Dr Dianne Lefevre
Transference communications in cases of psychosis
In recent years it has become clear that the origins of severe psychosis frequently, if not always, originate in very early infancy. Traumata, at this age can become severe and ongoing mental illness. Most humans can understand the agony of hearing or seeing a distressed infant and being unable to comfort the infant. This extreme distress and the defensive rage, hatred, shame, helplessness, terror, dread, emptiness and hopelessness is conveyed in the transference and dealt with in the countertransference. How does this transference manifest in the adult with severe mental illness?

Dr Françoise Davoine
Yes, transference is possible in the case of psychosis
I will explore how psychotic transference can be understood as an investigation into erased parts of a personal history, referring to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of the "language game" to illustrate the process.

Dr Jean-Max Gaudillière
On details: the patient's side
Transference always deals with details. In the case of trauma and madness, precious little "favorite things", often overlooked, try in fact to open the world of epics and myth to reveal great expanses of unspeakable matter.

Professor Joy Schaverien
Men who leave too soon: further reflections on the erotic transference
In a paper first published in 1998 I observed that certain male patients in psychotherapy with female therapists end prematurely. Attention to common factors in these cases revealed an apparent pattern: some left to avoid intimacy, others to avoid consciousness of erotic/aggressive impulses in the transference. Avoidance of sexual feelings in the countertransference may lead to unconscious collusion in traditional gender dynamics. This may sometimes result in interpretation of eros in infantile terms in denial of the adult, sexual dynamic. Today, as more men seem to engage in psychotherapy, I will consider how this situation may have changed.

Dr Phil Mollon
The foreclosure of the Freudian transference in contemporary British psychoanalysis
Freud's original perspective on transference, as the unconscious intrusion of the past into the present, has been to a large extent lost in current fashions for a continual focus on the 'here-and-now' dyad of therapist and patient.

Professor Andrew Samuels
Transference: Gold Standard, Fetish, or Status Symbol?
Debates about the centrality of transference in clinical work also reveal its centrality in the ways psychotherapists, counsellors and analysts think about themselves. We are in the land of the pecking order and, possibly, the thought police. The concept is becoming increasingly difficult to address in a balanced and reasonable way as various groups of practitioners either claim exclusive ownership of the idea, or try to prove an equivalent mastery of it, or embark on a frank refusal of it. The entire situation is greatly complexified by new thinking in the areas of diversity, equality, inclusivity and exclusivity as applied to clinical work.

Dr Valerie Sinason
Bachelard said "We are alone so there are four in the room". What happens when trauma has fragmented someone into myriad others, each with their own way of perceiving therapy and the therapist? By working with extreme trauma we start to understand the body-mind response in ourselves so that we are better equipped for all clinical work.

Dr Amanda Jones
Early transferential processes in the perinatal period and how these might contribute to a baby's formation of inner representations
Although the birth of a baby renders a parent at risk of solidfying his or her painful inner representations it can also offer the possibility to modify and change their habitual unconscious projective processes. This presentation will explore the complexity of unconscious transferential processes between a mother and her baby; her baby and his absent (but powerfully present) father; and the ghosts of the mother's parents and grandparents.

Anne-Marie Sandler
Can we assume that mother-infant relationships as observed in baby observation constitute the building blocks of our later adult relationships? If so, would it alter the psychoanalytic understanding of transference? The complex emotional and cognitive steps involved in the creation of the inner representation of another will be discussed, as well as the role of the third in our lives.