About this Event
(This is an In-Person and a Hybrid event - Zoom link will be send to to tikcets holders the day before the Congress )
CONGRESS TIMETABLE
9.00 - 9.30 Registration
9.30 - 9.45 Welcome by Micheli Romao – APPI Chair and introduction by Carol Owens, Chair of Congress
9.45 - 10.30 Guest Speaker – Ian Parker
10.30 – 11.00 Pablo Lerner
11.00 - 11.30 Coffee Break
11.30 - 12.00 Andrea Guerra
12.00 – 12.30 Mike Holohan and Ruth Muller
12.30 – 13.30 Lunch (not provided)
13.30 – 14.00 Denise Brett
14.00 - 14.30 Rachel Brown
14.30 - 15.00 Eve Watson
15.00 – 15.30 Coffee Break
15.30 – 16.00 Antonis Poulios
16.00 – 17.00 Speakers Plenary Session
17.00 – 17.15 Closing Comments by Ger McLoughlin, Chair APPI Congress Events Committee
7 CPD POINTS WILL BE AWARDED FOR ATTENDING THE CONGRESS
Presenter: Ian Parker
Title: Psychoanalysis and history: Reflections on Seminar XII
Seminar XII was given by Lacan at a moment of crisis, of a turning point in the history of psychoanalysis, and it includes reflection on the location of psychoanalysis as such in history. Key questions – ‘crucial problems’ posed for psychoanalysts – include the inclusion of the clinician and researcher in the phenomena they describe, and the position of the analyst. We see in Seminar XII an account of the ‘extimate’ nature of psychoanalysis, in dimensions of space, of the place of the clinic in culture, and of time, of the historicity of psychoanalytic theory and practice. This paper extracts elements of the argument from the seminar and its engagement with contemporary psychoanalytic debates to explore how our psychoanalysis today might, in the light of decolonial critiques, reflect upon itself.
Bio: Ian Parker is a practising psychoanalyst in Manchester working with the Red Clinic, and co-author, with David Pavón-Cuéllar, of Psychoanalysis and Revolution: Critical Psychology for Liberation Movements (2021, 1968 Press) Psychoanalysis and history: Reflections on Seminar XII Seminar XII was given by Lacan at a moment of crisis, of a turning point in the history of psychoanalysis, and it includes reflection on the location of psychoanalysis as such in history. Key questions – ‘crucial problems’ posed for psychoanalysts – include the inclusion of the clinician and researcher in the phenomena they describe, and the position of the analyst. We see in Seminar XII an account of the ‘extimate’ nature of psychoanalysis, in dimensions of space, of the place of the clinic in culture, and of time, of the historicity of psychoanalytic theory and practice. This paper extracts elements of the argument from the seminar and its engagement with contemporary psychoanalytic debates to explore how our psychoanalysis today might, in the light of decolonial critiques, reflect upon itself. Ian Parker is a practising psychoanalyst in Manchester working with the Red Clinic, and co- author, with David Pavón-Cuéllar, of Psychoanalysis and Revolution: Critical Psychology for Liberation Movements (2021, 1968 Press)
Presenter: Pablo Lerner
Title: Whereof One Cannot Speak, Nevertheless, I say
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”, Wittgenstein famously wrote to conclude his Tractatus. From Kant onwards, this prohibition of speaking of the unspeakable has served as a cornerstone in continental philosophy: against metaphysics, against ontotheology, against mysticism. In the field of psychoanalysis, it was Lacan who took upon himself the task of instituting this prohibition, emphasizing the subject’s labyrinthic confinement in language and all of the impasses and impossibilities inscribed therein, gathering them under the concept of the real: what resists symbolization. The Lacanian real is the unnameable. There are things that cannot be said even to exist, and each attempt to nevertheless name them defeats its own purpose, owing to the simple fact that all endeavors to escape the labyrinth by naming the unnameable only takes you from one room of the labyrinth to another: there is no way out. But psychoanalysis is not a philosophy – it is a talking cure, and its theory, apart from facilitating psychoanalytic practice, should arguably serve the purpose of elucidating whatever takes place within the field of subjectivity. But could it be that the emphasis on the limitation that language imposes on the subject in effect has become a limitation that psychoanalysis imposes on itself, foreclosing even the possibility to tentatively approach or account for phenomena that perhaps should not primarily be understood with regard to the rule of language? And if it so happens to be the case, should we refrain from speaking only because it is prohibited, perhaps even impossible to do so? To take but one example, what hinders us from speaking of the real not only as what resists symbolization, but also as what resists imagination, independently of the workings of the symbol, rendering the real unimaginable rather than unnameable – unimaginable and not even unnameable?
Bio: Pablo Lerner is a psychologist and psychoanalyst based in Stockholm, Sweden. He is the author of Speculating on the Edge of Psychoanalysis: Rings and Voids (Routledge, 2023), editor of Freud och dödsdriften (TankeKraft, 2021), and author of many articles in English, Swedish, and Spanish. His work spans a wide range of topics in the field of psychoanalysis and its intersections with philosophy, theology, and aesthetics – themes such as solitude, creation, poetry, mysticism, grief, the death drive, Lacanian metapsychology, the art of interpretation, the clinical structures, and Freudian epistemology.
Presenter: Andréa M. C. Guerra
Title: Interpretation and the Proper Name in Jacques Lacan’s Seminar XII
By employing non-Euclidean surfaces in Seminar XII, Lacan demonstrates that the unconscious is neither a deep layer nor a fold to be undone. Rather, it is an effect of language crossing over the body, and the subject is, therefore, always traumatised. Through the transformation of the torus into a Klein bottle, he illustrates how the circuit of self-penetration (autopénétration), followed by the reversal crossing (rebroussement), seals the movement that constitutes a continuous surface—without inside or outside—just like the unconscious, which is structured as a language.
The point where this crossing (rebroussement) leaves an opening in the structure becomes the support for the proper name. Unlike the patronymic, which is inherited from the symbolic genealogy of the family of origin, the forename engages the subject in the desire of the Other. While it designates the subject, the forename simultaneously enacts its disappearance. It functions as a kind of a flywheel, made to fill holes. It falsely appears to suture, pointing to what is missing while covering over the lack.
We return to the case of Serge Leclaire, discussed in this seminar, to examine the limits of psychoanalytic interpretation, which must aim at jouissance. Through the extraction of the term Poordjeli—which functions as a proper name in the sense of a name of jouissance—Leclaire attempts to pursue a path that proves impossible within the analytic experience. He would have us believe that the unconscious can be elucidated in its moteriality, letter by letter. Yet in this operation, the subject celebrates the phallic letter, for no phalasser can—or is meant to—identify with their own unconscious. The limit of analytic interpretation lies in the jouissance isolated from the signifier, with which the subject may learn to make do (savoir-y-faire).
Bio: Andréa M. C. Guerra is a brasilian psychoanalyst with a master’s degree in social psychology from Federal University of Minas Gerais and a PhD in psychoanalytic theory from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, with a period of in-depth studies at the Université de Rennes II-France; Adjunct Professor of Postgraduate Studies in Psychology at UFMG, Coordinator of the @PSILACS Laboratory (Psychoanalysis and Social Bond in the Contemporary World); Federal government researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and author of many articles and books.
Presenters: Michael Holohan and Ruth Müller
Title: Technology on the couch: Staging encounters between psychoanalysis and Science & Technology Studies (STS)
Thinking about the future, one thing that appears obvious is that technology is playing an ever-increasing role, including in questions of health and mental health. How can psychoanalysis respond to this increasing role of technology in society, and as a growing part of our experiences of patients in our consulting rooms? One field to turn to and learn from in their treatment of human-technology relatings is Science & Technology Studies (STS). STS is an interdisciplinary research field that studies how social, political and cultural values and structures affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how science and technology in turn affect society, politics and culture. STS thinks about interpersonal relations as inherently linked to and structured by discourse, interrogating the role of discourse in the production of subjectivity as constantly evolving in the interplay between both human and non-human actors. Psychoanalysis and STS share a focus on situatedness, as is reflected in the quote attributed to Lacan that was chosen for the conference, “What exists is one by one: each one must reinvent psychoanalysis on his own.” This approach shares a sensibility with what Donna Haraway calls “situated knowledges”, the idea that knowledge is not one single thing, but is multiple and always shaped by the social, historical and cultural contexts in which it is produced. Both psychoanalysis and STS are concerned with the situatedness of experience, as well as the embeddedness of experience in social structure. Particularly in our age of technology, a kind of psychoanalysis that returns to its roots and reflects the individual in society is important for responding to technologized futures. STS can provide resources for psychoanalysis on how to think about technology in the experience of the patient, as well as how to situate that social experience within a wider societal context. In this talk we will explore how STS can be mobilized in psychoanalytic thinking, engaging with both theory and examples from clinical encounters.
Bios: Michael Holohan is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Munich, Germany, and has an interdisciplinary background in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, literary theory, and science and technology studies. From 2020-2024, Michael was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of History and Ethics in Medicine at the School of Medicine, Technical University of Munich, where he explored the relationship between different conceptions of the mind in psychoanalysis and biomedicine and the relevance of psychoanalytic thought for contemporary biomedical practice, research, and ethics. He holds a PhD in the History of Consciousness from the University of California Santa Cruz, and an MSc in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the School of Medicine, University College Dublin. He is a member of the Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland and the Irish Council for Psychotherapy.
Ruth Müller is Professor for Science and Technology Policy and Vice Dean for Talent Management and Diversity at the School of Social Sciences and Technology, Technical University of Munich. She is a researcher in the field of Science & Technology Studies (STS), a social science research field which explores the interactions between science, technology and society. In her research, she explores academic work and evaluation cultures as well as the production, circulation and reception of scientific knowledge and technological innovations in society and policy, with a specific focus on knowledge and innovation in biomedicine, the life sciences and AI. She is an expert in facilitating inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration across fields and sectors as well as in different formats for engaging the public. Across all her activities, she centers questions of social justice, diversity and equity.
Presenter: Denise Brett
Title: What need you being come to sense?
In today’s world of a rapidly disintegrating Symbolic and an overgrown Imaginary, the Real still persists.
What is the place of analysis today?
In the past, one might say it existed to subvert the order of things, to put everything into question. Today, the pull for psychoanalysis to step into the breach, to uphold the Symbolic, to offer solutions, is strong. Yet never before has it been more necessary for psychoanalysis to hold to the position of not-knowing; to sustain its position at the intersection of the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary, without closing the gap that constitutes the subject.
Today, as the Symbolic order crumbles, marked by the erosion of shared meaning, the proliferation of fragmented identities, and the rise of algorithmic certainties, psychoanalysis is increasingly pressured to adapt, to help, to soothe. The decline of traditional structures such as religion, disillusionment with political leadership, and the horrifying spectacle of global events deepen a collective sense of disorientation. Psychoanalysis must resist the temptation to fill the gap left by the decline of the master signifier (S1), the quilting point that anchors the field of meaning. It must hold fast to its ethical function: to sustain division rather than patch it over with identity, ideology, or cure.
Like the observer in Young’s double-slit experiment, the analyst’s mere presence alters the field. The subject is not left untouched. To bear witness without mastering the subject is itself a radical act. It upholds the ethical stance of psychoanalysis in a world desperate for certainty.Our methodologies may vary, but the premise remains the same: the act of bearing witness is powerful.
Bio: Denise Brett is a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, supervisor, and study and exam coach based in private practice in Clonskeagh, Dublin. She has worked with adults and children since 2002, with extensive experience working with adolescents. She holds a BA in Psychology, an MSc in Clinical Psychotherapy, and an Advanced Diploma in Clinical Hypnotherapy.
Her post-master’s training includes two years in APPI’s Programme of Formation and two years in child psychoanalysis with analysts from Espace Analytique and Analyse Freudienne. Denise is an accredited member of the Irish Council for Psychotherapy (ICP) and the National Guild of Hypnotists (NGH). She has presented papers in Dublin and Paris and has published in the psychoanalytic journals The Letter and Analyse Freudienne Presse (in French and Spanish). Her interests include Lacan’s use of topology.
Presenter: Rachel Brown
Title: The Fantasy of Recovery
Recovery is the aim of most therapeutic interventions, implying that there will be an end to the symptoms of mental suffering and distress, or that the client is at least capable of independently managing their symptoms. In this paper, I will argue however, that what often meets the standard for recovery under certain circumstances is a performative and symbolic mastery of the signifiers of recovery linked to hegemonic social norms – the expectations of the Other – as distinct from the reduction of suffering. This critical exploration of experiences of recovery uses an intersectional and multilevel qualitative analysis, including reflective thematic analysis, where “recovery” emerged as a key theme. This was then explored further through a Lacanian lens combined with a Bourdieusian practice framework. Using interview data from 14 participants from distinct social class backgrounds, this in- depth analysis of their recounted experiences of navigating mental health services found that recovery was not simply an end to symptoms of distress, but that class-based recovery practices and negotiations with mental health services played out distinctively, corresponding to different social habitus frames. Furthermore, the Lacanian focus on desire provides insights into how key signifiers mediate or constitute these recovery practices, with participant's subjectivity split by the signifying chain of “recovery” Critically, discourses of recovery operate as a trans-subjective realignment to meet the demands of the Other, where recovery is framed as the participation in production and consumption, a symbolic recovery of neoliberal capitalist practices.
Bio: Rachel Brown is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at Maynooth University. Her research interests include mental health, social class, human rights and social justice issues, applying critical and interdisciplinary approaches.
Presenter: Eve Watson
Title: A Psychoanalysis of Shame
Abstract: The talk explores the role of shame as a cultural phenomenon, in clinical presentations, and in the context of psychoanalytic practice today. It is an under-explored topic yet is one that every analyst encounters and often works with in practice. In the Irish context, there is a long and complicated history of shame socio-culturally and in gender practices. A psychoanalytic framework drawing from the work of Freud and Lacan and other literary and cultural sources offers a mode of approach to the implications of shame in conditioning the human psyche and interlinking it with culture. Was Lacan right in declaring that shame is extinct? A complicated picture of shame demonstrates positives and negatives - its role in sexual prohibition and in the function of desire as well as its effects on jouissance, and in revelation and truth-telling.
Bio: Eve Watson is involved in psychoanalytic practice, training, education, and research. She is a co-director of a busy Dublin city centre practice, and has published numerous essays on psychoanalysis, sexuality, film, culture, and literature including “The Shame of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes” in a recent collection Irish Shame: A Literary Reckoning (2025, Edinburgh University Press). Her co-edited books are Freud’s Principal Case Studies Revisited: Freudian-Lacanian Psychoanalysts Reconsider the Legacy (2025, Routledge), Critical Essays on the Drive: Lacanian Theory and Practice (2024, Routledge), Clinical Encounters in Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory (2017, Punctum), and a forthcoming collection on James Joyce’s writing in 2026. In 2022, she was the Erikson Scholar-in-Residence at the Austen Riggs Centre in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She is the academic director of the Freud Lacan institute (FLi), and was the Editor of Lacunae, the International Journal for Lacanian Psychoanalysis from 2016-2024. She is the Burns Scholar in Irish Studies at Boston College in the Fall of 2025.
Presenter: Antonis Poulios
Title: When psychoanalysis encounters trans experience: transitions and trans-formations
The encounter with trans experience may be felt as a form of transgression which disrupts normative structures such as essentialism, biological determinism, the gender binary, and the traditional family model that many therapeutic disciplines, including some psychoanalytic schools of thought, have often implicitly but also explicitly supported. This transgression could actually be the reason that trans people are among the groups that are increasingly targeted by reactionary policies, which often draw on some psychoanalytically oriented theorisings to support their arguments. Indeed, historical and ongoing biases of psychoanalysis against trans people have been leading to the pathologization and exclusion of trans individuals from both clinical practice and the field itself.
In this presentation, the conseptualisation of trans experience is based on major psychoanalytic approaches, such as those of Lacan and Laplanche, and is also informed by more recent, affirming contributions, some of which are made by queer and trans analysts. According to this conceptualization, the encounter with trans experience gives the opportunity to expand or even revise our therorising of all genders, trans and cis.
Through clinical vignettes, a supervision of a gender non-comforming adolescent in a community mental health setting, and a long-term analysis in private setting of an older trans man, the presentation explores how existing theorising, institutional prejudice and its impact on non-heteronormative therapists, as well as the myth of analytic neutrality, can inadvertently harm trans analysands, with a main focus on the therapist and their countertransferential reactions.
In conclusion, the importance of recognizing the dynamic, non-essential intersectional nature of gender is emphasized. It is argued that psychoanalytic practice should be enriched by engaging with trans experiences, which challenge and expand our understanding of subjectivity, sexuality, and trauma. Ultimately, the encounter with trans experience gives psychoanalysis itself the opportunity for a much-needed transition.
Bio: Dr. Antonis Poulios is a clinical psychologist MSc, PhD, and a psychoanalyst. He works in private practice and also serves as an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Crete, Greece, as well as in the Master’s Program in Clinical Psychology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He is a consultant on chemsex issues for AIDS Action Europe. He also collaborates with the “Queer Analysis” research group of the School of Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Additionally, he is a member of the training and scientific committees of Orlando LGBT+ “Mental Health without Stigma,” a scientific associate of the Greek Association of People Living with HIV “Positive Voice,” and an external collaborator of the Greek National Opera. In 2022, he was awarded the Symonds Prize by the Studies in Gender and Sexuality journal for his outstanding contribution to the intersectional psychoanalytic and cultural approach to sexuality. In 2025, he received the “Dimitris Georgas” Early-career Researcher in Psychology Prize from the Hellenic Psychological Society.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Royal Marine Hotel, Marine Road, Dublin, Ireland
EUR 54.60 to EUR 92.15
