Appendix: The Origins of the EPF ‘New ’ Scientific Policy and the Early History of the Working Party

The project described in this book is the first outcome of the EPF Working Party on Comparative Clinical Methods. The working party had its origins in the new scientific policy agreed at the European Psychoanalytic Federation Council in London in April 2000 and the consequent formation of the EPF Working Party on Clinical Issues set up six months later under the chairmanship of Haydée Faimberg. Retrospectively, it is possible to see the 2000 London Council meeting as the initiation of a novel process of evolution leading to new forms of exchange between psychoanalysts, the results of which were only very partially anticipated. As this may be of some interest the early events prior to those discussed in more depth in the book are described in this Appendix.

The London Council meeting (in 2000 comprising a small executive and the presidents of twenty-six psychoanalytical societies with seventeen different mother tongues and based in twenty-one sovereign states) considered and eventually adopted unanimously what was called the new scientific policy. This policy was stimulated by a newly elected president working within the context of a creative and constructive executive who had already begun to create the institutional structure for reform. The opening rubric of the new policy proposal

document asserted that in the field of psychoanalysis scientific discussion might be in some trouble:

Too often we seem to need to return to clarify what ought to be basics. There are some hopeful signs but there is also evidence in the growing pluralism that followed the breakdown of the previous authoritarian orthodoxy that the field may be disintegrating into superficially organised sub-groups with little in common but their aspiration to be called psychoanalysts, creating significant difficulties for clarity within the profession and in the interface with other professions. These difficulties are felt in the complex and rich cultural context of Europe as they are world-wide. But a