Review of the Year by IPU President Jan-Hendrik Olbertz

If you would like to continue reading from here, there are many things to report from 2022. After the waves of the Covid19 pandemic, we have returned to regular university life and have come back from our digital orbit into the real world. It was particularly wonderful to experience the Long Night of Sciences on 2 July, which, in cooperation with the Berlin psychoanalytic institutes, took place on our campus once again and also included an alumni gathering.

But this year was also overshadowed by the Ukrainian war, in which Russia invaded its neighboring country on 24 February and has been causing death and destruction ever since. The IPU declared its solidarity with those still in Ukraine, its scientists and scholars, its students, and especially its psychoanalysts. The message referred our tradition of working with Ukrainian colleagues in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, for example, in the Ukrainian translation of Helmut Thomä’s and Horst Kächele’s textbook on psychoanalytic psychotherapy and raising additional funds from the DAAD for our aid project “StuFen – Students Helping Refugees”, which has now been extended to Ukrainian refugees as a welcome project. Numerous students have become involved at Berlin’s main train station in order to receive Ukrainian give then practical support after arriving in Germany. Ida di Pietro, widow of renowned Viennese psychoanalyst Harald Leupold-Löwenthal and major sponsor of the IPU, reminded us of a lecture series from 2019 in Lviv, which helped to establish psychoanalysis’ now widespread presence in Ukraine. It is an obligation of the IPU to continue with all of these initiatives in the coming year, especially in view of the current state of the war, which is accompanied by fear and possible traumatization.  We remain hopeful for the return of peace in Ukraine in the near future.

It can also not be forgotten: Ukraine is defending itself not only on its own land, but is also fighting for us in Germany towards a peaceful and democratic Europe. It is therefore more important for the IPU to expand its international network and involve Ukraine more than ever as well.

In considering the IPU’s international projects, I would like to bring the Balkan Network STICS (“Social Trauma in Changing Societies”) into view, especially regarding its Summer School “Screening the Scars”, which took place at the IPU and collaborated with the Kant Kino from 19 to 23 September in putting on a five-film series on social trauma. The spotlight must also bring the IPU Summer School “The Future Now?! Interdisciplinary Psychological Perspectives on Global Ruptures, Challenges and Actions!” into view, which took place earlier in the year in June. These events are also joined by the continued development of our project Erasmus Mundus Joint Master, which included a practical workshop from 27-30 November in Niš (Serbia) with IPU’s partner universities from Padua, Lisbon, Niš, Sarajevo, and Talin. Further work was also carried out on the “Visiting Program”, which the IPU, in conjunction with the HU, FU Berlin, and other Berlin universities, will present at the largest US-American networking conference for universities in Washington D.C. in May 2023, where we will be represented at the DAAD Berlin-Brandenburg stand.  

As part of the Horst Kächele Memorial Visiting Professorship and its parallel webinars, Mark Solms (Cape Town), Heidi Levitt (Boston), and Christopher Muran (Garden City, New York) followed one after the other. They have enriched the academic daily life, teaching, and public (partially digital) lecturing at our university quite significantly.

There are currently three appointments of professorships underway, which are sure to be concluded in 2023: Psychoanalytic Cultural Studies and Childhood and Adolescent Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, as well as Transformational Psychology and the Workplace. Our Research Commission has been developing our research profile with the three focuses in “psychotherapy research, transformation research, and concept research”, seed funding has been provided to several projects, and third-party funding is in the works. This also includes, for example, a largescale joint project (RCT study on long-term psychotherapy with 10 participating centers) run by Simone Salzer and Christiane Steinert, as well as two HORIZON projects (“Mainstreaming Trustworthy AI for Mental Health – MATIAM”) and – in the works – one with the keyword “Metaverse”, that will investigate the question of how to ensure and foster mental and physical health for people who work professionally in the Metaverse, both led by Gunther Meinlschmidt.

On the topic of fostering next generations, it should first be mentioned that in 2022, we had more students than ever before. Although the number of new students in 2022 was somewhat less than the level set in the past two years at 237, for the first time since its inception, the English-language MA Psychology program welcomed 58 new students, making up two cohorts. At the end of this year, the total number of students will surpass 900 for the first time (last year was 857). Our doctoral program has also taken speed: we recently put on a doctorate day event, and on 1 January, our work begins in the new joint doctoral college with the KKC Bochum, which will revolve around the topic “Trauma and Collective Violence: Articulation, Negotiation, and Recognition”. Additionally, the Foundation for the Fostering of University Psychoanalysis has approved five new doctoral scholarships (three for the doctoral college and two as part of the special program for doctoral candidates who are simultaneiously in psychotherapist training according to the old regulations). We would like to offer a heartfelt thanks to the foundation and our benefactor Christa Rohde-Dachster for these generous offers. Our thanks also extends to the Köhler foundation, which also took on funding scholarships for the KKC Bochum.

In addition to a plethora of cooperations with other universities and institutes both in Germany and abroad, with clinics and therapeutic practices, unions and associations, the IPU maintains a particularly close cooperation with the Hans Kilian and Lotte Köhler Center for social and cultural psychology and historical anthropology at the University of Bochum (KKC Bochum for short) as well as the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt am Main (SFI). Within the context of this three-part cooperation, there is currently a series of three symposiums on social and psychoanalyis that take place every six months, which began on 3 Februar in Bochum on “Psychoanalysis and social analysis – Competition, Complementarity, Synergy”, then on 27 October at SFI on “War and its consequences from a social and psychoanalytic perspective”, and will be continued on 9 February 2023 at the IPU with the question, “Why and to what end does social analysis need psychoanalysis?”. And finally, the Lecture Series Psychoanalytic Cultural Sciences has been running for years, which is funded by the Friedrich Foundation in Hannover and is organized by BIPP, HU Berlin, the ICI, and the IPU (among others, with lectures by Insa Härtel on 22 March and Joachim Küchenhoff on 8 December).

Among our cooperations – in addition to the successful realignment of our university outpatient clinictowards group psychotherapy as well as the addition of more therapists to the team – the psychosis outpatient clinic must be mentioned, which treats patients with schizophrenic and schizoaffective psychoses in collaboration with the Charité psychiatric university clinic in the St. Hedwig Hospital. This also provides the opportunity for relevant research and for students to gain practical clinical experience.

Conferences that took place at the IPU in 2022, among others, were “The art of letting oneself be irritated” by Junktim e. V. on 19 April, the third International Erich Fromm Research Conference from 8-11 June, and “The Agony and Art of Loneliness” on 18 and 19 November, which was organized with the art college Berlin Weißensee. In addition, the IPU hosted conferences from our partners, such as the Consortium of Psychodynamic Professors (ADAP), the Sympodium on the History of Psychoanalysis, the 12^th DDPP Congress, the DPV cultural workshop “Transformation of thought – on the individual and collective ability to learn from experience” (with Joachim Küchenhoff and Rolf-Peter Warsitz, the 75^th anniversary of the Institute for Psychotherapy e.V. Berlin (IfP), and the Fall conference of the Commission for “Psychoanalytic Pedagogy” of the DGfE.

Further highlights from the year, of which I can only name a few here, were our University Day “The University as Community” on 26 January with several follow-up meetings (most recently on 14 December), the Strategy Forum on the Future of psychoanalytic cultural studies on 1 April , the film screening of “Men Don’t Cry” on 23 April (to celebrate the 85^th birthday of Prof. Christa Rohde-Dachser), the career day on 13 May, our unforgettable summer solstice party for the IPU staff on 21 June, our anniversary celebration on 12 October, which also saw the naming of senior professors (Susanne Lanwerd and Michael Buchholz) as well as junior professors (Leonie Kampe and Christian Sell), just before which the collaboration agreement was signed with the association Junktim e.V. to become a new associated research insitute for empirical conversation research in therapeutic interactions.

On 9 July there was an evening of lectures by the Friends & Sponsors of the IPU Berlin with Aaron Lahl on the topic “Revolution against will – Freud and masturbation”, and on 30 November, we hosted the Erich Fromm Lecture with Prof. Hans-Jürgen Wirth through the study center of the same name, which is generously funded by the Karl Schlecht Foundation.

There is so much more to tell, for example the application to the DFG by the library for the project OEDIPUB(“open electronic documents from the IPU Library”) or the arrival of Prof. Tilman Habermas to the IPU. Like every year, there is a prize for the best thesis projects, and in addition, Ida di Pietro created a new young talent award, which will be given out for the first time next year.

The IT and Digitalization teams as well as the Communications team have made many accomplishments, such as planning a new campus management system, the support of countless online platforms or keeping our hardware up to date. They produced many podcasts, among others, on Post-Covid syndrom (January with Joachim Küchenhoff), sex and love (February with Phil Langer and September with Aaron Lahl), anxiety (April with Lilli Gast and Charline Logé), identity (May with Annett Streeck-Fischer and Pradeep Chakkarath), speaking within psychotherapy research (July with Marie-Luise Alder and Michael Franzen), depression (October with Samuel Bayer), on Football (November with Thomas Kühn and Alexander Drandarevski), and finally on mental health (December with Gunther Meinlschmidt). Furthermore, the website saw a refreshing relaunch and the research projects page has been redesigned. This year’s image films revolved around the topic “No thinking without feeling” and investigated the questions “What does psychoanalysis mean? Is psychoanalysis current? What can we learn from psychoanalysis?”. The films were accompanied by both print and video adverts in the S-Bahn and Berlin cinemas.

The Diversity working group worked on recommendations for gender-sensitive language and produced a Gender Equality Plan, which was approved by the Academic Senate on 9 December along with a Masterplan for Climate Preservation, prepared by the Climate Preservation working group, which was established by the Academic Senate on 20 April. 

If we take a look forward, we can see the upcoming highlights of 2023. In the first half of the year, we will be busy preparing for the (early) reaccreditation, including the application for the right to award doctorates. We must conceptualize another strategy forum (after the previous one on psychoanalytic cultural studies), and preparation for the first annual congress of the IPU (working title: On the psychoanalytic methods in social and cultural research – qualitative empirical research at the IPU) is already underway thanks to Christine Kirchhoff and Aaron Lahl. In addition, work on two new topical groups for the Germany Scholarship will begin (the topic “Future” will be funded by the Friedrich Foundation Hannover, and “Trauma and Violence” will be funded by Dr. Harald Leupold-Löwenthal’s endowment fund). With all of that, the search continues for a suitable location for the IPU after 2030, for which the most attractive option is of course to find a long-term home on our current campus on Stromstraße next to the Spree.

And so, we have a pile of reasons to roll up our sleeves and begin the new zear with drive and confidence.

Prof. Jan-Hendrik Olbertz
(President)