Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,
Als alle Knospen sprangen,
Da ist in meinem Herzen
Die Liebe aufgegangen.
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,
Als alle Vögel sangen,
Da hab’ ich ihr gestanden
Mein Sehnen und Verlangen.
In the wondrous month of May,
When all the buds burst into bloom,
Then it was that in my heart
Love began to burgeon.
In the wondrous month of May,
All birds do join the singing quire
Then it was I confessed to her
My longing and desire.
May this poem, originally in German by Heinrich Heine, translated to English by Richard Stokes, and hopefully improved by me, inspire and invite us to the congress that was sown at our latest conference in Bologna in 2024. Over the last two years that seed has burgeoned into budding, now to bloom in Lisbon 28th – 30th of this wondrous month of May.
Love inspire beauty, and beauty is perceived through the senses of the perceiver. Hence beauty has endless shapes, colours, odours, touches and sounds. Nevertheless, there are musical sounds and beautiful sights that seem to have the almost mysterious capacity to enthral almost all of our species. I can think of sunsets, mountain ridges, deep fiords, monumental views and lullabies. Likewise, I see that enchanted moments of sexual encounters can lift people of all kinds up into blissful heavens.
Can a scientific congress embrace love and beauty without harassing the scientific content, since we do approach deep and often love enriched human expressions?
I think so, and I hope so.
I know there will be an abundance of love in those congress halls, a love of sexuality, of diversity, of friendships and all in all, a love of the human condition.
Love fosters hope. We hope for a more inclusive, more just world where equity will overrule material injustice, overrule dehumanization, overrule greed, overrule any idea that some people own the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, claiming themselves to have higher worth than their fellow human beings.
Sexuality, society and science: evidence and facts are in the motto of the conference. This motto is the guideline for the 18th conference of our biannual endeavours.
Equity is a grand task for all societies. Science is one important tool to support and to qualify equity. Nevertheless, scientific evidence may or may not be attainable, not even to prove all existing facts. There is an abundance of facts that prove themselves. Hence, we cannot solely rely on science. In our field where much is centred around the capacities of clients and the competence of the professionals, we must never turn down the truths built through this client-therapist relationship.
The true and love inspired insights from the therapy room, which are the grounds for the art of therapy, must and will have space and respect in our congresses.
Our field is inhabited by sex researchers whose aim is to give a true depiction of the human condition when it comes to sex. Likewise, the educators, who try to positively influence the sexual development of young people of all genders and ages, while the policy influencers strive to take all these insights from research, prevention, education and clinical practice and combine them into policies that makes the spaces we live in as human, sexual beings more inclusive, warm and worthwhile to live in.
Love and beauty are always at hand, even under the most severe conditions where love and togetherness sustain survival. Love is basic for all human relations.
We live in a world where many forces of dehumanization prevail. The more important to take part in humanizing projects like our congress in the wondrous month of May.
Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad
President EFS
