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A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE HISTORY of the Forum. I guess always been a desire among analysts to have an international platform for getting together, talking things over and hopefully advancing the field of Psychoanalysis.
The fulfillment of such a goal has been complicated by the proliferation of dogma, of politics, of personality clashes, all in the name of scientific points of view. Generally speaking, analysts have been thoughtful and considerate of their patients, but not of each other. One example for this is the history of the psychoanalytic movement, which cannot serve as a good model for tolerance and sensitivity to valid but variant points of view. On the other hand many psychoanalytic countermovements have lost sight of significant analytic issues and have tossed out the baby with the bathwater, as the trite saying goes. Be that as it may, the excessive splintering into opposing psychoanalytic groups has in many respects retarded the evolution of common goals. For this and other reasons the idea of a genuinely open Forum has a great deal to offer, i.e., a meeting place open to all those who are dedicated to analytic principles on a broad level without being unduly bound by dogmatic rigidities, by excessive political ambitions or all out personal egotrips. Such is the ideal, such is the wishful thought of what may be the impossible dream.
Now let us look at the reality! World War II cut off international communication among the psychoanalytic fraternity. We