-harming conducts, from the incumbent paralysis of depression to the frantic and sterile acceleration of a world made meaningless, from a flattened past to an unthinkable future. But on the other hand, the title addresses resilience as a key factor, the ultimate vital resource of the adolescent mind, ready to be held and to unfold via the precious work of the transference.
The IAAP Executive Committee together with the Working Party on Childhood and Adolescence chaired by Brigit Soubrouillard has encouraged this conference responding to the need expressed by analysts from all over Europe. This is also a recognition of the contribution made by Jungian analysts who work with children and adolescents to the theory and practice of analytical psychology.
It is a great opportunity to put together different clinical approaches developed in recent years to hopefully create a corpus of ideas and methods based on our reflections and observations.
We encourage the submission of abstracts and posters, with clinical and theoretical contributions.