Revue Française de Psychanalyse

Account of the 9th Conference of Psychoanalysts of the French Language.

1. R. Laforgue. Family Neurosis.

2. J. Leuba. The Neurotic Family and the Family Neuroses.

3. Marie Bonaparte. Paleobiologic and Biopsychic Views.

4. G. Mauco. The Psychology of the Child in its Relations with the Psychology of the Unconscious. (First Part.)

Conference of Psychoanalysts of the French language held at Nyon, Switzerland: The conference was opened by a short address of welcome by Dr. de Saussure and then followed:

1. R. Laforgue. The Family Neurosis.—Dr. LaForgue considers the family neurosis, as yet not sufficiently recognized, one of the principal aspects of the neuroses encountered in patients. Indeed often treatment of at least one of the parents—if not two—will cure neurotic children without their having been treated themselves; children of neurotic parents are always more or less neurotic themselves and the preceding statement eliminates the possibility of heredity. From his experience he considers the neurosis represents a family tradition and thus explains many of the complex states known as character neuroses, neuroses of defeat, homosexuality, frigidity, sexual impotence, certain psychoses, notably paranoia. One should never, he says, neglect the family neurosis in searching for the origins of a neurosis. In practice there are several types of family neurosis which in different degree have the same clinical aspect and are expressed often in a similar way in the children for each type of neurosis. All these types, despite the variation of their clinical symptoms, express a more or less profound regression of sexuality and go on a par with more or less manifest sexual inversion. Neurotic persons we know marry often out of hate more than love, to destroy rather than to construct. All the misery ensuing from such a condition can pass behind the façade of an apparently perfect bourgeois family life, with the complicity of society and the doctor who until now has never dared interfe