Editorial

Half a century ago exactly, at the occasion of the 1969 International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) congress in Rome, a group of Italian, Swiss, West German and French analysts and analysts-in-training organized a ‘counter-congress’ to register their dissent from what they perceived as the authoritarianism and inadequate engagement with social issues of the day among the leaders of the international psychoanalytic community. More than 100 participants showed up for several days of engaged discussion at a restaurant within a fifth of a mile of the Cavalieri Hilton, where the registered congress participants were housed in upscale splendour. The IPA was criticized - as the dollar signs replacing the final letters in the poster criticizing the main ‘Congre$$’ made all too clear - of caring more about lucrative professional self-protection than about excellence in clinical practice, to say nothing of then-pressing political matters. The young European dissidents were soon joined by several Latin American, especially Argentinian, analysts. The US-based analysts who predominated not just among the attendees (comprising nearly 50 per cent of the 1,500 registered) but also within the power structures of the IPA were accused by participants in the counter-congress of pursuing a ‘therapy of the elite’ and ‘seeking hegemony over the unconscious’ (Pecorini, 1969, p. 17). The counter-congress was covered with fascination in both the French and the Italian press, and Jacques Lacan flew in from Paris when he learned how much excitement its discussions were generating.