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The first international neuropsychoanalysis conference, held at the Royal College of Surgeons, was orgnized under the auspices of the Anna Freud Centre, and appropriately convened in the first year of the new century. The conference attracted about 450 delegates from around the world (and generated a waiting list of 200-odd more who were unable to obtain places). Roughly equal numbers attended from Europe, North and South America, with a scattering from the rest of the world; both the psychoanalytic and neuroscientific communities were well represented.
The stated aim of the conference was to provide a forum for discussion, dialogue, and debate between psychoanalysts and neuroscientists on the nature, function, and organization of human emotion. The aim was amply fulfilled over the 3 days of the conference, the debate generating considerable excitement in both groups, with areas of agreement and points of controversy. The ultimate consensus was that both disciplines are at a turning point at the beginning of the new century, and that continued dialogue and cross-fertilization will be frutiful and important to both.
Delegates were welcomed by Julia Fabricius on behalf of the Anna Freud Centre, and the conference was introduced by Oliver Sacks, well-known clinical neurologist and author, who explained his lifelong commitment to both disciplines. Sacks is a witty and powerful speaker who generated a sense of awe at the coming together of two such significant schools of thought and research after a century of estrangement. Mark Solms gave an introductory paper on the psychoanalytic contribution to affective science, principally reiterating the contribution made by Freud, whose basic conceptualization and model of the mind have not been superseded in this respect.
On the second day of the conference, two leading neuroscientists presented the principal discussion papers. , author of Descartes' Error: Emotiok, Reason and the Human Brain (1994) and The Feeling o