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In February 2020, in the beautiful city of Lisbon, it was decided that the next IFPS Forum would take place in Madrid in 2022. No one could have imagined that just a few weeks later the world would change drastically due to COVID-19 and the pandemic. There were the confinements, the contagions of the terrible virus, the deaths. The world stopped and we were all forced to adapt to a new reality. Our clinical work was naturally affected and we had to respond to new problems, new challenges, and new working conditions.
Two years later, with the global health, humanitarian, economic, and political crisis lessening but still present, we set about organizing the new Forum at the Centro Psicoanalitico de Madrid. Fears and doubts were faced and finally an enthusiastic group of colleagues from 21 countries gathered at the Madrid College of Physicians to embrace each other again, to dialogue and share their reflections. It was an atmosphere of re-encounter that gave a special warmth to the scientific meeting. Our coeditor Marco Conci, who was present at the Forum, has produced an excellent report (Conci 2023), which reflects in meticulous detail the combination of the quality of the presentations and the joy of personal contact.
The Madrid Forum marked an important commemoration. It was the 60th anniversary of the founding of the IFPS in Amsterdam. An impulse of collaboration and critical spirit brought together William Alanson White, the Deutsche Psychoanalytische Gesellschaft, the Sociedad Psicoanalitica Mexicana, and the Wiener Arbeitskreis für Tiefenpsychologie. Over the years, dozens of societies have joined the Federation and today several thousand members make up a heterogeneous, powerful, and creative psychoanalytic community that spans Europe, America, Africa, and Asia.
Naturally, several colleagues in Madrid have studied the history of our Federation and our discipline. In this issue, we find Alejandro Ávila’s reflection on the history of psychoanalysis and his own pra