Address of Welcome, London Congress

This is the fourth time that the honour of welcoming members of an International Psycho-Analytical Congress has fallen to a President of the British Psycho-Analytical Society. This in itself is not a record, but it is something of which we are extremely proud. So: welcome to London. It is a place with pride in its ability to combine an unchanging charm with a capacity for profound and carefully developed change.

We believe that our tradition forms an ideal background to this Congress which is devoted to a consideration of 'Changes in Psychoanalytical Practice and Experience' and the 'Theoretical, Technical and Social Implications' of these changes which, of course, cannot be wholly dissociated from the changes that are taking place in society at large.

The history of psychoanalytical societies inevitably reflects, to some extent, the climate of opinion of the countries in which they are rooted and the British Society is no exception. Quite apart from everything else, we in London do pride ourselves in being 'with it'. It was Ernest Jones who broke fresh ground in the field of female sexuality with his paper on that topic and one of his many famous errands took him to Vienna in the early 1930s for a special discussion on the subject.

We have arranged a small exhibition on Psychoanalysis in Britain and, although I do not wish to bore you with a history of the British Society, I should like to remind you that the small nucleus of British psychoanalysts included the names of Ernest Jones, Sylvia Payne, John Rickman, James and Edward Glover, James and Alix Strachey, Ella Sharpe, Joan Riviere, Adrian Stephens, (Virginia Woolf's brother), Marjorie Brierley, Susan Isaacs, William Gillespie, Clifford Scott and Donald Winnicott. They initiated the tradition which has, to this day, provided the basic tenets of our outlook towards the development of theory and technique in the practice of psychoanalysis and which has also influenced our training methods. It was the climate