A Letter from Switzerland

Switzerland is a small country with four official languages, three of which our colleagues from the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society (SPS) work in—German, French, and Italian. The fourth is Raeto-Romansch. There are six training institutes: Zürich, Basel, and Bern in the German-speaking part; Geneva and Lausanne in the French-speaking region; and Lugano in the Italian-speaking canton. The SPS itself has 155 members, 91 and 64 of whom work in the French- and German-speaking parts of the country, respectively. There are 43 training and supervising analysts (66% of whom work in French-speaking institutes), and 322 candidates (including many older candidates who have chosen not to apply for membership). Scientific meetings of the whole society are held in the middle of the country in the capital city, Bern. They are conducted in French and German, and simultaneous translations are provided for paper presentations and discussions.

These facts are meaningful, and a crucial determinant of the specifics of the SPS. From early on it developed in two main branches. One grew in Zürich's famous Psychiatric University Hospital “Burghölzli,” where Eugen Bleuler opened the doors to psychoanalysis, and where C.G. Jung presented a lecture on Freud's dream theory as early as January 25th, 1900; the first Swiss psychoanalytic society, the Society of Freudian Studies, was founded in Zürich in 1907. The second branch originated in Geneva, where also in 1900 Theodore Flournoy reported on Freud's Interpretation of Dreams at the University of Geneva. Alexander Moser (1992) has traced the multitwisted history of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society from its beginnings up to the present, so I won't go into all the details here.

More important even than the language differences, cultural diversities constitute a major challenge to our society. The Frenchand Italian-speaking analysts are traditionally oriented towards Paris and French psychoanalysis, and the German-speaking