Dear EAP Member, Board Delegate and ECP Holder,

Welcome to the fourth EAP Newsletter this year. In this winter 2025 edition, we have some updates from the EAP Governing Board meetings in October, alongside other EAP news, from Individual Members to events.

We hope you enjoy this Newsletter.

The EAP Newsletter Team

Anne Colgan, Andra Rampu, Tom Warnecke

For the EAP October meetings, the Czech Association for Psychotherapy CAP invited the Board and Committees to Prague in the Czech Republic. Our CAP colleagues found us a beautiful venue at the Fortna Monastery, centrally located in the historic old town. The Monastery is a stunning and tranquil venue, with gorgeous views and courtyard, certainly the nicest one during my years at EAP. The Board meetings attracted a good crowd and debated some important positive updates about the EAP's various initiatives, such as supporting our national umbrella organisations (NUO/NAO) in countries with psychotherapy legislation proposals.

This summer, our President, Catalin Zaharia, and myself represented EAP at congresses in several countries, as well as the World Congress alongside other EAP speakers. The WCP also included presentations and lectures by several more EAP Board members, such as our former Registrar and Honorary President Ivana Slavkovic and TAC member Josef Knobel. EAPs External Relations Officer, Nevena Calovska and former President Patricia Hunt composed various letters to Government ministers in close cooperation with the NAOs. EAP Officers also gave interviews with national newspapers or journals, which provide good opportunities to promote psychotherapy and the work of the EAP. In September, Patricia Hunt also represented the EAP at this year’s European Mental Health conference and she continues to chair the European Ukraine Alliance Symposium (please see the report from the 9th Symposium in November in this newsletter).

Board delegates also discussed the EAP draft proposals for ethical guidance and principles regarding "AI" systems in clinical psychotherapy contexts (please see the EAP website for a draft document). We hope to take a vote on these matters in March as time is short. Unfortunately, the Communications Officer discussion proposal had been badly worded and this role has gone back to the “drawing board”. Heated debate flared up on several occasions, an issue we should address as a Board matter and improve the quality of communications, which should be considerate at all times, even when strong emotions surface. I hope we can make some progress at the March meetings in Vienna. On Saturday, a brief EGM was necessary to elect our acting Treasurer Dieter Welbich as the EAP Treasurer and to confirm a few minor corrections to the Statutes. For further details of our meetings, please check the provisional Board and EGM minutes for more details.

Friday evening was dedicated to a social event on the Monastery grounds, organised by the Czech Association for Psychotherapy, the WAPP Support Project (Poland), and the Ukrainian Psychotherapy Association. The evening was dedicated to EAP projects supporting Ukrainian colleagues. A number of researchers and writers joined along with a singer, as well as three painters who exhibited their work. The evening was a great success, certainly helped by the venue which provided an amazing environment for this event.

Unfortunately, we cannot return to the Sigmund Freud University in March following Alfred Pritz retirement this year. We are currently still negotiating the best alternatives and will let you know as soon as these are finalised.

Tom Warnecke
EAP General Secretary

The chamber of individual members (CIM) met at the last EAP meeting in October in Prague. There was much agreement for chamber to aims to welcome and integrate new members. Arriving at EAP is an important moment and CIM members want to help you find a space of warm sharing and coming together with colleagues from all over Europe. We connect through our humanistic values to defend psychotherapy as a profession.

The next CIM meeting will be held online on January 26th, 2026 from 7:30 pm to 9pm CET.
If you are interested, please write to info@europsyche.org with ‘CIM meeting’ as a reference. During this meeting, we want to create an international intervision group and set its framework.

Further meetings will be held:
• in person in March 2026 in Vienna, where you will have networking opportunities;
• online on last Monday in June 2026 to process the intervision group;
• online during EAP online meeting in October 2026 for inter- and transcultural encounters.

We wish to be more and more individual members around Europe to connect, to share our experiences and create a meaningful professional space in between EAP.

See you soon,
Christina Winkler, chair of CIM

The Science and Research Committee presented the SARC research paper ‘The Effectiveness of Psychotherapy: A Contemporary Evidence-Based Overview’. This research had been requested by NUOC and presents a great example of good cooperation between EAP Committees. The research paper is available on the EAP website and will be published in the International Journal for Psychotherapy, IJP. This research is a good source of references for colleagues looking for ways of approaching governments and health ministries.

Lynne Rigaud
SARC chair

The European Room for Listening (ERL) continues to work for our Ukrainian colleagues working in increasingly difficult situations. The ERL facilitates monthly online meetings between Ukrainian and European colleagues who are now committed in an ongoing process of deepening our relationship as colleagues and give support by sharing experiences. The Chamber elected José Maria Castilho as deputy chair.

Once again this year, we luckily could offer some of our colleagues in war zone an opportunity to come to peaceful regions in Denmark, Poland and France to pause and find a space of personal interaction and find back some emotional stability. These weeks are more than necessary and the French association ERL is working on developing this space further. Our work focuses on responding to our colleagues needs and to find funding for making concrete actions possible.

We also celebrated the strong bond between colleagues from Ukraine and Europe during the October EAP meeting in Prague. A very meaningful evening shared with four Ukrainian colleagues who came from Ukraine and Poland, gave us the opportunity to show artworks, music and present the publications in the special edition of the International Journal of psychotherapy. A lot of soulful work has been shown.

The next listening room will be held on Wednesday 3rd of December, then we start again with monthly meetings on the last Wednesday of every month.

For further information, please contact us on https://europeanroomforlistening.com/en/home/

Christina Winkler
President of the ERL

It is doubtful that anyone amongst the group of colleagues, who met in November 2022, would have imagined that this would be the start of one of EAP’s most important projects. Contrary to all hopes for a quick end of the war, this terrible tragedy and horrific loss of life carries on unabated. In parallel, the European psychotherapist forum facilitated by these symposiums goes from strength to strength with a very moving Ninth Symposium on 14th of November. The day was opened with a large Thematic Group involving all participants on the Symposiums theme of ‘Anger, Humour, Connection and Love’. Members of the Alliance Organising team made up a “Reflecting Team”.

Several excellent speakers followed, including Professor Marjana Mavrek who presented "Humour as Life Support in times of war", and two psychotherapist and psychiatrist speakers, who joined from the frontline of the war in Ukraine. Oleh Hukovksy and Anatoly Gargaun both gave powerful and moving presentations about their experience as psychotherapists at the front, followed by small group work, a research presentation and a round table. Once again, this Symposium received incredible positive feedback.

A Tenth Symposium is scheduled for Friday February 20th 2026, on a theme yet to be decided. We hope we will see you all there.

With warmest wishes
Patricia Hunt
FRSA Chair of the Ukrainian and European Psychotherapy Alliance
Former President of the European Association for Psychotherapy

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10th UUP and EAP Fifth Joint Online Symposium – 24 November 2025
This is a free online only event. For further details, please check the EAP website or the Symposium website: https://www.uasymposium.online/

EAP Governing Board, Annual General Meeting and Committee meetings
12 – 14 March 2026 in Vienna, Austria.

The Vienna venue details are being finalised and will be sent to all EAP Board delegates shortly, along with information about nearby hotels. Please contact the EAP office (info@europsyche.org) if you would like to join the meetings (but are not a delegate).