There is no better occasion than our international congresses to review the history of the IPA and to proceed with the scientific development of our method, now a century old.
The 1908 “Meeting of Freudian Physicians” in Salzburg, in retrospect considered our first international congress, brought together a small group of colleagues who had made a study of Freud's ideas. At that meeting Abraham, Riklin, Ferenczi, Sadger, Stekel, Jung, Jones, and Adler presented their ideas, while Freud read “The Rat Man” to an audience able to appreciate the magnitude of his discoveries and the extent of his genius. Two years later, in Nuremberg, the International Psychoanalytical Association was founded, with Carl Gustav Jung its first president.
Since then, successive congresses have been held in various European cities, with growing attendance and expanding and diversifying ideas. It is no small merit of the IPA that its congresses marked the progress of our theory and united analysts the world over in fruitful dialogue, establishing the foundations of our identity. These endure even to this day.
The Thirtieth Congress, held in 1977, marked an important change—finally we dared leave Europe. It took place in Jerusalem, which well deserved the recognition paid it, and it was there that the idea of returning to Germany arose.
Two years later, in 1979, the congress moved to New York, the first city in the Western Hemisphere to host an IPA congress. In 1985 we were finally able to return to Germany, for the first time since World War II and the Holocaust. The next meeting, held in 1987, convened in Montreal—a significant step in the IPA's commitment to further the international spirit of psychoanalysis. After a brief return to Europe—Rome in 1989—conditions were ripe for a congress in Latin America, where in 1991 the Thirty-seventh Congress was held in Buenos Aires. It was at that point that a definitive integration of the three areas making up the IPA was finally achieved.
Now, after fifteen years, we return to the United States, once again the guests of the American Psychoanalytic Association, accompanied now by the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies (IPS) in North America, a renovating force for psychoanalysis on that continent. This time we will be received on the West Coast, in California, with enthusiasm and warmth equal to that we experienced in New York.
The Thirty-ninth Congress in San Francisco, organized by colleagues in the United States and under a Latin American administration, can quite rightly be called the Congress of the New World. Major responsibility for the event has fallen to the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and Society, but it is fair to say that we have all made a great effort to achieve the level of excellence the occasion demands.
I appreciate the opportunity afforded me by TAP to cordially invite our U.S. colleagues to attend this congress. It belongs to us all, but is especially your own. The scientific program has been designed to invite greater participation around a subject of major theoretical and practical import, the Local Arrangements Committee has spared no pains to make us feel comfortable, and the Conference of Training Analysts has done its usual best to ensure an effective interchange among the participants. Above all, by attending you seal your commitment to the International Psychoanalytical Association and to psychoanalysis worldwide. I trust that the forty who once gathered in Salzburg will this summer find their way to San Francisco three thousand strong.
Horacio Etchegoyen, M.D., is president of the International Psychoanalytical Association.