Report on the X IFPS Forum, Madrid, May 5-9 1998

The X IFPS Forum was held in Madrid, with the Centro Psicoanalitico de Madrid as the host society and with Rómulo Aguillaume and Alejandro Gállego as presidents of the organizing and scientific committees. More than 200 IFPS members and guests attended the event, actively participating in the discussion of the five themes chosen—on the proposal of our Madrid colleagues—by the IFPS executive committee, chaired by Marja Lindqvist. From Tuesday afternoon to Saturday one whole day each—with the exception of Friday—was dedicated to the following topics: IFPS Identity and Status; Defects and Conflicts in The Severely Disturbed Patient; Transference And Countertransference in the Treatment of the Severely Disturbed Patient; History and Psychoanalysis; and Epistemology and Psychoanalysis—with the participation of Adolf Grünbaum.

The pre-forum held on Tuesday afternoon—before the official opening of the Forum and the successive cocktail reception—was characterized by a lively discussion stimulated by the papers presented by Carola Mann (USA), Michael Ermann (Germany) and Javert Rodrigues (Brazil). After illustrating the history of the New York W.A. White Institute (1943), with particular reference to the different backgrounds of and communal liberal attitude of its founders: Sullivan, Thompson, Fromm and Fromm-Reichmann, Mann showed not only how well the interpersonal tradition fits with the open and heterogeneous climate of IFPS; but also how mainstream psychoanalysis has today taken up many of the assumptions around which interpersonal psychoanalysis centers, with particular regard to what goes on in the analytic dyad (as documented by the recently published Handbook of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, edited by Mann herself together with Lionells, Fiscalini and Stern). The history of the Deutsche Psychoanalytische Gesellschaft around which Ermann's contribution centered, was not only more complex, but he was also critical in his appraisal of our IFPS analytical identity. At