Reports and Brief Communications

At the Assembly by Delegates of IFPS in May 1996 in Athens (in connection with the VIII IFPS Conference) “Società Italiana DI Psicoanalisi della Relazione” (SIPRE) in Rome and Milan (Italy) was admitted as the 21st member society of the IFPS.

SIPRe took this name in 1985. It had been set up in 1978 by a group of psychologists and physicians, trained in psychoanalysis, who had been studying and working together for a few years with two main focuses of interest: deepening the theoretical roots of psychoanalysis and extending the psychoanalytic intervention into every psychic pathology.

The attentive reading of Rapaport's and his followers' works (especially Holt's, Shafer's and Gill's) brought the Group to identify the concept of “relation” as the main theoretical and clinical focal points of interest.

“Relation”—in its meaning of “interaction” — expresses a revision of the physicalistic epistemic assumptions, which characterize the Freudian thought.

In accordance with Sullivan's interpersonalism, Barangers' bidirectional dimension, Stolorow's, Brandchaft's and Atwood's intersubjectivity, the epistemic choice of the concept of “relation” indicates that the interactive dimension is regarded as the ultimate explanation of human behavior. That shows the passage from one-person to two-person psychology.

The role of objective observer is denied to man—especially to the analyst—so that the subject and the object cannot be seen any longer as two opposite poles. On the contrary they build together reality as a co-construction.

From a clinical point of view, the analytical relation, point of contact of transference and counter-transference, becomes the object of observation and interpretation.

At present SIPRe has two Training Institutes—one in Rome and another one in Milan—and a Centre in Genoa. The Executive Committee of SIPRe consists of four members. The President is Dr. Michele Minolli. The train