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More than 500 colleagues and candidates participated in the XVth International Forum of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS), which took place in Santiago, Chile, between Wednesday October 15 and Saturday October 18, 2008, and was dedicated to the general theme “Identity and globalisation. New challenges for psychoanalysis.” The Forum was organised by our member society Sociedad Chilena de Psicoanálisis (ICHPA) and took place outside of the historical center, at the Santiago Mariott Hotel. The approximately 50 of us who arrived there from Europe had the feeling of landing in one of the most European-looking cities of South America. Only in the course of the following evenings and days could we start to discover the historical center, see the presidential palace La Moneda, visit the museum created from the home of the poet Pablo Neruda, and admire the exhibition of the paintings that Salvador Allende had received as a gift from a whole series of well-known artists during his presidency.
Talking with our Chilean colleagues in and outside of the Congress also allowed us to understand how slowly the wounds of the Chilean tragedy of September 1973 have been healing. Judging from the high number of young people (candidates and psychology students) attending the Forum, psychoanalysis seems to have become an important part of the “public discourse” in Chile as well. From this point of view, it is of course worthwhile reminding the readers that the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) held its XLIth Congress in Santiago in the summer of 1999, under the presidency of the Chilean-trained Otto Kernberg. Last but not least, the Psychoanalytic Federation of Latin America had held its annual congress in Santiago a couple of weeks before our own Forum.
Even before the official opening of the Forum on the Wednesday evening, a whole series of International Forum of Psychoanalysis and IFPS meetings had already taken place, and much work had already