Vienna – Kohut – Self Psychology:
Searching for Creativity in Times of Crisis

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17 – SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2018

Hotel Savoyen
Austria, VIENNA

The 41st Annual IAPSP International Conference: “Vienna-Kohut-Self Psychology: Searching for Creativity in Times of Crises” will be held in Vienna, Austria, Europe from Wednesday, October 17 – Saturday, October 20, 2018.

We invite you to come to Vienna, the city where a little over one hundred years ago psychoanalysis was created along with so many other innovations in art, music, and literature, and in the humanistic, social, and natural sciences, innovations that changed the world. Vienna during that exceptionally creative time was also the birthplace of Heinz Kohut. It was there that he attended the Döblinger Gymnasium, attended countless cultural events, underwent psychoanalysis, and studied medicine and it was there that the groundwork was laid for his subsequent creative revisions of psychoanalysis. But Vienna during the period of Kohut’s early years was also a hotbed of social and political tension that culminated in the uprising of 1934 and the emergence of Austro-Fascism and of anti- Semitism that culminated in the incorporation of Austria into the Third Reich in 1938, an event that forced Kohut to flee the city he loved and to which he was so deeply attached. In short, the Vienna of Kohut’s early years was place of exceptional creativity and of deep crisis.

As we return to Vienna, we again face a world of creativity and crisis, albeit different from the one that Kohut experienced. As was the case with Vienna of Kohut’s early years, where exceptional crisis was accompanied by exceptional creative achievement, this conference will seek to find creative ways to respond to the crises of our contemporary world. In the search for creativity in time of crisis, the conference will be organized around four themes: the History of psychoanalysis and self-psychology, set within its social, political, and cultural context; the Development of Kohut’s ideas and their fate over the years, as reflected in contemporary concepts of adolescence; the Crises of our time to which self-psychological developments seek to respond, and the Arts along with other sources of Creativity that can help us respond to the crises of our contemporary world.

Political, economic, social, and cultural uncertainty and upheaval is omnipresent as we plan this meeting. This upheaval does not exist just outside our offices. They are ever present in the background and foreground of our clinical work. Thus, the frame within which this meeting will unfold will recognize these crises as challenges and opportunities for creativity both outside and inside the consulting room, in theoretical advances, in the understanding of the human condition, and in responding effectively and humanistically to the uncertainty and danger of our contemporary world. We invite you to join us in Vienna in 2018 to develop creative responses through psychoanalysis and self psychology to the crises that we face as clinicians and citizens in our contemporary world. The conference will consist of Panel Presentations followed by Post Panel Group Discussions. There will also be Workshops and Original Paper Presentations.