SAPC Conference 2016

Molweni,

We are pleased to say that we have had a very good response to our SAPC National Conference. Bookings are going fast and furious and many people have commented enthusiastically about the rich and diverse conference programme. Thank you all for your support and encouragement.

For those who have not yet booked and who are concerned about costs, here are a number of options that might make the decision easier:

1. Group rates: For 5 or more registrations we are offering a reduced registration of – R1,800 per person/ R650 per student
2. For out of town people we have retained the early-bird fee to compensate for the extra costs incurred
3.  CPD points (both normal CEU’s and ethics points) have been applied for.
4. The AGM on the Sunday is intended as a cost-saving strategy, saving on travel costs. If you need to represent your group at the AGM you may be able to negotiate a travel subsidy from your group?
5. We would like to remind you that skyping is another way in which you can participate in the AGM if your situation does not allow you to attend in person. Please alert us if you will be skyping in to the AGM meeting so that we can make the necessary technical provisions.

We encourage you all to attend the Cocktail Party on the Friday 28th October.

• We are in the process of securing an address by an Official of the Western Cape Health Department
• Bea Wirz  bwirzct@gmail.com and Siobhan Sweeney Siobhan@humannature.co.za are busy organising a SAPC Poster Display of our members’ diverse psychoanalytic work.
• Nicky Jordan nicolettecjordan@gmail.com is setting up a book display of our memberships publications.
• Enzo Sinisi enzo@hixnet.co.za  is setting up an innovative COG initiative facilitating the ongoing dialogue between members before, during and after the conference.
• Dain Peters and Candice Dumas have been developing and fundraising for the piloting of new SAPC Video Award Project. In support of this, there will be a screening of 4 short videos created by the UCT students.

Many thanks to all of these members for all of their hard work!  As you can see the cocktail party promises to be a lively event. It is scheduled to end at 19h15 so that still gives you time to proceed with your normal Friday evening plans or, even better, of devising other ways to continue the evening together with out of town colleagues. Such networking is particularly central to this SAPC initiative.

Make sure you don’t miss out by booking soon to attend the cocktail party and by supporting these efforts by contributing your posters, publications and signing up for the COG initiative.

We are looking forwarding to see you all at the Conference.

Best wishes

SAPC Conference Committee

I recently encountered a situation that fully revealed my male privilege in the midst of a South African society dominated by patriarchal structure. The whole incident left me feeling disconsolate, puzzled, and embarassed. 

I had entered into the men’s toilet area of a shopping centre in my area. The time of day was late morning, and the lavatory was occupied by only two people; a male using the urinal, and a cleaner wiping the mirror and walls. This is what one might expect to find in any number of shopping centre toilet areas, yet this scene was unique in one key construction- the cleaner was a woman.

I was momentarily halted by this occurrence as a swathe of  thoughts and emotions circulated in my being. What’s going on? Did the guy see that the cleaner is female? Should I ask her to leave? How does she feel about being here? I need to use the facilities, should I just use them as per normal even in her presence? These blitzed through my mind in a concoction of entanglement until I decided to follow my base instinctual drives and relieve myself, partially in her view but completely in her presence. After washing my hands and exiting the scene stayed rooted firmly in my conscious mind with added reflection and emotion. 

What happened was clearly an emboldened violation of Women’s Rights. Currently in South Africa National Women’s Month (August) where Women’s Day (9th of August) is commemorated as an historic 40 year young event where women of all races marched to the Union Buildings to petition against our country’s pass document laws. Liberation from legislative discrimination is still slowly spreading into the realms of society where day-to-day interpersonal changes are most needed. Our treatment of women is still incredibly violent, and silencing.

 Furthermore, the eerie ‘naturalness’ of the scene fortified a hegemonic structure that is quintessentially violent in it’s treatment of the female body. She quickly turned her head away when men entered the toilet, as we all remained silent to this interaction. It reminded me of how we silence mostly through our actions stronger than our words, and the act is so visceral that it can be felt in your body long after the initial event.  The observations I made of my violent behaviour clearly displayed that at a change-effecting level, we (as men) are perhaps the most destructive beings that have inhabited the planet Earth. Aside from all the perversions of nature that we have enacted in the forms of weapons, chemicals, processed foods, and machinery, our brazen responses to obviously immoral situations is in need of further transformation. 

I then delved into the sheer indignity of what was going on. The man who was there before I exited left without washing his hands while she cleaned urine residue from the surfaces. It seemed to mirror some aspects of the domestic situation where the Woman dutifully abides by cleaning up after her male partner, children, fathers, and brothers. We unacknowledge this by literally ‘pissing on’ her accomplishments, and going with the misguided expectation that we will always be cleaned after. This point is probably the most poignant considering where South Africa is currently located in contextual terms. Our President, accused of rape in 2006  admitted to having unprotected sex with Fezekile Kuzwayo (now known as Khwezi) who he knew to be HIV Positive but claimed that taking a shower immediately after sex reduced his risk of contracting the virus. The controversies surrounding the president’s phallus have been a source for wider debates, yet even with abstract interpretations one can deduce that the body of the female is the ultimate container for a man’s discharge; whether she consents or not. Supporters of Khwezi stood in Silent Protest as Zuma delivered his briefing at the closing of the IEC Conference on August 6th, glaringly unaware of what was happening in front of him (http://ewn.co.za/2016/08/06/Anti-rape-protesters-disrupt-Zumas-speech)

Picture: Thomas Holder EWN.

After being forceably ejected from the room, there was considerable backlash AGAINST the Silent Protesters from the African National Congress’s Women League. This would be surprising from all organisations, yet the Cadre’s of the Old Guard have declared themselves as ‘Zuma’s Women’, and have proudly declared to defend our President ‘with their buttocks’  http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2014/09/15/we-will-defend-with-our-buttocks-mokonyane . Yet again we see that the female body is an objectified mean’s to patriarchy’s end, even in perversion of sexual intercourse, by the protection of the phallus in public spaces. Essentially, it is strikingly similar to the silencing of the female voice with the male phallus as done so violently in the toilet area I stepped into. 

Bertrand Leopeng is a Counselling Psychologist, Training Psychoanalyst Provisional Candidate, and multipotentialite in Tshwane South Africa. He helped organise the Silent Protest 2015 at Wits University, and is interested in many diverse topics such as feminism, race, neuroplasticity, and mindfulness. https://bertrandleopengpsychology4all.wordpress.com/

tags- gender, violence, rape, South Africa, 

We are writing to remind you of the SAPC conference and to invite you and your group/s to think about how you will be participating.

We are very pleased to announce an early line-up of Participants that includes: Armien Abrahams, Astrid Berg, Amanda Kottler, Trevor Lubbe, Tshidi Maseko, Nomfundo Mogapi, Cora Smith and Sally Swartz.

The Early Bird Fee offers expires on 31 August 2016.  The full conference which runs from 12h30 – 17h15 on Friday 28 October and 08h30 – 17h15 on Saturday 29 August costs R1 800 – online registrations at www.sapc.org.za.

The national conference of a confederation like SAPC offers a unique opportunity for dialogue between the diverse psychoanalytic traditions and practices represented across groups.   We are delighted to …

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… report that we have had a good response to our request for Abstracts.  We are planning longer plenary and shorter parallel sessions with panel discussions as well. There is still time for you to send in that abstract or to encourage a colleague to – the deadline has been extended to 7 August 2016.

Our Programme is taking shape – Under the Couch and Country banner, we have decided on two panel discussions:

Friday 28 October 2016 – discussants will engage with the topic What holds us, how it fails and how we fill the gaps.  This panel offers the opportunity for members of groups to present and interrogate the  models and theories that inform our understanding of our South African social contexts,  and possibly contribute to our blind spots.  We hope that the panel and audience will explore the theme by drawing on both personal reflections and clinical experiences.

Saturday 29 October 2016 –  Politics and the Psychoanalytic practitioner. Using the text “Is Politics the last Taboo in Psychoanalysis?” (Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 2004, vol. 2 pp 5-37), discussants will examine how our engagement with politics enters into our theories and our work.

The SAPC Video Award (Flyer attached) is an exciting pilot project which, emulating the successful IPA project, elicits short four-minute films dealing with public perception of psychoanalysis in this country. Winning films will be screened at the conference.  .

We’d like to use Posters to communicate visually information about the SAPC groups and work being done by our members. Many groups do have posters from the 2014 Colloquium – please let us know if you’d like to display a poster as we need to make display arrangements. Perhaps your group might want to put one together, if not dust your old one off!

With such an exciting diversity of panels, projects, presentations and papers we are anticipating a vibrant and stimulating conference.  We look forward to your participation – sign up now!

Enkosi,

SAPC Conference Organising Committee

Moving through the sky, at great speed, and under control of an unknown, albeit trained person is for many, scary.

Its not natural for humans to fly. This fear is a normal fear because it comes from an instinct to live and avoid being in a dangerous place. This instinct is seen in small babies or animals who will not crawl over a glass table because they know they can fall and be hurt. Being cautious and thoughtful is what we all need, to live safely.

Flying in an airplane evokes for some, primitive fears to do with death and trust. Flying may remind someone that they are vulnerable to dying, something they hadn’t thought deeply about before. Worries about how a person dies can also be triggered when flying. Some worry about dying frightened, falling, unable to breathe or just in pain. Independent people who avoid vulnerable situations don’t care about the moment of death, but whether they are able to trust another person like the pilot, to keep them safe.

There are other levels of meaning to this difficulty because it triggers other underlying issues and earlier experiences. Trusting another person with your life is a huge feat and relates to reliability of parents and caregivers. The fear of falling can mean being dropped emotionally or physically. Feeling very small in relation to the earth below and stars above may be hard for some to bear.

Flying in an airplane can be for some so overwhelming that it makes travel impossible. They lose out on having lovely experiences. It isn’t always possible to just be brave and courageous. People use all kinds of methods to manage their fear of flying such as meditation, self talk and self medicating with alcohol or using prescribed sleeping pills. Another method is to be slowly introduced to the fearful situations like flying. Unfortunately, these methods don’t always work. Often a deeper process is needed in conjunction with these methods. For these people psycho-analytic psychotherapy is very effective. This helps people to understand and work through the ideas and feelings underneath the fear so that the real upset, not a worry about flying, gets to be soothed and healed.

Written by Cathy Rogers (clinical social worker and SAPC member). Visit www.cathyrogers.co.za

People these days, if they can afford it, are often more connected to their smart phones, i-pads, and laptops than they are to other living beings. While social networking sites like Facebook aim to connect people in cyberspace, they can actually leave us more physically alone and lonely. Social isolation often goes hand in hand with depression. People who are depressed are more likely to isolate themselves and being socially isolated can contribute towards depression.

Because the internet is so recent and it is constantly changing, we don’t yet know about its long-term impact on us as people. We have yet to discover how our total reliance on IT effects our mood, attention, concentration, thought patterns, ability to delay gratification, our style of communicating and our relationships with others.

Like anything else, the internet can be used for good and for bad. It has helped us to make great strides in education, health care and improving lives. It allows us to equip ourselves with knowledge that is empowering and beneficial in so many different ways. But it can also be used destructively to attack, deceive, steal and hurt others. Part of our adjustment to this new technological world is about learning how to avoid these dangers, in a similar way that we learn not to walk down dark alleyways at night.

We know for sure though that the internet, social networking sites and smart phones are not going to go away – they are only getting smarter, faster and more addictive. They can be good for mental health but they can also be bad for it. The challenge for us all is to use the internet to improve our lives, to learn, grow and stay connected to others in a meaningful way. But we do need to be aware of the dangers, and we should recognise when it’s time to unplug, disconnect from technology and reconnect with ourselves and others.

What kind of impact has the internet had on your mental health?

Written by Jenny Perkel (clinical psychologist, SAPC member). Visit www.jennyperkel.com, www.childreninmind.co.za, www.babiesinmind.co.za, www.twitter.com/jennyperkel or email: jenny@perkel.co.za