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The proceedings opened with a plenary session chaired by Dr Leonard Shengold and introduced by Dr Clifford Yorke.
C. Yorke: I want to say how very gratifying it is to us to welcome so many of you to what is now the seventh of these annual colloquia, and to say on behalf of the staff and students of the Anna Freud Centre how happy we are that you have been able to come. The Steering Committee have taken the view that the format of the Colloquium should not change in any major particular because they feel that it is very much worth preserving the comparatively small and informal character of these annual meetings. Although this inevitably means that every year there are many friends and colleagues whom we would like to have with us but cannot accommodate, we hope they will be with us in spirit on this occasion.
There is, however, one person whose absence is a cause of sadness to everyone. You are all aware of the death of Margaret Mahler. She would have been with us today. She will be missed not just by everyone here but by the whole analytic community.
And now, with no more ado, I will ask the Chairman to initiate the proceedings.
L. Shengold: Just one more thing. I have been told that happily almost everyone from our list of invited participants is here. The only exception is Dr Sam Abrams who, unfortunately, has had to cancel his plans to be with us due to unforeseen circumstances.
I had felt it might be a relief to have a chairman who left the talking to others, but my friend and conscience, Peter Neubauer, told me: ‘Len, the chairman has to put the topic in context’—and I always obey Peter. Of course we have many contexts: for us overdetermination is itself a context. But certainly one context of our Hampstead meetings has been our mutual belief in the genetic principle: that what occurs early in life is of continuing momentous importance. Past colloquia have dealt with the origins of insight; and of the superego; with the importance of fantasy and reality for psychic