Click Here to Read: David Sach’s Contribution on “Placing Symptoms in a Cultural Context” given at the Panama Conference on October 6, 2007. This aticle has not been published.
From Oct.24 to Oct.28 , here in Panama, the First School of Psychoanalysis sponsored by ILAP (LatinAmerican Psychoanalytic Institute), an IPA affiliated organization, took place. Invited and Present were Dr. Claudio Laks Eizirik ,IPA Presiden-Brazil, Dr. Juan Carlos Jimenez, FEPAL President-Chile, Dr. Paolo Fonda-Director for the Institute for Eastern Europe- Italy Dr. David Sachs-Director for Allied Centers-IPA- USA, Dr. Javier Garcia-Director of ILAP-Uruguay.
The Congress was an unqualified success. There were about 100
participants from Panama, Honduras, Guatemala,Mexico,Venezuela and
Argentina.
In his main address Dr. Eizirik emphasize the necessity to use clinical data to create theory . He also covered some present challenges to analysis within the context of culture and the temptation to build theory without supporting clinical data. The material covered was very varied and range from clinical presentations to workshops and seminars on specific topics and areas of theoretical interest i.e., Psychosomatics, the concept of the
unconscious, aggression, sex of the therapist and its influence on the therapeutic proces,art,and of course culture. Unfortunately the only presentation available in english is the latter by Dr. Sachs and it can be read above.
In 2008 a congress on Children and Adolescents is being planned. The second school of psychoanalysis will take place in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Face to face seminars will be followed by online seminars.
As you can see there is much fervent analytic activity in the region. ILAP Council with its Director Dr Javier Garcia (Uruguay) and collaborators in the council: Dr. Telma Barros (Brasil), Dr. Juan Vives (Mexico), Dr. Pedro Boschan
(Argentina), Dr Alicia Leite (Venezuela) are charged by ILAP with all issues
concerning training. About 50 interviews were conducted for prospective candidates for
analytic training.