Reports and Brief Communications

The VIII IFPS Conference was held in Athens, with the Therapeia Society as the host society and with E. Klemelä and M. Lindqvist as presidents of the scientific and organizing committees. About 180 people attended and thirteen nations were represented.

The theme of the conference, inspired by the unique setting in which our IFPS reunion took place, was Mythology and Psychoanalysis. The social and the scientific programs prepared by our Finnish colleagues, with the help of K. Simonsuuri of the Finnish Institute of Athens, were so well organized to allow the participants to fully experience the emotional impact of the theme under discussion, while articulating it in the scientific sessions. On the very first day, for example, we all went on a guided visit to the Acropolis after hearing R. Fried's excellent paper on Freud's 1904 visit to the site and his subsequent elaboration of the whole experience in his 1936 letter to R. Rolland. The following day, after hearing D. Kyriazis' paper on Aeschylus' Oresteia in the morning plenary session, we had the chance to see Sophocles' Electra performed in a small open theater outside of Athens, and to discuss it with the producer. Last but not least, our Finnish colleagues treated us, at the beginning of each of the three days we spent together, to half an hour of art and music connected to our theme.

Fourteen papers were given in plenary sessions, which were centered around the following themes: “What does a myth mean for a psychoanalyst?”, “Myths that are alive in my analytic work”, “The tension between love and death”, and “Search for selfhood”.

The first theme, the discussion of which was chaired by M. Ermann (Munich) and G. Wrede (Helsinki), was addressed by four members of the Finnish scientific committee, whose short presentations centered around the substantial relevance of myths in their clinical work. For example, whereas K. Mälkönen showed us how the story of the