New Imago Forum 2026: Trust

Organised by:

New Imago Forum

Description

Background

The New Imago Forum is an interdisciplinary psychoanalytic conference. It carries forward the tradition begun in 1912 by Sigmund Freud, when he founded Imago, a journal for psychoanalysis in relation to other fields. The New Imago Forum began as an outreach by the British Psychoanalytical Society to universities in 2007 and has since grown into a long-standing annual meeting of clinicians and academics in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The conference aspires to create the conditions for deep and sustained interdisciplinary dialogue, combining formal papers and extended discussions between presenters and participants on a particular theme.

Following previous successful conferences at Jesus College, Oxford (2012-2019) and King’s College London (2023-2025), the 2026 New Imago Forum will take place at the University of Essex and return to its popular residential weekend format, providing further opportunities for discussion and social gathering outside of the formal conference programme. The 2026 conference will be sponsored, in part, through a collaboration with the Forum for Psychiatry and Humanities in Washington,
DC.

Theme

Trust is at the root of all human endeavour, from the very earliest moments when infants reach out into their new world to the possibility of politics and the belief in the regularity of natural events. D.W. Winnicott considered the building up of trust in the mother-infant relationship a precondition for the possibility of later spontaneity, separation and independence. Likewise, Melanie Klein emphasised the importance of the infant’s trust in its internal objects and, with it, its own reparative capacities. Bion emphasised the psychoanalyst’s trust in the psychoanalytic process, which by necessity involves the ability to tolerate what is uncertain or unknown. More recently, mentalisation theorists, such as Peter Fonagy, Chloe Campbell and Elizabeth Allison, have stressed the importance of ‘epistemic trust’ not only in the context of the consulting room, but also in connection to the broader social and political sphere. The rupture of trust can be a disaster, both in the psychoanalytic clinic and in the social world—and now in the natural world as well. However, scepticism and mistrust might also have an important role to play in a period characterised by political deception, fake news and rapid technological change.

Bringing together clinicians and researchers from a range of different fields, the 2026 New Imago Forum will explore ideas about Trust in relation to clinical, social and artistic themes.

Venue

The 2026 New Imago Forum will be meeting at the University of Essex, in conjunction with the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies. The university is set in a large park and woodland, outside of Colchester. Trains run several times per hour from London Liverpool Street (fast trains 46 minutes) to Colchester North Station, from which there is a regular bus service or taxis to campus. Private rooms in on-campus postgraduate family accommodation are included in the conference fee.

Registration and Hospitality

Conference fee:
Residential (includes lunches and refreshments, Friday night buffet, Three Course Saturday Conference Dinner and entertainment, and Bed and Breakfast for Friday and Saturday night)

General Admission: £250
Concession (Doctoral Students, Early Career Researchers, Low Waged): £175

Non-Residential (includes lunches and refreshments only)

General Admission: £100
Concession (Doctoral Students, Early Career Researchers, Low Waged): £70

Campus Provision

If you decide to make your own meal arrangements, there are several coffee shops and restaurants on campus, and the town centre, a short bus ride away, is well-provided with places to eat and to stay.

To register, please book via https://www1.essex.ac.uk/online_shop/conference/default.aspx?conference=new-imago-forum-2026-trust

To book, email newimago@protonmail.com