The conference, organized by the International Sándor Ferenczi Network (ISFN), will take place in Madrid, Spain from October 14–17, 2026
Raluca Soreanu will give one of the plenary talks at the conference, titled ‘The Times of Orpha: On the Psychic Life of Fragments’. In the paper, she builds on Sándor Ferenczi’s understanding of trauma and psychic scenes to explore the psychic life of fragments. She discusses psychic processes that have to do with living among fragments, scraps, detritus, but also new growths, protective membranes and contagions. Firstly, the paper proposes a psychoanalysis of scars, held together by a vocabulary of wounds and scar-tissues. Here, the attention goes to a scar-tissue resulting from the encounter with the Other, out of which both memory and the ego are made. Secondly, it proposes a psychoanalysis of organs, interested in radical plasticity and in surprising modes of psychic splitting that result from the scene of trauma. Here, the guiding question is ‘what can a fragment do?’. Thirdly, it explores an eventful psychoanalysis, centred on catastrophe and trauma. Raluca Soreanu approaches the scene of trauma from new angles, paying attention to oblique lines, un-common transversal trajectories, orientations that are from below or from above, and asymmetric encounters. Finally, she discussed the psychic life of the ‘Orpha fragment’ of the psyche and its temporalities. She reference a particular kind of ‘eternal present’ as the main temporality of Orpha. In this eternal present, the subject seemingly iterates: ‘I can do everything’ or ‘I can do anything’.
Furthermore, the conference will feature a panel discussion dedicated to Raluca Soreanu’s new book, The Psychic Life of Fragments: On Splitting and the Experience of Time in Psychoanalysis, published by Routledge in April 2026, in the Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis Series. The panel, chaired by G Lori Millon, will consist in a short presentation by the author, followed by commentaries by Endre Koritar and Judy K. Eekhoff, and a Q&A session.
The conference programme is available here.
