Marilia Aisenstein, My Friend

Marilia Aisenstein passed away on 13 May 2025. It was a great loss for psychoanalysis, because she was one of our finest authors, clinicians, and training analysts, and a gifted leader of French, European and international institutions, as well a personal one, because she was a dear and inspiring friend. I welcome the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (IJPA) invitation to share some memories of our friendship and collaboration.

I met Marilia Aisenstein for the first time in July, 1997, at the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) Congress, in Barcelona. She was the president of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society (SPP), and I was the chair of the then existing House of Delegates, and in this capacity I was chairing a meeting of presidents of societies from the three IPA regions. At a certain point, Marilia strongly disagreed with the way I was trying to chair that difficult meeting. She stood up, along with other European presidents, and expressed her disagreement – almost shouting, which produced a somewhat similar reaction from me, but eventually things calmed down. As far as I can remember, it was our first and last disagreement of this kind.

Several years later, except for some meetings at international events, we next met on the IPA Board, where Marilia was a European Vice President and I was President elect, and we were able to begin getting to know each other better. I was impressed with her participation in the discussions, her intelligence and her way of presenting her views. In 2007, as President, I had the great idea of inviting her to be the International New Groups Committee (ING) Chair, a task that she performed with her enormous capacity for work, the ability to face delicate situations and to look for solutions, and her full commitment to psychoanalysis. Another remarkable event of that period, as she liked to put it, was that we jointly won the Battle of the Three Models of Training, together with other colleagues. In my view, it was a