New Zealand Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, NZIPP

NZIPP is a professional organisation and a training institute based in Auckland, New Zealand. The Institute was originally established in 1990. In 1999 it became a member of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of Australasia (PPAA). The founding patrons were: Dr Isla Lonie, Dr Eng Kong Tan, and Joyce Mc Dougal. In 2018 the Australasian Confederation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies (ACPP) has been established.

NZIPP offers a training programme open to eligible therapists in New Zealand.

The Institute hosts public seminars and workshops throughout the year. The presentations are delivered by by international and local experts and are aimed at the wider psychotherapy community. The NZIPP has hosted a number Australasian conferences: Destruction and Creation in 2004, Dual Tracks in 2005, Basket of Dreams in 2010, and Sexualities: Psychoanalytic (Re)Thinking of Sex, Gender, Sexuality in 2016.

Neville Symington 1937-2019

It is with great sadness that I would like to inform you of the passing of Neville Symington. Following a brief hospitalisation and a rapid decline in his health, Neville died on Tuesday morning 3 December at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital in Wahroonga, New South Wales, Australia.

Neville Symington was born in Portugal. He was a Catholic priest before becoming a psychoanalyst. He worked in England at the Tavistoc Clinic, and the British Institute of Psycho-Analysis, before emigrating to Australia in 1986. Neville Symington was a member of the Middle Group of British Psychoanalysts which argues that the primary motivation of the child is object-seeking rather than drive gratification.
Neville Symington’s passing represents a great loss to the psychoanalytic world, the Australian Psychoanalytic Society and the New Zealand Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (NZIPP). He was supporting of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy in New Zealand, the development of the NZIPP and facilitated many seminars over the past two decades. We were extremely lucky to have Neville involved with us during our training. He was the Patron of the NZIPP.
Below is a section of Neville’s better-known papers and books:
"The response aroused by the psychopath", International Review of Psycho-Analysis 7 (1980)
"The analyst's act of freedom as agent of therapeutic change" Int Rev of P-A 10 (1983)
The Making of a Psychotherapist (London 1991)
Narcissism: A New Theory (London 1993)
The Analytic Experience (London 1996) – Tavistock Lectures
The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion (1996)
The Spirit of Sanity (2011)
Emotion and Spirit (London 1998) – Religion and Psycho-Analysis
The Spirit of Sanity (London 2001) – Religion and Psycho-Analysis
A Patter of Madness (2002)
The Psychology of the Person (2012)
A Different Path; An Emotional Autobiography (2016)
The Growth of Mind (2017)
A timely and apt quote from Neville’s autobiography, "Our human task is to be lived by Life. Life as a transcendent principle. It seems to me that a reliable test of whether we have lived worthwhile lives is this: is the world a better place for my having lived in it?"

Dr Mark Thorpe, Chairperson NZIPP.