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The 2009 Neuropsychoanalysis Congress—with the provocative theme of “Neuropsychoanalysis: Who Needs It?”—held in Paris, was a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the International Society for Neuropsychoanalysis. Paris, the city of a thousand pleasures, has also witnessed key moments in the development of neurology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, moments that also constitute the early history of neuropsychoanalysis. The venue for the first day, the Educational Day, was the Amphithéâtre Charcot at La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, which served as a reminder that these three disciplines, so divided from one another over the later twentieth century, were strongly interlinked at their points of origin during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
The anniversary was celebrated with a sense that the young discipline of neuropsychoanalysis, albeit with this long and venerable history, had come of age, as reflected in the range and depth of papers presented during the two-day themed congress, in the number of registrants (just under 400), and especially in the number, scope, caliber, and vitality of the papers presented during the Open Research Day, which, for the first time, required parallel sessions to accommodate the many excellent submissions.
At the start, Lisa Ouss lay down the gauntlet with the proposition that neuropsychoanalysis represents a challenge to clinicians working with neurological disorders, and that the question “Neuropsychoanalysis: Who needs it?” points to a confrontation between neuroscience/experimental psychology and psychoanalysis, a way of emphasizing a necessary, if perilous, exchange between disciplines. The Congress title represented, she said, the idea that while neuroscience might be interested in a dialogue regarding the relation between brain and mind, clinicians may be more interested in developing their understanding of the clinical phenomenology that confronts them and thereby in developing their clinical competence. Part of the ch