Press release
Inaugural lecture by Prof Dr Susanne Hommel
To mark her appointment as Professor of Counselling and Intervention in Work with Children, Adolescents and Families at the Department of Social and Educational Sciences, Prof. Dr Susanne Dorothea Hommel will hold her inaugural lecture on 1 December 2025 entitled "The World of the 'Early Relationship' and the 'Early Relationship' in a World of Existential Threats".
"There is no such Thing as a Baby ..." - D.W. Winnicott, 1960
The British paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott wrote in 1960: "There's no such thing as a baby. There is a baby and someone." And added: "Meaning of course that whenever one finds an infant one finds maternal care and without maternal care there would be no infant."
Prof Susanne Hommel's inaugural lecture provides a brief overview of the psychoanalytical understanding of early relationships and uses key findings from infant and attachment research to illustrate that relationships are not sentimental but existentially necessary from a psycho-biological perspective.
The early relationship between a baby and its parents regulates the child's developing nervous system, influences brain development, is the basis for the development of the self and represents the anchoring of identity and resilience. Relatedness protects us from isolation, loss and abandonment, manipulation and the loss of our ability to think.
What are the effects of the current existential threats posed by the pandemic, populism, climate catastrophe and war on the early development and relationships of babies, toddlers and their parents? And what can we do in our educational, psychological and psychotherapeutic professions to ensure relatedness and belonging as the basis for development, play, love, learning, our social interaction and our socio-political stability?
Personal details
Prof. Dipl. Psych. Susanne Hommel, PhD. began her work with babies, children and families in 1995 as a physiotherapist at the Centre for Child Development in Hamburg and completed her degree in psychology with a focus on developmental psychology, educational psychology and clinical psychology at the University of Hamburg in 2005.
From 2005 to 2008, she was a research assistant in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychosomatics, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf and Altona Children's Hospital in Hamburg and began her further training as a depth psychology-based child and adolescent psychotherapist in 2006.
Her research on early childhood regulation disorders, peripartum mental disorders and the early relationship led to research stays in Munich at the Schreibaby-Ambulanz of the Kinderzentrum München, Washington DC at the Children's National Medical Centre and London at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), the Tavistock Clinic and the Anna Freud Centre (AFC).
Her further training in "Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy" at the AFC led to a PhD at University College London, UCL in co-operation with the "Parent-Infant Project" at the AFC from 2009. The successful acquisition of research funding and her membership of the Research Programme of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) were the start of collaborations with the Yale Child Study Centre, La Sapienza in Rome, the Center for Early Intervention and Family Studies (CIF) in Copenhagen and the Department of Social Policy and Intervention in Oxford, which she incorporates into her research activities at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam.
Back from London, she set up the "SchreibabySprechstunde Hamburg" in cooperation with "wellcome gGmbH" for the health authority of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 2018 and founded the "ElternHaus" as an umbrella for the qualification as an early help specialist, research and supervision funded by the Bundesstiftung Frühe Hilfen.
Susanne Hommel works as an analytical child and adolescent psychotherapist in her own practice in Hamburg and is a lecturer and supervisor for analytical infant, toddler and parent psychotherapy and child and adolescent psychotherapy training in Hamburg, Berlin and London. She was a member of the ethics committee of the Hamburg Chamber of Psychotherapists and is active as an expert in early relationships and early intervention in national and international working groups, including the recently published AWMF guideline "Mental disorders in infants, toddlers and pre-school age", the DGPPN's "Family Health" department, the revision of the GAIMH and WAIMH training and further training standards for "Early Intervention" and the IPA's "Psychoanalytic Intervention for Parents and Infants".
As a professor in the Department of Social and Educational Sciences at the FHP, she currently teaches primarily in the Childhood Education and Early Childhood Education degree programmes, offers more and more teaching in English and will supervise qualification work from BA to PhD level. From the summer semester 2026, she will work with Prof Tanja Salem to set up and manage the teaching and research daycare centre designed by Prof Annette Dreier and colleagues.
Inaugural lecture
When: 01 December 2025, 18:30 - 20:00
Where: House D, Room 0.11
Online: Zoom link for online participation
The event will take place on site in presence and will be broadcast live in parallel. Interested parties are welcome to attend. Following the inaugural lecture, there will be a small reception in the gallery of the main building.