First Day

The forum started with a plenary session chaired by Dr J. Lampl-de Groot and was preceded by the following introductory remarks by Miss Freud.

Not every such occasion gives me the pleasure that I have today, as I welcome our guests. When the idea that we invite so many people was first mooted in this Clinic, I could not help but feel pessimistic. Why should people want to take the time and trouble, and spend the money, to come not only from the distant parts of London but actually from other countries or even other continents? My pessisimism was obviously unfounded, as this room now shows, and the occasion is one which fulfils some of the hopes which I had when this Clinic came into being. I envisaged it then not only as one more place of instruction where young people could be introduced to the technique and theory of psychoanalysis but as something different: a centre where analysts could come, exchange views, study for a time in peace and could develop further, long after their qualification in an analytic Institute. We have had such guests, single individuals, over long periods—half a year, even a whole year—and it was always very pleasant. We also fulfilled the purpose of exchanging views and of studying and learning more about analysis among ourselves. But in a small centre like ours one becomes, in time, ingrown. The same opinions are bandied about and exchanged over and over again. It is not the same as an exchange with people from abroad. So you are here to stimulate us, and we ought to try and stimulate you for further study.

There is perhaps also another motivation behind the invitation that we sent out: we as a centre have not been adopted, so far, by anybody. I had thought in the beginning that perhaps one of our bigger organizations would be willing to take our organization as a pattern and to open up centres of this kind in other places. This has not happened and, as I said, we have not been adopted by any parent organization, neither by the Internation