VII th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF IACFP Sao Paulo 2016
CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN COUPLE AND FAMILY PSYCHOANALYSIS
ARGUMENT
Recent psychoanalitic works have looked at the diversification of psychic spaces and how they unconsciously operate. The subject, the link and group, that is to say the couple, the family and more widely speaking the culture, hide a complexity that the fifth IACFP Congress intends to explore, because this vertex is propitious to further studies both on a clinical and theoretical level.
We can see a first dimension of cultural diversity in family psychoanalysis when the group shows macrocultural differences, be they social or ethnic.
Defence mechanisms such as denial and conflicts between cultural ideals weigh heavily on the family’s psychic life. How can the associative process in a session operate to bring these to light and lead them towards a heightened differentiation, which would integrate mixing?
Can cultural clashes be a reminiscence of societal changes echoing the family history, as well as bringing previously unseen elements and a stimulus for the future?
In the very midst of the family, there is a second dimension in cultural diversity, through continuous microcultural mixing working through the generations. How can the family be helped to overcome the agitation linked to events, which generate defensive processes, and encourage this microculture to evolve?
A third facet of cultural diversity in CFPT touches on the analyst’s personal and psychoanalytical culture particularly strong in the transfero-‐counter-‐transference field.
Should we take an orientation towards couple and family psychoanalysis as a betrayal of a so-‐called psychoanalytical orthodoxy? Or, on the contrary, would not this diversification of psychoanalytical practice be an improvement likely to enrich the metapsychological corpus?
Sao Paulo Congress’ sub-‐themes (3rd-‐7th August, 2016)
Regarding the call to talks and to facilitate its outcome, a series of sub-‐themes has been worked on. The list underneath shouldn’t be seen as firm; there are cross-‐references between the various parts, which have been clearly identified and described.
Please note that proposals, which will broach the topics of the framework, interpretation, processes, particularly transfero-‐counter-‐transferential, and other classic main themes, should be done according to the Congress’ theme, which is cultural diversity in CFP. When we mention « family», it automatically implies the couple (before the couple, and often beyond the couple, we have a family).
Macrocultural viewpoint : Families, couples and cultures
-‐ Cultural context and its effects on the family psychic processes
-‐ Multiple cultural origins and their impact on the psychic family life (homogeneity, similarities, mixing, conflicts…)
-‐ Traumatic impact due to a break from the original cultural context (in various situations: expatriation, emigration, exile…)
-‐ How the cultural context contributes to the building of the foundation of identity and the feeling of belonging
-‐ Intercultural and transcultural processes, variations in cultural environment
Microcultural viewpoint: within the family
-‐ Mix, mixing and socio-‐cultural conflicts within a culture
-‐ Mix, mixing and conflicts between two or several cultures.
-‐ Languages and cultures: bi or multilingualism, impacts on subjectivation processes and generational links
-‐ Myths, ideals and family cultural framework
-‐ New technologies at the disposal of family life
-‐ Virtual reality, as a factor of disruption and/or transmission?
-‐ Fine cultural mixing along the generations
Culture and the analyst
-‐ Psychoanalytical culture, psychoanalytic multiculturalism
-‐ Psychoanalysis as a tool for cultural mixing
-‐ Theory and techniques: their cultural inclusion and cultural variations
-‐ Language and practice of family psychoanalysis: pitfalls and benefits
-‐ The analyst’s personal culture and its effect on the treatment