This congress explores anxiety from psychoanalytic and philosophical perspectives.

Starting from Sigmund Freud's and Martin Heidegger's conceptions of Angst, two rather different approaches come to the fore. On the one hand, we have Freud's interpretation in "Inhibitions, Symptom and Anxiety", where he tries to define the concept of anxiety as a main element in neurosis and, on the other, Heidegger's concept, which plays a major role in gaining the existential meaning of Dasein, literally translated as 'being-there'. Despite this difference, many scholars have postulated a common anthropo-existential interpretation.

Anxiety as such marks the anthropological and existential passage from the non-distinction of the pre-subjective life to the distinction that emanates from the differentiation of the subject from the world. With Freud, a specific connection to repetition insists, formulating anxiety both as repetition of a traumatic situation and as a defence reaction facing a recognised danger-situation.

In 1962-63 Jacques Lacan held his Seminar X on Anxiety, where he notes the following: "What constitutes anxiety is when something, a mechanism, makes there appear....at the place which corresponds to the one occupied by the 'o' the object of desire...re-read the article on the Unheimlich,...as being the absolutely indispensable hinge for approaching the question of anxiety".

Unheimlich - the 'scary, creepy or eerie"- dominates discourse currently, initially intensifying during the Covid pandemic and escalating into psycho-social anxiety for children and young people; anxiety in relation to war in Europe and crisis in the Middle East; anxiety in the face of climate and threats to survival; anxiety surrounding identity and dismantling of established human rights.

Furthermore, recent findings on people's memories, consolidation and systems of memory, memory dissociation, suppression and memory of emotions indicate there is a need for added research on anxiety.

8 CPD POINTS AWARDED

PROGRAMME:

9.00-9.30 Registration

9.30-9.45 Welcome by Micheli Romao, Chair of APPI and Carol Owens, Chair of Congress day

9.45-10.30 1st Keynote Speaker: Professor Joanna

Moncrieff

10.30 - 11.00 Dr. Ivana Milivojevic

11.00-11.30 Coffee Break

11.30-12.00 Dr. Jeannette Abou Nasr

12.00-12.30 Hannah McCann

12.30-13.00 Andrei Tcaciuc

13.00-14.00 LUNCH (not provided)

14.00-14.45 2nd Keynote Speaker: Dr Derek Hook

14.45-15.15 Fatemeh Biglar Hasani

15.15-15.45 Coffee Break

15.45-16.15 Dr Michael Cooke

16.15-17.15 Speakers' Plenary Session

17.15-17.30 Closing Comments by Ger McLoughlin, Chair APPI Congress Events Committee

17.30 Close of Congress

BIOS:

Joanna Moncrieff

Joanna Moncrieff is Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London and works as a psychiatrist in the NHS in London. She has led and contributed to large, government-funded research projects evaluating psychiatric drugs and is the author of numerous papers including the recent review of research into the serotonin theory of depression. Her books include Chemically Imbalanced: the making and unmaking of the serotonin myth (2025), A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs, second edition (2020), The Bitterest Pills: the troubling story of antipsychotics (2013) and The Myth of the Chemical Cure(2007).

Ivana Milivojević

Ivana Milivojević is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with educational and professional background in the areas of mental health, comparative literature and theory of literature,and civil/environmental engineering.

Ivana is the author of two monographs: The Authorial Figuresand Love of Diversity. She has also published academic articles and book chapters in Serbia, Italy, Switzerland and Ireland, edited two books of essays by Mark Twain and Danilo Kiš, and a volume of contemporary short stories from Ireland.

Jeanette Abou Nasr Daccache

Psychoanalyst, Author, Professor of Psychology, Psychopathology, and Psychoanalysis at the Lebanese University, Saint Joseph University, and Université Paris 13.

Founder of SPIAL Lebanon and France. Member of the European Foundation for Psychoanalysis and member of URTPP, Sorbonne Paris Nord University. Member of the Scientific Research Committee of the Doctoral College at the Lebanese University. Member of the American Psychological Association (APA). Member of the Disciplinary Committee of the Order of Psychologists in Lebanon.

Author of several books and scientific articles, including Love and Its Representations, which has been translated into several languages worldwide.

Hannah McCann

Hannah McCann is a fully accredited psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Mullingar and Dublin 2, where she works with children, adolescents, and adults. She is a member of the Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland (APPI) and currently serves on the Executive, Events, and Communications & Innovations Committees.

Hannah holds an MA in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from Dublin Busi

Description supplied by the event organiser.