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On behalf of the Programme Committee we want to introduce to the membership the main considerations which led to a new conception and structure of the scientific programme. The ideas leading to this came from Miss Anna Freud. We agreed with her that in the present phase of the development of psychoanalytic theory and practice an exchange on the different views and trends existing in our science is appropriate and necessary. It is a genuine trend in the development of any science that after some time the fundamental phenomena and the theoretical points of view should be reconsidered in the light of newly acquired experience and the growth of our theoretical knowledge. This is valid not only for sciences which are concerned with inanimate nature, e.g. physics, astrophysics, chemistry, mathematics, technology etc. but also for those concerned with the living world in its broadest sense, e.g. biology, psychology etc.1 Since the age of enlightenment all sciences have undergone a breathtaking upsurge, sometimes assumed to be limitless in our "atomic age". However, science and technology depend on human brains, activities and, last but not least, on human psychological capacities. A glance at the world situation gives rise to the question of whether human beings will be able to make use of their nearly unlimited mastery of the forces of nature in a constructive way or whether they are on the way to using it for self-destruction. But apparently the control and constructive use of inner psychic forces and of interpersonal relations lag far behind our management of technical discoveries.
We should like to quote the following passage from the Inaugural Lecture given by James Clark Maxwell as Professor of Experimental Physics in the University of Cambridge in October 1871 (partly reprinted in Charles C. Gillespie's book: "The edge of objectivity, an essay in the history of ideas, " Princeton 1960).
"The history of the development, whether normal or abnormal, of ideas, is