You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
London, 30 August-6 September, 1975
A TURBULENT meeting of trainees and recently qualified analysts held during the 1975 International Congress ended in the recognition that we were ignorant of the crucial issues involved. We decided, therefore, to spend a week together during the summer of 1975 to learn about differences in training, of theoretical standpoint and styles of work. Representatives were elected from each of the institutes of the trainees present. This ‘International Committee’ maintained contact and agreed upon London as the most convenient conference venue in terms of cost and accessibility. A programme was agreed upon by correspondence between the representatives. The conference was, from its inception, the result of shared responsibility between the committee members and their colleagues at home. Initiative was coordinated and channelled through myself as representative of the host country. During the conference itself the committee formed the basis of a steering committee which met together daily at lunchtime.
Forty-seven trainees and recently qualified analysts from the institutes of Berlin, Holland, Italy, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Stuttgart, Zürich and London participated. Foreign members stayed mostly in the homes of London analysts and trainees. The conference week was an intense exchange on both feeling and intellectual levels. On the intellectual level we explored conflicts about the use of the transference and therapeutic regression, ‘discipleship’ to Jung, the value of archetypal theory and political involvement. On the feeling level we grew to be extremely aware of the wide range of our personality types, cultural backgrounds and individual styles. Our initial collective prejudices gave way in the face of the personal encounter. Having discovered each other as people we began working on the formation of an association.
The main purpose of the association would be to promote cross-fertilization of ideas between the national groups and t