1^st INTERNATIONAL JUNGIAN CONFERENCE IN CYPRUS

THEME: TIME AND THE PSYCHE

Chairman’s Address

Thank you for inviting me to make this brief address on behalf of the Pancyprian Association for Psychotherapists (PAP), which together with the Istituto per L’Italia Meridionale e la Sicialia and the Malta Depth Psychological Association (MDPA) make the three sponsoring professional bodies for this event.

PAP was founded upon the ethos of ‘working together’ with all professionals in the field of Mental Health and personal development in Cyprus, Europe and Internationally. Today’s event, which aims to explore ‘Temporality and its relation to the psyche from a Jungian perspective’, is the first of its kind organized in Cyprus. It brings International speakers from the UK, ITALY, MALTA and CYPRUS, together with an audience of professionals from Cyprus. It highlights the importance of professionals ‘working together’ and speaks not only of the ethos of PAP but also of its vision for the future of psychotherapy in Cyprus. PAP is therefore proud to have this event take place here in Cyprus under its Auspice.

I would also like to say that with today’s event, The Pancyprian Association for Psychotherapists (PAP), is responding posititively to an invitation from Laner Cassar, President of the Malta Depth Psychological Association (MDPA), for exploring the idea of ‘Twinning’ our professional associations, with the view of developing a collaboration between us, as well as amongst different psychotherapy organisations in the Mediterranean Islands and Europe. Today’s collaboration marks the beginning of this dialogue and I do hope that today’s conference will be one of many to come in TIME.

I would like to thank, Angeliki Yiasemides, founding member of PAP, and her colleague Maria Vilanidou for the conception and gestation of this project but especially our guest speakers from abroad, professional practitioners and active researches and writers in the field of Analytical Psychology. Caterina Vezzoli, Angela M Connolly, Kristina Brode, Laner Cassar and Christopher Hauke, welcome to Cyprus, it is a pleasure to have you here. We do hope that your thoughts will fertilize our psyche and that our thoughts, cultural and professional inheritance will fertilise yours.

Today’s event is the first international conference in Cyprus, which deals with psychoanalysis from a Jungian perspective. It feels right to honor the man who was the first to bring psychoanalysis in Cyprus. So today’s conference is dedicated to Dr Takis Evdokas, in recognition of his immense contribution to psychotherapy, mental health, public and politicians in Cyprus for the last 53 years. Son of a farmer, he trained as a doctor in Greece, a Psychiatrist in New York and as a psychotherapist at the ‘New York Institute of Psychoanalysis’ otherwise known as the ‘Karen Horney School’. He had returned to Cyprus in 1961, a year after independence, and he has been fertilizing the Cypriot psyche with his psychoanalytic insight since that TIME.

Takis had translated into Greek two of the works of Karen Horney, ‘Our Inner Conflcts’ and ‘Self-Analysis’ as well as ‘Man’s Search for meaning’ of Viktor Frankl whom he had met in person. He is a prolific writer of many books himself and has been a political animal as well as a humanitarian activist in his TIME. His research and work on the partition of the island in 1974 can be found in the publications ‘‘The Cyprus Refugees’ and, ‘The symbiosis of the two communities and the emotional factors used to promote partition’.

In a recent conversation he has told me that he had read all the works of Jung in his TIME and that he had been fascinated with Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious. He is 85 years of age and in his recently published book ‘The End or the Beginning’ he deals with his research on an archetype closely related to temporality. The archetype of ‘death’. He is a founding member of PAP and he is here today with his wife, Eirini Evdokas, who stood by his side in his long journey through thick and thin, making sure that he remains aware of his shadow and thus keeping an inflated ego in check.

Dr Takis Evdokas we thank you for your contribution and we dedicate this conference today to you because we feel that much of the ground that it is taking place upon was prepared by you and we have inherited it from you.

Last but not least I would like to thank you all for coming here today in order to take part in the final delivery of this project called ‘TIMEANDTHEPSYCHE’. My main experience from reading Angeliki’s book ‘Time and Timelessness’ was something of a spiritual uplift. It was as though a hand was holding me up whilst I carried on swimming, at times beyond my intellectual depth. I do hope that the conference today will also be a potential space for discovery for you and perhaps of timeless moments of numinous experience.