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“The task of the European Psychoanalytical Federation is to function as an arena of exchange and an intellectual forum for all psychoanalytical societies of Europe”. This is how the task of the Federation is defined in its webpage.
In my position as President of the EPF I want to speak essentially of the future, of how it presents itself today, full of difficulties and problems but also of promise and projects.
It is, however, fundamental for me to underline the contributions made by all the previous Executives - particularly the one directly preceding us with the presidency of Serge Frisch - which have meant that today we have a great number of societies that make up the EPF, an increased wealth of scientific initiatives and, especially, a house (The House) where these and other initiatives can be hosted to great advantage.
If we would like to know the history of the EPF, an excellent historical survey was written by Han Groen-Prakken (‘A European organization for psychoanalysis - why, how and when?’) published in Bulletin 26 of the EPF in 1986. An abbreviated version was published in the same book we mentioned above with the title ‘A Historical Survey of the Founding and Development of the EPF’. The first chapter, ‘Prelude: 1945-1964’ begins by saying that: “The inventory of European psychoanalytic Societies taken directly after World War II tells the story of the almost total destruction of European psychoanalysis”. The preparation to create an overall European psychoanalytic organization seems to have been discussed in the third ‘Conference on Training Standards’ in 1964 in London, under the chairmanship of Pier van der Leeuw. Here, they proposed and eventually held, a meeting during the 24th IPA Congress in Amsterdam in 1965, chaired and reported by Miss Pearl King.
As Groen-Prakken says, the foundation of the EPF could be extended over nearly 3 years, from a meeting at the Paris Institute in rue Saint-Jacques in October 1966, where the draft Constitution (Pearl Ki