Dear Colleagues,

The world is getting loose, everything considered as being in the proper place is being shattered. Now, it has been nearly 100 years after what Freud said about the war (1915, 1933) and we again witness how the war and destruction broken out very close to us lead to social, cultural and spiritual catastrophes. Millions of people have to look for a new house far away from their homelands, the lives are being suspended on the borders. In such times, a mode of out-of-placeness sets the tone of the life.

Edward Said expressed his relation to his homeland and his intense emotions about having a homeland as such: “the homeland is where my family and friends exist non-problematically, without questioning why or how they are present there”. So, based on an exile in our day when the repeated traumas are enacted and thus the inspiration coming from this narration of E. Said, we have decided to arrange our Thinking on Border: International Psychoanalysis Conference to be held in İstanbul in 2023 under the theme of ‘Out of Place’.

Being out of place is not only experienced in the context of a physical place. Like an epidemic, many people do not feel home when they live in their houses.  The tangible world, the touchable bodies and phantasies lead the way to the virtual lands and this mode of being everywhere is turning into the mode of being nowhere. Living and working styles, positions in gender and sexuality, and forms of social and emotional association are changing rapidly. Within all these tensions, narcissism of little differences is being crystallized due to a search for a shelter and ground and the identities are becoming monuments. In this flow, the world is moving away. The livable world is about to come to an end. The civilization keeps moving in a somehow familiar discontent.

We invite you to our İstanbul meeting to make room for the horrors of the war that we have witnessed, exile and migration amidst looking for a home and a path and those on borders and those wandering beyond the borders; to discuss how the psychoanalysis positions itself in the face of the oppression of the reality flopped down on us; to psychoanalytically problematize various phenomena, visions and associations of being out-of-place and think on their reflections on clinical sphere together in this conference under the tension of internal and external realities.  

On behalf of Committees of Scientific Programs and Arranging Local

Respectfully yours,

Ferhan Özenen- İstanbul Psychoanalysis Association

Yeşim Korkut- Psike İstanbul- İstanbul Psychoanalytical Training, Research and Development Association

Contact: thinkingonborderistanbul@gmail.com

Scientific program, registration information and other details will also be shared.