Letter from Geneva

What can I tell you about the situation of psychoanalysis in Geneva? I shall take a retrospective look over the past 15 years and try to highlight the events and circumstances that have had a significant impact on the development of psychoanalysis in Geneva and the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Although it is in Geneva that the majority of French-speaking members and trainees live, it would be pointless to dissociate its situation from that of Lausanne, where psychoanalysis is again developing rapidly, or of the other districts, Neuchatel, Fribourg and Valais. Psychoanalytic training stricto sensu is still based mainly in the Raymond de Saussure Psychoanalytic Centres of Geneva and Lausanne, the latter having been established more recently.

To clarify things, I shall give a brief overview of the three main issues which I will go on to discuss in more detail. (1) Psychoanalysis in our part of Switzerland is still in relatively good shape, especially in the private sector, although in the university medical schools and psychology departments it has all but disappeared, driven out by the vogue for biological psychiatry, the neurosciences and behavioural–cognitive treatments. (2) As for psychoanalytic training, we have now set up an Associate Membership of our Society, a preliminary status leading to that of member (previously we had only two categories of members: full members and training members); in addition, members participate to a greater degree than before in the training process, for which we continue to prefer the independent model rather than that of a classical training Institute. (3) In our Society, members and candidates are nowadays more confident in the value of their specificity as psychoanalysts; the extent to which they are engaging with colleagues from France in organizing the Congress of French-speaking Psychoanalysts, to be held this year in Geneva, bears witness to this.

For more than 30 years, psychoan