Call for Participation!

(Proposal form links are located at the bottom of this webpage.)

IFPE’s 34th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference

Friends, Enemies, Allies, Suspects

October 17 – 19, 2024

Mayflower Park Hotel
405 Olive Way
Seattle, WA 98101

Awardees:

Lynne Layton, Ph.D.
Hans W. Loewald Memorial Award

B. William Brennan, ThM, MA, LMHC
Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educator

Caprice D. Hollins, Psy.D.
Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educator

John Totten, LMHC
Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educator

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states…Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

" ... people experience and subdivide the world in terms of Us and Them. In this ever-shifting yet reliably fixed world-view, now elegantly invalidated by science, every last one of us is someone else's Outsider.
Al Young, Outsiders: Poems about Rebels, Exiles, and Renegades

Call for Participation

We hope you will join us at IFPE’s 34th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference: Friends, Enemies, Allies, Suspects.

This year we are called to wrestle with what appears to be relational dichotomies of friends, enemies, allies, and suspects. However, as we lean closer, we see that we cannot separate ourselves from the intricate web of roles and identities in the wider human spaces we all inhabit.

How do we know where the other person, the other psychoanalytic theory, the other political party, is located? Can our relationships with our clients inhabit the arenas of friendship and enemy? What happens when a colleague, a supervisor, a mentor, a community whom we may have considered dear and a place of belonging no longer considers us in the same way? How do we hold onto our ideals of compromise and mutuality when we feel threatened? Should we always try to love our enemies? And would we know friendship without also knowing the felt experience of an enemy?

We invite you to consider not only the interrelatedness of friends, enemies, allies, and suspects, but to also reflect on how each of these individually have influenced or impacted you in some way…if it is possible to do so.

This year’s theme ignites debate and tension in the face of multiple global conflicts, and as we approach one of the most important elections in our country’s history. For many, speaking out creates fear. We are all looking to the other…with longing, hope, fear, anger…and hopefully…with love. Our relationships with each other, and the internal and external spaces these relationships inhabit, are more important than ever. For what do we have in this world, except for each other?

Our conference will be held October 17th – 19th, 2024, in Seattle, Washington, at the Mayflower Park Hotel.

Proposals are due by May 1st.

Erin Wright
Conference Chair

Ideas to stimulate your thinking:

● What is the role of friendship in your professional life?

● How do you work with a client who feels like an enemy?

● What happens when a colleague, community, or school of thought hurts you?

● What makes someone or something an enemy? A friend? An ally? Suspect? Can you have one without the other?

● If we are all interrelated, what pulls us to split?

● How does culture influence how we relate to each other?

● Have you ever felt like an enemy to your own self?

● How does the conference theme relate to how we choose to practice psychotherapy/psychoanalysis?

For over three decades, IFPE conferences have always emphasized the personal dimensions of our themes. Continuing with this tradition, our 2024 conference will feature presentations and panels that provoke the rethinking of ideas about psychoanalysis as a profession, as a sensibility and as a therapeutic method.

Please read before clicking on the link to submit your proposal. 

Thank you for your interest in participating in the 2024 IFPE Conference, Friends, Enemies, Allies, Suspects.

Our online proposal form is new this year. Please read the instructions in the "abstract" section to upload your Word document for the reviewers. 

If you prefer to use the traditional Word document proposal form as in past years, please click on the link at the bottom of this to download the Word document. Please email the completed Word document to IFPEcontact@gmail.com

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

• Individual Presentations* are limited to a maximum of twenty (20) minutes for the presentation portion, to allow for ample discussion time in the dialogue between presenter and attendees.

• Panels:* A typical panel is one hour thirty minutes in length, with each presenter limited to 20 minutes maximum. Proposals must have a minimum of 3 participants to qualify as a panel. Occasionally, further time alterations may be necessitated by our overall conference schedule. 

A conference booklet will be distributed to all participants and registrants at the time of the conference that will contain abstracts, brief biographies and email contact information.  Presentation summaries will be posted on the website.  The conference is conducted in English. Bilingual or multilingual proposals must be accompanied by an English translation.

Proposals are due by May 1st, 2024.
 
All presenters must register for the conference within 10 days of notification of acceptance, when early-bird rates will apply.
 
The Conference will take place October 17-19, 2024, in Seattle, Washington.
 
Note Regarding Continuing Education Credits: IFPE exists outside the organizational traditions of psychoanalysis, with neither authority to “authenticate” training nor favors to bestow; beholden to no parent institution, specific theoretical persuasion or particular professional discipline; offering only the opportunity to meet and dialogue with colleagues and others on safe ground as we consider the human condition (including our own) from all perspectives. It is therefore an issue of both congruence and integrity that we do not offer Continuing Education Credits through an organization.  However, many attendees have found that their license governing body allows a certain number of hours to be counted towards Continuing Education credit under “Other Learning Experience,” and have been able to use our Certificate of Attendance towards CE credit.  We highly recommend checking with your state laws to see if IFPE’s conference may be used for Continuing Education credit. 
 
Certificates of attendance are available to be emailed to attendees after the conference, upon request.
 
IFPE membership is not requested or required for first-time presenters. It is our policy to require 2nd time presenters to show their support of IFPE with their membership. In situations necessitating choices among multiple worthy proposals, preference may be given to those proposals submitted by members. The IFPE membership form is available on our website, and an online payment option is available: www.ifpe.org/membership-benefits/
 
Your acceptance will be a reservation for a presentation slot, thus the conference fee will be non-refundable, and non-transferable. Your acceptance is also an acknowledgement that you are the sole author of your presentation and its published abstract, and that IFPE assumes no responsibility for their contents.   

Please click on the link below to submit your Proposal OnLine,
based on your proposal format:

Individual Presentation

Panel Presentation/Other: 3-Person or requesting an atypical format

Please click on the link below to download the traditional Word document, as in past years:

Individual Proposal

Panel or “Other” Format

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please click Here