12/01/2026
On behalf of the Greek Institute for Relational and Group Psychotherapy.We were deeply saddened to learn that Ilana Laor passed away. . We wish to address our condolences specifically to the Tel Aviv Institute of Group Analysis and to the Israeli IARPP Chapter. Many of us experienced Ilana as a steady psychoanalytic mind, a group analytic presence, and a colleague whose voice could hold complexity without theatrics and without losing tenderness.Ilana’s clinical and scholarly work consistently returned to essential concerns. How the individual and the group meet each other as living subjects. How a group becomes an intersubjective field rather than a collection of separate minds. How the analytic setting is not simply given but mutually constructed and carefully protected so that recognition can occur even when destructiveness and fear are present. Her thinking on the group as an intersubjective meeting place helped many of us articulate boundaries, otherness, and belonging within the group matrix.Within IARPP Board , and particularly within the Israeli chapter, Ilana offered more than service. She offered discernment. She was able to maintain an autonomous psychoanalytic gaze within a field where interests can easily collide, personal, institutional, professional, and political. She did so without polarization and without surrendering to group pressure. This capacity was rare and deeply needed. Her contribution to the Board of Directors of IARPP was quietly decisive, grounded, and humane.Many of us also remember her important role in the exceptional 2019 conference in Tel Aviv. Together with colleagues from the Israeli IARPP community, she helped shape a climate that could hold difference, tension, and genuine dialogue, without collapsing into factions. The imprint of that conference remains alive in the relationships it fostered and in the institutional culture it modeled.Please accept our condolences and convey them to Ilana’s family, students, supervisees, and close colleagues within both institutions. We mourn her loss, and we also carry her presence forward, in our work, in our groups, and in the ethical tone she consistently embodied, especially when it would have been easier to retreat into silence or certainty.With sympathy and respect..
With great sorrow and mourning, we are here to inform you of the passing of our Ilana Laor,
A friend, and a courageous woman, whose words and heart were aligned.
An original, creative person, a loving family woman, and a respected former chairperson of the Israeli Relational Forum.
Ilana, you were a guide for us and paved the way in your unique manner.
It is hard to digest your departure; your presence was so playful and full of life.
We will miss you greatly.
Sending an embrace to the family and to our grieving community.
Udi Chen – Chair of the Forum, and the entire Relational Board
