Psychoanalysis As a Work in Progress1

With these words, which so aptly convey my deepest feelings for psychoanalysis, I accept the presidency of the International Psychoanalytical Association handed over to me by the honourable and worthy Prof. Daniel Widlöcher.

To be sharing this moment with my family and so many friends and colleagues reminds me, in a very personal way, of an expression employed by a character out of Erico Veríssimo's creative mind. Every time Liroca, a native of the Campanha Gaúcha (the Brazilian Pampas, situated at the extreme southwest of Rio Grande), stood face to face with new, surprising or somewhat unbelievable circumstances, he cried out: It is such a wide old world without gates!

This is a significant moment for our discipline and the IPA. We are gathered here in Brazil for the first time ever (the third time in Latin America), and the evidence that the ongoing Congress has been one of the most successful of recent years, in terms of scientific level, attendance numbers and organization, is cause for rejoicing.

Psychoanalysis is going through a crisis, we are told. Nonetheless, we witness a growing interest in our theories, a lively blossoming of new developments and their increasing application in the fields of mental health and human sciences. Statistics tell us that the number of analyses in progress has decreased, as has that of candidates at the institutes, and yet, in our congresses as well as in our publications, we find accounts of technically and methodologically thorough analysis and discussion of clinical material. The news about a so-called crisis in psychoanalysis contrasts strongly with our direct experience of dynamic reality, the construction of which is a task for all of us, each in his or her own practice.

The controversy between Robert Wallerstein (2005a, 2005b) and André Green (2005), two of our greatest contemporary thinkers, is a recent example of t