The IJP Annual Online Conference 2026
10 January 2026

Four papers from leading psychoanalysts:
John Steiner, Giuseppe Civitarese, Cecilia Taiana, and Joshua Durban.

Chaired by Francis Grier, Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Psychoanalysis

A recording of the conference will be shared with all those who register. Spanish subtitles will also be available.

 

We are living in violent times, with the wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and many other regions, the rise of far-right populism, cancel culture, and the mass displacement of refugees. Some external violence has entered the consulting rooms and analytic institutions. The relationship between external and internal violence is, of course, a complex, two-way current.

This conference draws together psychoanalytic reflections on myth, ethics, childhood, trauma, and poetic form, to explore the interplay between different expressions of violence – grievance and revenge, disintegration and defence, rupture and representation. At times, violence may be a call for recognition, a form of protection, an extreme defence. Sometimes, it can be transformed – sublimated into creativity, the death drive turned towards life. But sometimes, sadism can be addictive.

Four leading psychoanalysts – John Steiner, Giuseppe Civitarese, Cecilia Taiana, and Joshua Durban – examine violence in different ways: on the battlefield, in the consulting room, in infancy, in autism, and in the poetic line. The papers consider the wrath of Achilles; the autistic child who adopts cruelty as a shield; the soldier-poet who writes what cannot be said. How might violence emerge not from innate evil but a breakdown in mutual recognition, from the agony of exclusion and fear of annihilation? How might analytic technique, ethical attunement, and even literary form, help tolerate, contain, and transform extreme psychic states?

Chaired by Francis Grier, Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, the conference explores these vital psychoanalytic questions of our time.

 

For all information on the conference papers, the programme, the event booking terms and conditions, click here