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Rather than speak of an Ideal Institute, as Anna Freud did in the title of her (1966) paper, I am tempted to imagine an Ideal Congress, where it would not be Utopian to have more than fifteen minutes at one's disposal even to speak of such a seemingly limited topic as the one I have chosen. After all, it must at first glance appear rather restricted in scope compared with the complex problems raised by Anna Freud's major clinical and theoretical concerns. It does not seem to me, however, that we can do justice to any of her work by limiting our observations about it in this way.
Yet, on closer scrutiny, the subject I have chosen is by no means a secondary matter. It is strictly related to the implications of my opening observations concerning time limits at our disposal in this congress, or in other congresses or meetings. With Anna Freud's paper very much in mind, I would like to reflect further on what we mean today by the internal and external time and space we all dedicate, have dedicated, or would like to dedicate to being educated or to educating, and to learning more about improving our systems of preserving, transmitting, and fostering psychoanalytic knowledge, and extra-analytic learning related to our discipline. Of course, the context in which we operate nowadays is quite different from and far more complex than the situation, almost thirty years ago, when Anna Freud was invited by Heinz Kohut to Chicago's Psychoanalytic Institute to read the paper on which I wish to comment.
Today, I want to remind you of certain passages in Anna Freud's paper in order to make some further personal comments on them. It goes without saying, therefore, that in listening to these reflections, one must take into account my personality, personal background and experience,