🇳🇴 At the end of last month, the 39th Annual European Psychoanalytical Federation Conference, “Neutrality – Neutralität – Neutralité,” took place. Our thanks to the organizers and hosts for such a welcoming event — we had a wonderful time in Oslo. Here are some impressions from the IJP Board ✨
🔑 Lastly, Vic Sedlak offers a discussion of Francis Pasche’s paper, reflecting on the challenges and richness of engaging with a text shaped by the French psychoanalytic tradition.
🔑 Following this, Nathalie Zilkha revisits Francis Pasche’s "From the Ambivalent Superego to the Impersonal Superego", tracing the transformation of the ego–superego relation from admiration and idealisation toward an impersonal, apophatic form.
Read now at pep-web!
🔑 In the Key Papers section, this edition holds special significance. As section editor Bernard Reith notes, it introduces the last paper selected by the deeply missed former Editor-in-Chief Dana Birksted-Breen. Her choice: Francis Pasche’s "From the Ambivalent Superego to the Impersonal Superego"
Join us on March 27th at the EPF Conference for "The Annuals of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis" panel, held in memory of Jean-Michel Quinodoz.
🗓 March 27, 2026
⏰ 17.30–19.00
🎙 Chair: Francis Grier (Editor-in-Chief, IJP)
🗣 Speakers: Monica Bomba, Daniela Luca, Melis Tanik Sivri
🔒 In the Psychoanalytic Controversies section, We Must Publish Material from Our Sessions, So how do We do It Safely? David Tuckett considers how algorithms and future technologies might enable the re identification of anonymised patients.
Read now at pep-web!
🔒 Next up Vittorio Lingiardi and Mariana Liotti reframe anonymisation as a process of transforming clinical experience into shareable narrative in "As Fragments of a Vessel: On Anonymisation and the Ethics of Clinical Case Writing".
Read now at pep-web!
🔒 Lastly, Aden Evens and Sarah Ackerman in Breadth Psychology reflect on how digital life reshapes personhood and challenges the paradox of confidentiality at the heart of the analytic situation.
🔒 "To Recognise Oneself" by Uta Karacaoğlan presents anonymisation as a multi-stage process: documenting the clinical event, abstracting general insights, and finally shaping a clinical vignette. While patients may still recognise themselves, these steps help prevent third-party identification.
🔒 "What a Tangled WEB we Weave" by Denia G. Barrett examines the ethical tightrope of writing about child and adolescent psychoanalysis. In a digital age where almost anything can be found, preserving patient and family confidentiality is more challenging than ever.
🔒 In the Psychoanalytic Controversies section, Confidentiality, Anonymisation and their Digital Discontents takes a close look at how digital life complicates the foundational ethics of psychoanalysis. First up, "Is Anonymisation Possible?" by John Churcher.
🧩 Concluding the Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique section, Franco De Masi and Gabriella Giustino examine sensoriality in development and psychopathology. In healthy development, sensoriality precedes thought, shaping the mind’s early engagement with the world.
Read now at pep-web!
🎶 Continuing in Issue 6 in the Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique section, Sebastian Leikert explores voice, body-self, and trauma in the analytic space. From the mother’s voice in the womb to the echoes of ritual and music, voice carries emotions beyond words.
Read now at pep-web!
🧠 Opening Issue 6 in the Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique section reflects on Alessandra Lemma’s notion of the meniscus of the self in technogenetic times. When reflection becomes surface bound, coherence can come at the cost of depth.
✨ Issue 6 brings together Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique, Psychoanalytic Controversy, Key Papers, Clinical Dilemmas, IPA Congress Panel Reports, and Book Reviews, with a strong focus on ethics, anonymity, the superego, trauma, and the conditions of analytic work in digital contexts.
🔔 Coming up next week: IJP Winter Study Meeting
Join us on Saturday 14th February from 2–4pm (GMT) for our next Study Meeting, featuring Jill Salberg discussing her thought-provoking paper "Crises and Enactments
While Ending Treatment " (Vol. 105, Issue 4, IJP).
Jill Salberg with discussants
Lesley Steyn and Stefano Bolognini 💬
14 February 2026
2:00 to 4:00 pm BST ⏰
Online via Zoom 💻
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Go to buff.ly/9fCIzbi or visit buff.ly/AXJ9Yys to find out how to subscribe to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
📝 Register now to join us online next Saturday!
📅 Saturday 14 February 2026
⏰ 2:00 to 4:00 pm GMT
💻 Online via Zoom
🎟 Registration via Eventbrite and PaDS (free for IJP subscribers)
More info at www.theijp.org/study-meetings
🔔 Coming up next month: IJP Winter Study Meeting
Join us on Saturday 14th February from 2–4pm (BST) for our next Study Meeting, featuring Jill Salberg discussing her thought-provoking paper "Crises and Enactments
While Ending Treatment " (Vol. 105, Issue 4, IJP).
Jill Salberg with discussants
Lesley Steyn and Stefano Bolognini 💬
14 February 2026
2:00 to 4:00 pm BST ⏰
Online via Zoom 💻
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Go to buff.ly/9fCIzbi or visit buff.ly/AXJ9Yys to find out how to subscribe to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
📝 Register now to join us online with Jill Salberg, Lesley Steyn and Stefano Bolognini
📅 Saturday 14 February 2026
⏰ 2:00 to 4:00 pm BST
💻 Online via Zoom
🎟 Registration via Eventbrite and PaDS (free for IJP subscribers)
More info at www.theijp.org/study-meetings
Last chance 🔔 Join us tomorrow for the IJP Online Conference 2026 on Saturday 10 January 2026. Register via the IOPA to secure your spot now: psychoanalysis.org.uk/civicrm-even...
Here’s our programme for this Saturday, when John Steiner, Giuseppe Civitarese, Cecilia Taiana, Joshua Durban, and Francis Grier will explore extreme violence – in war, childhood, autism, and the consulting room.
🗓️ Join us this weekend for the IJP Online Conference 2026 on Saturday 10 January 2026. Register via the IOPA to secure your spot now: psychoanalysis.org.uk/civicrm-even...
Go to buff.ly/9fCIzbi or visit buff.ly/AXJ9Yys to find out how to subscribe to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
✨ We’re delighted to share that Issue 5 of Volume 106 of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis is now available online!
📚 In our Book Review section, Sharon Numa reviews The Trauma of Racism: Lessons from the Therapeutic Encounter, edited by Beverly J. Stoute and Michael Slevin (Routledge, 2023), a collection of essays examining racism as collective and individual trauma through the lens of psychoanalysis.
📚 In our Book Review section, Miguel Leivi reviews On Freud’s “Neurosis and Psychosis” and “The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis” 100 Years Later, edited by Gabriela Legorreta and Catalina Bronstein (Routledge, 2024).
💬 In "Response to Moss" Shmuel Erlich reacts to Donald Moss’s letter.
Read now at pep-web!
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Visit www.theijp.org to find out how to subscribe to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
💬 In "Response to Erlich" Donald Moss reacts to Shmuel Erlich’s paper in Issue 1, 2025.
Read now at pep-web!
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Visit www.theijp.org to find out how to subscribe to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
💬 In "Response to Parsons" Shmuel Erlich reacts to Michael Parsons’s paper in Issue 1, 2025.
Read now at pep-web!
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Visit www.theijp.org to find out how to subscribe to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.