Fifteenth International Psycho-Analytical Congress

The fifteenth Psycho-Analytical Congress was held in Paris, in the Salle Jéna, from Monday 1st to Friday August 5th 1938. On the previous Sunday evening Congress members and guests were entertained by the French Psycho-Analytical Society at a Reception held at the Restaurant Le Doyen, Avenue des Champs Elysées; and on the following Tuesday afternoon a Reception was held at the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild, when Professor Jean Perrin, representing the Minister of Education, welcomed the Congress on behalf of the French Government. The Fifteenth Congress was marked not only by the quality of the scientific contributions but by the profuseness of hospitality displayed by our French colleagues. On Wednesday August 3rd an excursion was made to the Forest of Fontainebleau, and during the week receptions were given by, amongst others, Princess Marie of Greece and Dr. Raymond de Saussure, who, as local Congress Secretary, was also responsible for the excellent local arrangements. The Proceedings were as follows:—

Opening Address by Dr. Ernest Jones (President)

We meet to-day under the impression of another tremendous shock to Psycho-Analysis. I refer, of course, to the dispersal of the Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society. It is a shock more than commensurate in importance with the blows our work has previously sustained in its short history of forty years: the defection of our first President, Jung, the death of two others, Abraham and Ferenczi, and the violent interference with the freedom of one of our most important branch Societies, the German one. The recent blow from without has fallen on a central, if not a vital, spot—on the mother of all psycho-analytical societies, at the very birth-place of psycho-analysis. That there should no longer be psycho-analysis practised in Vienna, of all places in the world, is a thought that catches the breath. It is a thought that will take us some time to assimilate.

The resilience of the human spirit, howe