with
Howard Levine, Ofra Eshel, Riccardo Lombardi
Joshua Durban, Anne Alvarez, Avner Bergstein
Judy K. Eekhoff, Robert Caper, Leopoldo Bleger
Sebastian Thrul, Steven Jaron
Teresa Abreu & Csongor Juhos
FREE ASSOCIATION LISBON
There are things in life that you experience only once in love.
The year 2019 was a year of true passion. The Free Association was created in that spirit. We were infused with the feeling of the young and restless, full of hopes and possibilities. So, our journey began and beautiful things happened.
Our pet project, the Unicorn Project, got more visibility and attracted more colleagues to join in our theoretical-clinical international webinars with leading figures from the contemporary psychoanalytical sphere. During the year we had the opportunity to exchange thoughts with Anne Alvarez, Robert Waska, Fernando Orduz and Riccardo Lombardi on the subject of Primitive Mental States. The 2019 edition closes the Unicorn Project and opens up space for a new, in-person, study project with invited specialists. We call it IN THE DEEP.
We created the Happy Birthday Dr! A new project that opened with the FREUD24 celebration. The enthusiasm about celebrating Freud’s birthday with a psychoanalytical happening spread like a wildfire around the globe and fired up the imagination of many. It was unexpected and moving to see how colleagues from different generations and friends of psychoanalysis were eager to come together and pay a tribute to Freud and his work.
The Lisbon Clinical Marathon was a bold challenge. This four-day long, profoundly clinical meeting invited a small group of candidates and experienced analysts to work and think together. It was inspiring to witness how individuals from different countries and conceptual backgrounds shifted into a living group where even the shyest found a voice. It was a theoretically enriching and emotionally gratifying experience. If you are interested in the Marathon you can already preregister for the second edition here.
To find out more about the person behind the couch we started an interview project - Internal Habitats. We realized that even though many colleagues made a generous contribution to psychoanalysis in terms of training or institutional work there were no public record of their efforts. Our wish was to contribute to fill that gap, foster our collective memory and create a bridge between generations of psychoanalysts.
The Free Association's international Blog, Wild Thoughts, has gathered an ensemble of contributions that we find jolts emotion and reflection.
Did you ever imagine you could dance to Bion’s voice? Now you can! The Great Psychoanalytical Mashup mixed up some medicine for you and brought Freud, Betty Joseph and Bion to the dance floor. It is, admittedly, the worst idea that we had so far, but we loved it anyway.
We journeyed through this year of 2019 with the best traveling companions possible. It was a great pleasure to know you all and forge friendships with many of you. We hope that our collaboration with you will carry on into the future.
Some of you played a particularly crucial role for us this year. We would like to thank you Alexandra Coimbra, Vasco Santos, Rita Amorim, Steven Jaron, Monica d'Alancon, Dóra Lõrik and Vera Sergovskaya.
Last but not least, a word to our mentors who actually took a chance on us this year and invested in us. We feel that we truly learned from you about the art of psychoanalysis but above all about life.
Thank you
Howard Levine, Joshua Durban, Serge Frish & Judit Mészáros