Vignettes from ICP 2012

The 30th ICP (International Congress of Psychology) held in Cape Town at the Convention Centre turned out to be a great place to meet former colleagues, to stretch one's psychological imagination - the programme went to 350 pages - and to marvel at the international scope of psychology. There were  five and a half thousand registrants from many different countries attending dozens of parallel streams - an amazing experience. There were disciplines I'd never heard of - like psychological physics and there were so many papers in neuropsychology, one could've probably ended up passing Neuropsych 301 by the end.

I chose to go to presentations connected with Human Rights issues and also some of the keynote debates and lectures:

• There was a so-called Controversial Debate between Mark Solms (who describes himself professionally as a neuro-psychoanalyst) and Barbara Wilson - a rehabilitative neuropsychologist. I have a huge respect for Mark Solms - he is a brilliant lecturer, has actually founded a new discipline which has brought him world recognition and has done amazing things on his Solms-Delta wine farm - and here comes the but - he started off the debate by telling Professor Wilson that he was frightened of her handbag!