Shortly before his sudden death last May, Dr. Walter Joffe, Chairman of the Program Committee, together with Miss Pearl King, Secretary, announced preliminary plans for the next Congress of the IPA. Following the widely mourned loss of Dr. Joffe, the program, which bears the stamp of his imaginative work, will be co-chaired by Miss King and Dr. André Green. Dr. Joffe and Miss King listed two central principles that have guided the choice of format and topics. First, the Congress must be “centered around vital issues which
were topical and which played an essential role in every psychoanalyst's professional life.” Second, the Congress should constitute a forum which allowed an exchange of views among Congress participants as well as between invited speakers and those present in the audience.
To achieve the first goal, topics were selected which would promote a dialogue between those “who subscribed to changing approaches to psychoanalytic experience and practice, and those who represented a more traditional approach.” The unifying theme will be “Changes in Psychoanalytic Practice and Experience: Theoretical, Technical and Social Implications.”
The Congress will open and close with prepared papers and formal discussions, while the intermediate two days will be devoted to three simultaneous panels on Tuesday, and three simultaneous dialogues on Thursday. Topics for the panels will be: The Fundamentals of Psychic Change in Clinical Practice, The Changing Expectations of Patients and Psychoanalysts Today, and The Implications of Recent Advances in the Knowledge of Child Development for the Treatment of Adults. The topics for the dialogues will be: Freud and Female Sexuality, The Role of Family Life in Child Development, and The Changing Use of Dreams in Psychoanalytic Practice.
All invited participants will prepare presentations designed to stimulate progressive discussion. For the first time, simultaneous translation into the four official languages will be provided for all main Congress events. Invited papers for the first day Plenary Session on Monday will be pre-published in a least four different language journals, including the International Journal of Psychoanalysis early in 1975, allowing for advance planning of discussions. Position Statements of Panelists and précis of dialogue papers will be pre-published in the President's Newsletter (IPA) before the next Congress.
Individual scientific papers will be limited to twenty-four, and all will be published after the Congress in the International Journal.