China American Psychoanalytic Alliance
Training the teachers and leaders of the next generation of Chinese psychodynamic psychotherapists
In support of CIC, we are pleased to share their open call for Conference Theme proposals for the 2027 CIC Academic Conference!
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Psychoanalysis and the Questions of Our Time
The Difficulties of Our Time
In some eras, suffering remains hidden. In others, it becomes widespread. Perhaps we are living through such a time now.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, many have discovered that although life appears to have returned to normal, inner life has not truly returned to what it once was.
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Some have begun to question whether the future is still worth hoping for. Some find it increasingly difficult to draw close to others. Some live with chronic anxiety, yet cannot name its source. Some work hard to live while gradually losing their sense of meaning. Others, in a rapidly changing world, slowly lose a sense of who they are.
These experiences do not belong to any one individual alone - they are becoming part of the shared psychic reality of our time. They enter psychic life, relational life, institutional life, and cultural imagination. They shape the ways subjects suffer, defend, desire, withdraw, attach, mourn, and hope.
Psychoanalysis has long been concerned not only with intrapsychic conflict, but with the relationship between the subject and the historical moment in which that subject lives. At a time when so many experience instability, loneliness, polarization, loss, and uncertainty about the future, psychoanalysis is once again called upon to think — clinically, culturally, and ethically — about the conditions of contemporary life.
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The theme of a congress is more than a title. It establishes a field of inquiry, opens a space for dialogue, and gathers a community of thought and practice around what most urgently requires reflection.
CIC warmly invite analysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, counselors, scholars, trainees, students, and all those engaged in thinking about psychic life and contemporary realities to participate.
The most vital psychoanalytic conversations often begin not with certainty, but with a question whose time has come.
We look forward to thinking with you.
Areas of Reflection
CIC welcomes proposals that engage with themes including, but not limited to:
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Uncertainty and the Future: How do subjects live when the future becomes difficult to imagine, invest in, or trust?
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Anxiety in Contemporary Life: What happens when anxiety shifts from individual symptoms to social atmosphere?
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Loneliness, Attachment, and New Forms of Relationship: How are intimacy and separation transformed within digitally mediated worlds?
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Trauma, Mourning, and Repair: How do individuals and societies metabolize rupture, violence, and loss?
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Youth and Emerging Subjectivities: What psychic challenges characterize younger generations under changing social conditions?
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Psychoanalysis and Artificial Intelligence: How might analytic thought respond to new questions concerning mind, representation, presence, and human singularity?
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Difference, Division, and Coexistence: How can psychoanalysis contribute to thinking about conflict, otherness, and the difficulty of living together?
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Chinese Cultural Contexts and Psychic Experience: How do family structures, intergenerational expectations, education, and social transformation shape psychic life in contemporary China?
Submission Guidelines
ABOUT CAPA IN CHINA
CAPA In China (CIC), is a group that is formed by current students and graduates of CAPA (China American Psychoanalytic Alliance).
Its purpose is to promote the professional growth and ethics of CIC members, and to promote the development of psychodynamic counseling, therapy and psychoanalysis in China.