“Anchored in Turbulent Waters”: Psychoanalysis in a Fragmented World
Reflections from the IPA Congress 2025 in Lisbon
The 2025 International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) Congress in Lisbon took place against the backdrop of a world marked by conflict, inequality, ecological threat, and digital transformation. Psychoanalysts from across the globe gathered to explore the role of psychoanalysis amidst fragmentation—cultural, political, and psychic. The congress venue in Belém, a symbolic port of departure, became a fitting metaphor for setting sail into complex waters while holding firm to the ethical and methodological rigour of psychoanalytic thought.
Psychoanalysis in a World of Upheaval
Across lectures and panels, a shared concern emerged: how can psychoanalysis remain both responsive and grounded as we face global crises? While classically centered on intrapsychic life, psychoanalysis today is increasingly called upon to engage with external realities—war, displacement, systemic racism, climate collapse, and technologized ways of being. The analytic frame, far from being a retreat, was presented as a space for sustained reflection and ethical responsibility.
Many contributors emphasized that psychoanalysis functions not only as a therapeutic method but also as a practice of resistance—against dehumanization, against the erasure of subjectivity, and against the silencing of psychic life in a world of speed and spectacle. Holding space for unconscious processes in a time of moral disorientation was described as both deeply human and politically meaningful.
Inner and Outer Realities
In today’s world, analysts often find themselves navigating both their patients‘ psychic suffering and the collective pressures shaping it. Societal breakdowns and historical traumas continue to surface in clinical work—not just metaphorically, but through raw affect, repetition, and dissociation. Participants reflected on how clinicians are themselves embedded in these turbulent realities, underscoring the importance of reflexivity, supervision, and self-analysis.
New challenges arise in the digital and post-pandemic era: remote work, AI-mediated relationships, and the disintegration of traditional boundaries demand creative adaptation while preserving analytic integrity. The congress raised urgent questions about how to sustain depth, duration, and presence in altered therapeutic landscapes.
The Enduring Presence of the Child
Child and adolescent psychoanalysis featured prominently throughout the congress. Discussions highlighted the centrality of early psychic formations—not only for child patients, but as a continuing presence in every adult analysis. The child, in this context, was viewed both as a subject of clinical concern and as a symbol of futurity.
Play, gesture, and behavior were reaffirmed as foundational modes of expression for preverbal or traumatized states. Attention was given to the early shaping of defenses, the formation of the self in relation to others, and the necessity of analytic work that can hold and metabolize primitive affect. Working with children, it was suggested, demands a particular patience and capacity to bear silence, fragmentation, and nonverbal communication.
Bearing Witness in Extreme Contexts
Presentations from different parts of the world emphasized the ongoing relevance of psychoanalysis in settings marked by violence, exclusion, and social collapse. Especially in areas where systemic containment is absent, psychoanalytic practice offers a rare space for testimony, holding, and re-symbolization.
When children and adolescents communicate their pain not through language but through acting out, withdrawal, or psychosomatic symptoms, the psychoanalyst’s task becomes one of listening beyond words. In these moments, the practice carries an ethical weight: to bear witness without rushing to repair; to restore a sense of continuity and dignity where rupture has occurred.
Sustaining Practice and Hope
Despite the gravity of the topics explored, the congress was suffused with a spirit of ethical commitment and thoughtful innovation. The psychoanalytic community showed its capacity to grow and respond—through interdisciplinary collaboration, deeper engagement with cultural difference, and ongoing examination of its own structures and assumptions.
In a time when many practices are drawn toward speed, efficiency, and solution-focused models, psychoanalysis offers something profoundly different: the slow work of listening, of creating meaning, and of staying present with complexity.
A Living Tradition
This congress affirmed that psychoanalysis is not a relic of the past but a living tradition—one that evolves through rigorous thought, clinical humility, and political awareness. It reminded us that psychoanalysis, while grounded in the private space of the analytic relationship, also carries a public responsibility: to protect the capacity to think, to feel, and to remain human in dehumanizing times.
Let us stay anchored not by certainty, but by our commitment to listen—to our patients, to our times, and to the unconscious.
Note:
This reflection synthesizes publicly shared themes and discourses from the IPA Congress 2025. It does not report on confidential material, unpublished clinical content, or identifiable case material. All references included are drawn from published psychoanalytic literature and are used to contextualize general themes.
