SPEAKERS

Silvia Acosta

Silvia Acosta, PhD & PsyD

She is an Argentine psychoanalyst and member of the Portuguese Psychoanalytical Society. She holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and serves as Chair of the IPA Committee on Sexual and Gender Diversity. She is a Fellow of the IPA Research Advisory Board and Co-editor of the Committee's book series published by Routledge.

Her work spans clinical practice, research, and institutional engagement. She has presented regularly at IPA, EPF, and FEPAL events over the past two decades and has authored numerous articles and book chapters on sexual diversity and violence against women. She is a recipient of the IPA Training Today Award and the IPA Exceptional Contribution to Research Award.

She teaches Research Methodology and Epistemology in Psychoanalysis at Universidad del Salvador in Argentina, and serves as a Training Analyst at the Institute of Psychoanalysis of the Portuguese Psychoanalytical Society.

Recent publications:

Acosta, S (2026) Subjetividade Nómade e Escuta Analítica. Revista Portuguesa de Psicanálise 45 (2): 97-110

Thomson-Salo, F; Posadas, M & Acosta, SR. (2025) (Co-Ed.) Working Psychoanalytically with Gender Diversity and Sexualities: Resistances to Differences. Routledge.

Glocer, L; Acosta, SR & Tausik, JM (Eds) (2026). Technomorphisms and the Posthuman Turn. Routledge.

Anna Cordioli

Anna Cordioli is a psychologist, a phenomenologically oriented psychotherapist and a psychoanalyst - full member of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society and the IPA. She is the European chair of the ‘Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies’ committee.

She acts as chair for various study groups on gender issues, both within the SPI and in non-IPA institutional contexts. She has collaborated long and closely with the University of Padua, and since 2008 has also been teaching at institutions of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She is formerly member of Spiweb and the journal *Psiche* (actively contributing to the issue on gender) and is currently a member of the journals *Gruppi* and *KnotGarden*, as well as a reviewer for the *Journal of Psychoanalysis*.

She is the author of numerous scientific and historical articles. She studies gender, power dynamics, human rights, the relationship between groups and the masses, oblivion in history, and listening to the other in the auditory dimension.

Cordioli A. (2026)Homotransphobia has a short memory. Oblivion as a phenomenon of psychological complicity. [Original title: L’omotransfobia ha la memoria corta. L’oblio come fenomeno di complicità psichica.] Spiweb.it

Cordioli A., Porzio Giusto L. (2026) The Alienation of the Other: From the Attribution of Identity to the Erasure of (Queer) Otherness. [Original title: Alienazione dell’altro. Dalle attribuzioni di identità, alla cancellazione dell’alterità (queer)] FunzioneGamma

Jack Drescher

Jack Drescher, MD,

is a Trustee, Past-Executive Director, Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute.

He serves on the faculty of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the Florida Psychoanalytic Center.

He served as Section Editor of the Gender Dysphoria Chapter in the DSM-5 Text Revision (DSM-5-TR), on the DSM-5 Workgroup on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders and on the World Health Organization’s Working Group on the Classification of Sexual Disorders and Sexual Health that revised sex and gender diagnoses in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11).

He serves as a consultant to the IPA Sexual & Gender Diversity Studies Committee and serves on IPA’s Communications Committee as the co-moderator of IPA’s Journal Club.

His professional awards include The Mary S. Sigourney Award for International Work on Gender and Sexuality (2022) and the American Psychiatric Association’s John Fryer Award (2018).

Dr. Drescher, Author of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man (Routledge) and Emeritus Editor of the Journal of LGBTQ+ Mental Health, has numerous publications, many of which have been translated into Arabic, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian.

Ewa Glod

Ewa Glod is a training analyst at the Polish Psychoanalytical Society, and a psychoanalytical therapist and supervisor for children and adolescents. She works clinically with adults and children.

For many years, she has been involved in clinical and organisational work for the development of psychoanalysis.

From 2015 to 2019 she served as President of the Polish Psychoanalytical Society, and most recently was the Director of Training there.

From 2019 to 2024 she was a member of the Executive of the European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF) in the position of General Secretary.

In 2025, she was elected as the IPA Eurorepresentative and currently is a member of the IPA Board.

In the field of sexuality, she recently gave a lecture (not yet published) entitled: ‘Some psychoanalytic reflections on children's sexuality and intimacy in the face of new technologies’, during the interdisciplinary conference ‘Psychoanalytic visions of sexuality: a reassessment’ Warsaw, November 2024.

Bernd Heimerl

Bernd Heimerl (he/him) based in Berlin graduated from Humboldt University Berlin in psychology and theatre studies, followed by a PhD in psychotherapy research and at least trained as a Gestalt therapist, psychoanalyst and group analyst. He works as a training analyst for individuals (DGPT/DPG/IPA) and groups (D3G, SGAZ in Zürich, Switzerland) and is part of the German-Chinese Academy for Psychotherapy (DCAP, Shanghai) in the training programme for psychodynamic group psychotherapy. He has published on the reception of psychoanalysis in literature, theatre and film and on gender constructions in psychoanalysis and is (co-) editor of various textbooks to those topics.

Heimerl, Bernd (2025) Queere Identitäten in der Psychotherapie. Kulturanalytische Impulse für die Praxis. Springer Verlag Heidelberg

Heimerl, Bernd (2025) Die Bühne der Intimität. Psychoanalyse und theatrale Praktiken. Psychosozialverlag Gießen

Esther Hutfless

Esther Hutfless is a philosopher and psychoanalyst, member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytical Association. Hutfless is training analyst and Professor of Queer-Feminist Psychotherapy Science and Studies and Psychoanalysis at the Sigmund Freud Private University in Vienna.
Their research areas include: psychoanalytic theory and practice, feminist and queer approaches in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy studies, poststructuralism, posthumanism, deconstruction, gender and sexuality, trauma, societal power relations, and the unconscious, as well as psychoanalytic theories of society.
More information at: www.hutfless.at

Hutfless, E.: On the Cage of Gender. Perspectives on an Ethics of Sexual Différance. In: Vanessa Sinclair, Elisabeth Punzi, Myriam Sauer (Hg.): The Queerness of Psychoanalysis: From Freud and Lacan to Laplanche and Beyond. New York: Routledge, 2025, 27–42.

Nicole Burgermeister, Lalitha Chamakalayil, Esther Hutfless, Barbara Zach:

Gesellschaftliche Machtverhältnisse auf der Couch. Einleitung. In: Nicole Burgermeister, Lalitha Chamakalayil, Esther Hutfless, Barbara Zach (Hg.): Psychoanalyse und soziale Ungleichheiten. Gesellschaftliche Machtverhältnisse auf der Couch. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2025, S. 1-42.

Hutfless, E.: Psychoanalysis to come – A “Freuderridian” Approach to a Non-Normative Psychoanalysis. In: The Undecidable Unconscious, 6/2019, University of Nebraska Press, 1-27.

Mette Hvalstad

Mette Hvalstad, MD, works full time as a child and adolescent psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. From 1987 to 2014, she was involved in national and international programs in adolescent health and sexuality. She is a lecturer and co-author of scientific publications and books, and has been president of the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society since 2022

Elisabeth Imhorst

Elisabeth Imhorst studied psychology in Cologne (Germnay) and Nijmegen (The Netherlands); psychoanalytic training at the Psychoanalytical Working Group Cologne-Düsseldorf of the GPA, where she is also a training analyst, supervisor and lecturer and currently the head of the outpatient clinic of this training institute; doctorate with a thesis on "Homosexual men over fifty married to women. Psychoanalytical explorations of the development and transformation of sexual identity"; she was a lecturer at the University of Cologne and lectured at various universities, most recently in the counselling and marriage counselling programme at KathHo NRW; she has always had an academic interest in the body, gender and sexual development; regular lectures and publications, most recently:

Imhorst, E. (2024). Identity diffusion and trans identity. Historical overview and clinical example. In Kammerer; D., Klug, H. & Wolff Bernstein J. (Eds.) Rethinking and acting. The influence of social upheavals on psychoanalysis (pp. 233-252). Psychosozial-Verlag

Ejia Repo

Eija Repo, MD, psychiatrist and adolescent psychiatrist, adolescent psychotherapist and a training analyst (IPA) has been working over twenty years as a private practioner in Helsinki, Finland. She is a former President of the Finnish Psychoanalytical Society (2020-2023) and a liaison member of European Committee of IPA Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee.

Repo, E. (2024). Transmission of sexual and gender theories in psychoanalytic societies – How the Finnish Psychoanalytical Society ended up making a public apology to sexual and gender minorities. Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. 47, Issue 2.

Malde Vigneri

Malde Vigneri, MD, Surgeon, specialist in Neuropsychiatry.

She is Training Analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society (SPI); former National Secretary of the National Training Institute of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society; former Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, and former Lecturer in the Degree Course in Philosophy and Ethical Sciences at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, University of Palermo; former Specialist Consultant at the Foundation for Studies on Human Reproduction, and Lecturer in the Permanent Courses in Pathophysiology of Human Reproduction and Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Palermo; and currently Specialist Consultant at the University Clinic for Gender Dysphoria.

Sex in Transit: History of a Scientific Adventure (Original title: Il Sesso in transito. Storia di un’avventura scientifica ). Rivista di Psicoanalisi, LXXI-1-2025.

Nicolas Evzonas

Greek Cypriot-born Nicolas Evzonas is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Paris and a psychoanalytic therapist in private practice in France. He is a candidate at the French Psychoanalytic Association (APF, IPA) and a consultant to the IPA Committee on Gender and Sexual Diversity. He has guest-edited several special issues of international psychoanalytic journals, including The Psychoanalytic Review, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and co-edited Trauma and Sexuality (Leuven University Press), which brings together contributions from scholars and clinicians from across the world.

He has published widely on clinical and applied psychoanalysis, as well as on film, theatre, and literature. His most recent book, Devenirs trans de l’analyste—forthcoming in English as The Analyst’s Trans-Formations—explores temporality, identity, psychoanalytic training and transmission, and the transformations of the analyst. The book is currently being translated into four European languages.

Louise Lyon

Psychoanalyst, British Psychoanalytical Society

Clinical Psychologist

Currently working in private practice in London. Chair of the Outreach Committee and Board member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Specialised in psychoanalytical psychotherapy with adolescents and young adults.

Formerly an Executive Director of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London. From 2008 to 2015, this role included management of the Director of the now closed Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). Between 2015 and 2021, provided a monthly psychoanalytic case discussion group for GIDS staff.

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