The Third Pan-American Congress for Psychoanalysis will be held in New York City at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel from February 23-27, 1969. The Congress is being sponsored jointly by the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and the Coordinating Committee of the Psychoanalytic Organizations of Latin America (COPAL).
Dr. Marcel Heiman, Chairman of the Association's Committee on Liaison with Latin American Colleagues (COLLAC), has organized the Congress and is in charge of all arrangements; he anticipates a large attendance of both North and South American colleagues.
The Congress will begin with an opening session on the afternoon of Sunday, February 23; on Sunday
evening The American Psychoanalytic Association will be host at a reception for the participants. The first day of the Congress proper will be devoted to a plenary session on the subject of “The First Psychoanalytic Hour.” The presentations in this session have been especially designed for the purpose of comparing differences in psychoanalytic technique. All comments and interpretations by the analyst who is presenting the initial analytic hour will be deleted, and each discussant will attempt to reconstruct the first hour, as presented, in accordance with his own experience.
Further details of the program will be found in the adjacent columns. Dr. Heiman has arranged for simultaneous translation of all the presentations into English and Spanish. His Committee is planning, in addition to the scientific sessions, a variety of other activities for the visitors from Latin America, including visits to important psychiatric facilities and psychoanalytic centers in and around New York.
Participants in the Congress will attend a banquet on the last evening of the meetings, Wednesday, February 26, and the closing session will be held on Thursday morning. Chaired by Dr. Heiman, this session will hear reports from some of the workshops which will have been working earlier in the week, and will undertake a general evaluation of the conference.
The acronym COPAL is derived from the Spanish name of the organization of Latin-American psychoanalysts. COPAL started about 10 years ago, and has had two previous biennial Congresses in collaboration with the APsaA. Dr. Marie Langer of Buenos Aires is the current President of COPAL.