FREE ASSOCIATION LISBON

My experience with Free Association reminds me that psychoanalysis is alive and flourishing all over the world. This virtual gathering is more than an intellectual hub for the generation of new ideas and the exploration of psychoanalytic concepts within a modern context.  It is also a place for stimulating discussion and the forging of new ties. Relationships between analysts from all of the world are formed. Agreements and disagreements about theory and practice are shared in a lively and stimulating environment fostered by hosts Csongor and Teresa. I am grateful for their vision and their dedication.

When we psychoanalysts laugh and cry together, we also think together. Thinking together forges new ideas and new friendships. Sharing our struggles to help our patients – our trials by fire - with our colleagues, keeps our own work vibrant and alive. To stay emotionally present and engaged with our suffering patients and to put our experiences into words links us to our analytic forebears and to our futures.  Free Association provides us a virtual space for our passion for psychoanalysis. In doing so, Free Association was- and remains -on the cutting edge of technology and psychoanalysis, enabling analysts from all over the world to gather virtually and study together.  This was true before COVID forced us to meet this way.  The medium and the format is a creative endeavor that has become a forum for new ideas linked intimately to our psychoanalytic foundations.

Judy K. Eekhoff, 2021