Call for papers for ISPSO AM 2016

1. ISPSO, 33rd Annual Meeting,
20-26 June, 2016
Granada – Spain
CALL FOR PAPERS
Ethical Dilemmas in Our Global Era:
Challenging psychoanalytical understanding of
organizations
The theme for the Symposium in Granada is “Ethical Dilemmas in our Global Era:
Challenging Psychoanalytical Understanding of Organizations’”. While a person’s moral
principles tell us something about their social world, their ethics will be reflected in the
way they put these principles into practice. Understood in this way, an ethical dilemma
is faced in a person’s practice, in situations where it is not clear what behaviors would
be ethical. The Symposium aims to explore what psychoanalytical understanding can
bring to the ways in which we approach ethical dilemmas.
To make this exploration, we will need to examine ethical dilemmas in a wide range of
situations. Such situations abound in an era of globalization that appears ever more
precarious. The financial crisis added one layer of uncertainty and internal instability in
all our lives, the effects of global warming yet another. We are surrounded by concerns
with poverty, social class inequities, immigration, language differences, the threat of war
in different parts of the world, terrorism and the mid-east crisis. This precariousness in
these turbulent times becomes part of the spoken and unspoken issues affecting us as
professionals and human beings as much as they affect our clients, organizations and
societies.
With this theme in mind, possible working topics for bringing psychoanalytic
understanding to bear on ethical dilemmas can be:
1. Working with Systems organized by ‘tribal’ affiliations or ideology,
2. Dialogue and Conflict Resolution,
3. Global Migrations and Multiculturalism,
4. Impact of digitalization on mental states and business models
5. Socio-Technical Structures disrupted by automation
We welcome your submissions on the issues below or others you have encountered
a. How exactly do we understand ‘ethical behavior’ in organizations?

2. b. What are the consequences of ‘ethical leadership’ for morale and loyalty?
c. What role can consultants play in establishing a better ‘ethical climate’ in
organizations?
d. What do we do when we don’t agree with the ethics of an organization?
e. How can consultancy, coaching, and training enhance people’s capacity to work with
their humanity?
f. How can digital organization increase transparency and improve ethical behaviors?
g. How do ethical values differ across countries and cultures?
h. How do we approach ethical dilemmas faced by ethical committees
i. How do we work ethically with mourning and the transgenerational transmission of
chosen traumas?
j. How do we work ethically with racism and chauvinism in organizations?
This Symposium will provide an opportunity for individual and group workers from the
four corners of the world to connect, dialogue and expand their psychoanalytic
understanding of these issues. We will meet in a setting where we can explore new ways
to think about our practices and our role in organizations and society.
The call specifically invite BOTH papers that address conceptual and theoretical
approaches to ethical dilemmas in organisations and social systems AND case studies
of ethical dilemmas and how these were handled. We need a mix of theoretical and
practical papers.
A topic that might be mentioned would be the portrayal of organisational ethical
dilemmas in the media - both general media and social media; both news and popular
culture eg films. The media both reflects and shapes our understanding of ethical
dilemmas eg, around religious institutions and child abuse; MP behaviour; genetic
modification etc.
We should strongly encourage papers on how psychoanalytic and socioanalytic
approaches can work with other disciplines to approach the so-called "wicked problems"
that ethical dilemmas confront us with - wicked problems being those that cannot be
solved through one discipline or approach but that require multidisciplinary co-operation
eg climate change; global corporate ethical dilemmas; terrorism; mass migration.
We´d love to receive proposals that mention exploring unconscious processes in ethical
dilemmas.
Encourage 'papers that engage critically with different understandings of ethical practice
and the understandings of unconscious processes that they imply.'
Encourage theoretical papers that explore the nature of the "encounter" between
psychoanalysis and ethics, including how the unconscious and unconscious processes
can be related to or inform morality and ethics.
Multidisciplinary collaboration is what will become important in the future. ISPSO needs
to move from its cosy in circle to contribute more broadly.
This Symposium will provide an opportunity for individual and group workers from the
four corners of the world to connect, dialogue and expand their psychoanalytic
understanding of these issues. We will meet in a setting where we can explore new ways
to think about our practices and our role in organizations and society.
Adviser’s who are a part of our papers selection committee are: Susan Long, Judith
Levy, Gilles Amado, Philip Boxer and David Armstrong.
AM Symposium Co-Chairs: Muzaffer Mustafa and Manuel Seijo
Abstracts submission will be directly on the AM webpage from september the 1st to
November the 15th