Rob Gordon

Concluding Comments

We have seen today how speakers have emerged from the matrix of the psychoanalytic community.  We have worked within an agreement about a procedure which has allowed us to consider what we have in common and what differences mean.   We have different views that reflect our experiences, learnings and inclinations.  In meeting like this, listening to the papers, listening and participating in discussions and conversations between the papers, we only have to hear each other thoughtfully reflecting on our experience and we contaminate each other in the sense that we cannot fail to be extended and influenced by what we are exposed to.  

If we can do this with cooperation, respect and interest in the each other we cannot fail to become larger as we take in more than we hold in ourselves.  Each view opens a new perspective whether or not we understand or agree.  If we can accept it as worthy of consideration and respect it as the reflections of a colleague who, like us, works in the field, then the processes of influencing each other will lead to creativity.  

The creative process is born of our sense of the shared enterprise of the Confederation, that we form a place for the active exchange of ideas and experiences arising out of our common work.  The exchange helps us have a sense of the community we belong to and we are membered into it by our participation.  The creativity of community was pointed out by Goethe long ago when he had a character in a story say that conversation was more refreshing than either water or light.  

It is also important that just by doing this conference, organising, presenting, responding, listening, discussing and thinking we are bringing a social form, a social entity into existence which can take its place alongside the other social entities in our society.