Address of Welcome, Jerusalem Congress

Mr Teddy Kollek, Mayor of Jerusalem; professor Serge Lebovici, President of the International Psycho-Analytical Association; Honoured Guests, our Colleagues and our dear Friends.

It is a great pleasure and honour for me to open this Congress and to welcome you all to Jerusalem, to Israel and to the first International Psycho-Analytical Congress to be held outside Europe.

Jerusalem has been viewed as the navel of the world, the birthplace of ideas and of religions. Holy for Christians, Moslems and Jews, it belongs not only to the people who live here but to everybody. Jerusalem has a long history—to which we shall perhaps be able to add a brief paragraph with this Congress. Many of you know it intimately, before setting foot here, from the Bible. I shall never forget the sobering experience I had when showing my town to a psychoanalyst friend on his first visit, only to find that he knew, better than I did, every step we were about to take and every historical site we were about to visit. We are proud that the first of our Congresses to be held outside Europe takes place in Jerusalem. Yet it was not entirely fortuitous. Freud had an emotional relationship to Jerusalem. You may know that he was a member of the first Board of Governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the twenties. Freud spoke with a feeling of identification about what happened to Jerusalem when, in 1917, he was 'at daggers drawn with writing and with many other things'. 'The only thing that gives me any pleasure', he wrote to Abraham in a letter full of malaise, 'is the capture of Jerusalem [from the Turks] and the British experiment with the chosen people'. Throughout his life, Freud identified himself unequivocally with the Jewish people and their fate. In 1932 Freud proposed to Judah Magnes, Rector of the Hebrew university, that the first Chair of Psychoanalysis in the world be established at 'our university'. When this suggestion was not accepted and an academic psychologist wa