Date: 2 December 2015
Time: 8-8.15 - 10.00pm
Presenters: Jan Abram (British Psychoanalytical Society), Leopoldo Bleger (Association Psychanalytique de France), and Philippe Valon (Association Psychanalytique de France)
‘The Specificity of Psychoanalytic Treatment Today’ is a Working Party Research Group of the European Psychoanalytic Federation. This Research Group, known as the ‘Paris Group’, applies a qualitative research methodology based on the fundamentals of the psychoanalytic method i.e. free association and free floating attention. The inspiration for this way of working on clinical material is based on the work of René Kaës and Jean-Luc Donnet. Donnet, especially, pioneered the specific phenomenon of ‘inter-analytic exchange’ (Donnet 2009; Kaës 2013).
The main aim of the ‘Paris Group’ is to analyse the specificity of psychoanalysis and its relevance to contemporary analytic practice. To this end, clinical inter-analytic groups are held during the pre-Congress days of the main international meetings of the International Psychoanalytic Association. For each group, of 12 – 15 analysts, an analyst presents 3 consecutive sessions of a current analytic treatment with no reference to the patient’s history of course of the analysis. The group members free associate to the material while the moderators listen and comment on the group process. A member of each clinical inter-analytic group takes a report, like process notes, of what happens in the group. The ‘Paris Group’, which is the core group of moderators, meets two or three times a year, to study the reports and their findings.
For this Research Lecture, three longstanding members of the ‘Paris Group’ will present the different components of the Research.
1. Leopoldo Bleger will present the history of the ‘Paris Group’ and describe how the methodology has evolved over the past 9 years.
2. Philippe Valon will then present the work of the ‘Paris Group’ and illustrate how we study the reports of the clinical inter-analytic groups.
3. Jan Abram will illustrate how the method works in a clinical inter-analytic group and its effect on the subsequent analytic treatment over the ensuing year.
References:
Bleger, L. Frisch,S. Sechaud, E. (2010) The Specificity of Psychoanalytic Treatment Today in Bulletin of the EPF, 64, Working Parties of the EPF 2001 - 10
Donnet, J.L. (2009) Clinical reports, interanalytic exchanges in The analyzing situation Karnac Books
Kaës, R. (2013) Psychoanalytic work in groups EPF conference 2013
For tickets (free to candidates and BPAS members) please contact Marjory Goodall (marjory.goodall@iopa.org.uk). Please note that Members and Candidates must still apply for tickets although no payment is required.
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