Mind the Body

The theme of the 26th EFPSA Congress 2012 is not just a topic alone but an encouragement or a reminder to psychology as a field to include the body in the way psychology is taught, viewed and practiced,

On a national level we see a growing interest in the holistic and psychosomatic aspects of psychology. Meditation and exercise is becoming integrated in the treatment of depression, the educational sciences are focusing on bringing the pupils out of the classrooms and introducing new learning techniques that integrate the body as part of the learning process, and upcoming psychological disciplines like Sports Psychology, Mindfulness and Health Psychology are gaining popularity. The EFPSA congress 2012 will therefore for an entire week set focus on the body, its relation to the mind and how we can access and benefit from this relation in psychological treatment.

In order to discuss and investigate this topic there will be made scientific contributions from professional national educators within different disciplines that in different ways take the body into consideration. These disciplines might be anything ranging from the importance of body image with focus on eating disorders, cutting, the physically handicapped, to gender identity, sexology and treatment of trauma, to upcoming disciplines like the ones mentioned above, to the way the body can be integrated in therapy and in education, and finally to the more phenomenological debates concerning the relationship between the body and the mind.

We believe that this topic will be of  the interest of the participants, because it represent a current upcoming tendency that might come to shape the way psychology will be practiced in the years to come and will therefore become relevant for the next generation of psychologist.