Review of the Year by IPU President Jan-Hendrik Olbertz

It was the year of the IPU's 15th anniversary, which we celebrated during a week of festivities from 21 till 25 October. It included a ceremony with a lecture by Prof. Stephan Doering from Vienna, an opening evening lecture on 22 October by Louis G. Castonguay (Pennsylvania State University, USA), the symposium Truthfulness and Untruthfulness in Conversation with a public lecture by Prof. Emil Angehrn on the evening of 24 October and, finally, the big university party organized jointly by the Student Council and the university management the following day. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to our student council, which has been led by Anna Klinger and Philip Jammermann throughout the year, for the good – sometimes controversial, but always solution-oriented and friendly – cooperation. Other event formats, including those initiated by members of our communications team, preceded or followed the celebration week, such as the online chronicle today 15 years ago  with important dates from the university's founding history or the SALON15: Gast & Guests series, in which our Chair of the Foundation Board, Prof. Lilli Gast, talked to IPU researchers and students about key topics in psychoanalysis.
 

But the year also offered reasons for sadness. Two personalities closely associated with the IPU passed away: on 7 June, our long-time employee and colleague Sonja Witte and on 21 August, at the age of 91, the generous supporter of our Erich Fromm Study Center, Karl Schlecht. We will honor the memory of both of them.

However, even before this week of celebrations, we had already put a great deal of effort into preparing for and completing the inspection by the German Council of Science and Humanities on 27 and 28 June as part of the reaccreditation process, which the IPU had applied for a year and a half earlier than the regular deadline for the sake of the right to award doctorates. The months leading up to this were used intensively to work with various commissions and committees, in particular the Research Commission and the Doctoral Committee, to draw up important documents such as the concept for the promotion of young researchers, the research concept and new doctoral regulations and to submit them to the Academic Senate for approval. For the inspection itself, we held numerous preparatory meetings with all member groups to ensure that it went off without a hitch. At the end of January 2025, the German Council of Science and Humanities will decide on the outcome of its assessment and - we hope - also make a recommendation to the Senate Administration regarding the IPU's right to award doctorates.

One of the very special highlights of 2024 was the awarding of the Richard Merton Honorary Pin of the Stifterverband für die deutsche Wissenschaft to our founder, sponsor and Honorary Chair of the Foundation Council, Prof. Christa Rohde-Dachser, on 26 June, just a few days before the inspection.

It is no exaggeration to describe two achievements in the IPU's international cooperation as sensational. These have been made possible by the initiative and decisive commitment of our IO team. In addition to the acquisition of funds from various national and European funding programs, the following two highlights took place: The acquisition of over 800,000 euros from the DAAD Campus Initiative Promotion of International Talent for Integration into Studies and the Labor Market (FIT) and the successful application for the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Social  Psychology  of Transformation. Understanding and Mastering Social Change (SPOT). Seven partner universities from six countries can award a total of 80 scholarships for a Master's program with funding of almost five million euros, comprising at least 30 SPOT students in four cohorts. The IPU Berlin is responsible for the overall program.

The Center for Humanistic Ethics was founded on 8 February at the Erich Fromm Study Center with an opening lecture by Christian Felber on the Economy for the Common Good as a practical model of humanistic ethics.

One of the highlights of 2024 was the annual conference, which this time was entitled Emotions and Affects: Perspectives in Political Psychology, a topic that became even more topical as political developments in Germany progressed over the course of the year. The fourth annual conference of our affiliated institute JUNKTIM took place in Mannheim this year and once again offered insights into the interface between psychotherapy and conversation analysis.

Interesting lectures with renowned speakers accompanied us throughout the year, of which I can only name a few here: In the summer semester, krIPU hosted a series of lectures on psychoanalytical education about 7 October 2023 entitled "das ganze Grauen" (the whole horror), which, together with another series of events entitled Transgenerational Trauma begegnen (in cooperation with AMCHA e. V.), was embedded in the IPU contra anti-semitism program. On 12 June, Dr. Rainer Funk gave a lecture at the Erich Fromm Study Center (EFSC) on Erich Fromm's scientific contribution to the present on the occasion of the inauguration of new premises, and on 28 June, Wolfgang Merkel gave a lecture on the fragility and resilience of democracy in the 21st century as part of the DPV cultural workshop. Prior to this, on 22June, the Long Night of Science took place again at the IPU. Various events as part of the Library Talks with Dr. Leon S. Brenner also took place throughout the year and featured psychoanalytical authors such as Julie Reshe, Nathan Gorelick, Calum Neill, Joel Crombez and Stijn Vanheule.

I also include the graduation ceremony on 14 June and the semester opening for the winter semester 2024/25 on 16 October, with the presentation of the book "Encountering Silencing" by Michael B. Buchholz and Alexander Dimitrijević, as well as a book presentation with David Tuckett (London) "Knowing What Psychoanalysts Do and Doing What Psychoanalysts Know". On 1 November, the internationally renowned psychoanalyst and feminist Jessica Benjamin (New York, USA) spoke about Collective Violence and Social Traumata from a Psychoanalytic Perspective... . I would particularly like to highlight the launch of the new series Psychoanalysis in Conversation together with the DGPT Berlin, which was opened on 9 November with former Federal President Joachim Gauck. And this year's Erich Fromm Lecture with Prof. Michael Thompson (Wayne Township, New Jersey, USA) on the topic of the Revival of Radical Psychoanalysis on 4 December should not be missed.

Good progress has been made in setting up the WIPU, our future location for approach-specific training under the umbrella of the outpatient clinic. Unfortunately, the prerequisites for the financing of further training have still not been clarified by politicians, so that not only we, but almost all institutes are still puzzled over how they are to bear the costs of the new further training. Nevertheless, we are still hopeful that we will be able to start with the first training candidates very soon in the new year. Our thanks go in particular to Prof. Benigna Gerisch as WIPU Chair, but also to Professors Bernd Ahrbeck, Tamara Fischmann, Annette Streeck-Fischer, Thilo Eith and Anne Springer, who are providing us with highly competent advice and support.

In 2024, we also intensified our close collaboration with the Hans Kilian and Lotte Köhler Center for Social and Cultural Psychology and Historical Anthropology (KKC) in Bochum, not only as part of the ongoing joint research training group Trauma and Collective Violence, but also with various lecture formats and research projects in the cooperation triangle of the Sigmund Freud Institute Frankfurt a. M. (SFI), KKC and IPU. Our joint efforts with our colleagues in Bochum to give the KKC a permanent academic home at the IPU have begun.

Our current third-party funding statistics are very encouraging and successful. The most successful acquisitions with six-figure sums include research projects by our professors Annette Klein (as part of a DFG research group - with an extended duration - together with the University of Potsdam and the PHB), Phil Langer in collaboration with the Universities of Frankfurt a. M. and Innsbruck, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, Gavin Sullivan with a research project together with the University of Lund, which is funded by the European Research Executive Agency (REA)/EU), and Christine Stelzel, who together with the University of Mainz has successfully raised a considerable amount of third-party funding from the DFG.

In 2024, five successful doctorates were completed in close collaboration with the IPU, which were supervised by professors from our university in cooperation with the universities of Ankara, Frankfurt am Main, Giessen, Mainz and Vienna. Thanks to the energetic efforts of Prof. Christian Sell in collaboration with the IT/Digitalization and Facility Management teams, we have also succeeded in setting up the new video lab in Building 3b. With this video lab, we are expanding the opportunities for empirical research during your studies. The results of student research projects are regularly shown in poster exhibitions in House 3b.

Another annual conference is also in preparation, this time with research results from our own faculty and our young academics, as in future we will present and discuss IPU research results every two years, to be followed by a large thematic conference with international participation.