You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The following is a brief account of my experience of the 41st International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) Congress in Santiago, Chile. To set the stage, let me first explain that Chile is a long and narrow strip of land residing between the Andes mountain range and the Pacific Ocean. On the other side of the Andes is Argentina. Together they make up the southern portion of South America. After an ugly recent history of military repression (in the 1970s and ′80s) in which thousands of Chileans were tortured and killed, Chile is now a democratic and rapidly developing Latin American country. Santiago, the capital, is a large city with a European flare and a magnificent view of the snowcapped Andes mountain range. The IPA Congress was held July 25-30, 1999. This report is not a summary of the scientific contributions of the week but, rather, an account of my experience of the Congress. I will be reporting on only the small selection of the Congress activities that I attended. The Congress featured about 50 lectures, plenary sessions, and panel discussions, and many more workshops, symposia, poster sessions, and social activities. Nonetheless, this report is intended to give an impression of some of the activities of the Congress, and a bit of what it felt like to be there.
Perhaps the first thing to bear in mind about this Congress is that it was only the second IPA Congress to take place in Latin America. The first was in Buenos Aires in 1991. Interestingly, the first Latin American President of the IPA was R. Horacio Etchegoyen, of Buenos Aires, who subsequently presided over the 1995 IPA Congress in San Francisco. The Santiago Congress was presided over by Otto Kernberg, one of the most influential psychoanalysts of our time. What is not so widely known is that he was raised in Chile, and received his analytic training in both Chile and the United States. The welcome reception on the evening of July 25th gave us a hin