Europe and the Efpp: An Update

This communication is an update on the European Federation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the Public Sector (EFPP). The content is a sequel and supplement to the information given in the British Journal of Psychotherapy (8(1):824) in 1991. That earlier article described the background to the formation of the EFPP and gave an outline of its structure and objectives.

Membership of the EFPP remains through national networks of organizations of psychoanalytic psychotherapists in the European Community and European Free Trade Area. Each country may have either linked or independent networks of organizations representing three sections - adult psychoanalytic psychotherapy, child psychoanalytic psychotherapy and group psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Through these networks we have a membership now of about 10,000 professionals. Our high standards of training for the three sections have been a most helpful boundary, achieved in all cases by members of some national networks and accepted as a goal for other member countries in which public sector psychoanalytic psychotherapy is poorly developed. Though our focus remains on the development of services within the public sector, this is a less well defined concept in some Continental countries, but our overall thinking is that full membership of a component organization would imply capacity to function as a recognized practitioner or training organization for any public or third party system.

With these shared objectives and training standards, there have been substantial developments in a number of countries. Perhaps the most important has been the coming together for the first time of organizations from different cities in our member countries into a national network, with the long-term possibility of influencing professional development at that level and also giving a greater chance of influencing any legislative issues. The most striking example of this has been the formation of the Italian network with 600 members