Issue 9, November 2016

In her opening speech, September 2016 at the 9th conference, EFTA-President Maria Borcsa welcomed all colleagues to Greece, to Athens. She said: «Three years ago the 8th EFTA conference took place in Istanbul. It appears that not only Turkey, but our whole world has changed enormously since then. All Europe has gone through significant transformation in the last three years with terrorism, the so called refugee and the ongoing socio-economic crises as well as the increasing power of right wing political parties legitimized by voters

The period of Athenian Democracy during the 5th century was the most important period in ancient times, and what is recognized today as the oldest democracy in the world. It is the most studied subject of classical Greek history. Intra-temporal and universal values were established which attracted the attention of Europe during the Renaissance (14th-16th century). It all happened without a corresponding model, without a prior theoretical background, and reached its peak within a few decades.

During the Great Dionysian Festivals, hundreds of citizens had to abandon their everyday occupations, their family and profession, etc. and be available to those organizing the events. Their involvement had a similar importance to their participation in Heliaia (the supreme court of ancient Athens) or the Parliament, i.e. a clearly social-political one.

With her emblematic article “Envy and Gratitude”, Melanie Klein brought about a great shift to Freudism and to psychoanalytic thought in general. The theoretical contribution of Melanie Klein in the notion of envy led her to observe and describe the mechanism of projective identification that led to the elaboration of a bridge among the intra-psychic and the interactional and equipped psychoanalysis with tools for understanding interaction and communication.