These are the bare facts about the beginnings of the IPA: The first Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association was held in Salzburg, Austria, in April 1908. At this rather informal meeting, Freud, Jung, Adler, Ferenczi, Abraham, Jones, and others presented a total of nine papers. (Freud's presentation, “A Case of Obsessional Neurosis” — the “Rat Man” — was almost five hours long.) According to Jones, the meeting came about when he suggested to Jung that the time was right for a general gathering of those interested in Freuds work, and it was organized by Freud and Jung.
Freud already was concerned about protecting psychoanalysis and assuring its future. He was considering establishing an international association, but this issue was not on the agenda of the Salzburg Congress. As such meetings go today, this one was a model we should all hope to follow: There was “no Chairman, no Secretary, no Treasurer, no Council, no kind of subcommittee whatever, and — best of all — no business meeting! It occupied only one day,” wrote Jones.
The second congress was held in 1910, in Nuremburg, Germany, at which time the IPA was officially founded. Freud had met Jung only three years before, and Freud's early enthusiasm for this Swiss psychiatrist led him to appoint Jung as the first president. The first Branch Societies (now called Component Societies) were those of Berlin, Vienna, and Zurich. The New York Psychoanalytic Society was established in February 1911, with twenty members, and the American Psychoanalytic Association in May 1911, with eight members. Its first meeting was in Baltimore.
These were the early years of the psychoanalytic movement, with all the excitement, conflicts, quarrels, and defections that have been so well chronicled by Ernest Jones and Peter Gay, among others. Then, as now, there were adversaries outside the world of psychoanalysis who sought to discredit it, and inside that world there were conflicts over theory, technique, ideology, training, turf, and organization. Then, as now, valuable energies were expended on non-productive struggles, the origins of which were soon forgotten while the contention continued. Sometimes the conflicts passed from one psychoanalytic generation to the next It may be disillusioning to discover so much interpersonal conflict among analysts whose own analyses should have reduced the need for such conflict. Even more disheartening is the realization that psychoanalytic organizations can be the arena for revival and reenactment of disputes between individuals.
On the other hand, however, such organizations, so long as they survive, may serve to sustain, protect, and promote psychoanalysis. It is in this latter light that I view the IPA.
To expand a little on the more optimistic view, there is a built-in structural conflict between the exquisitely private psychoanalytic situation and the organizational framework that is meant to support it. After all, one of the organizations major aims is to provide psychoanalytic training. Whatever the defects of the system may be, limiting psychoanalytic training to a focus on the analytic dyad of analyst and analysand is bound to produce limited results. To think otherwise nowadays is to indulge in fantasy. The training provided by psychoanalytic organizations helps to sustain psychoanalysis as a healing profession, a way of thinking about and understanding the human mind and personality. Such organizations also represent psychoanalysis to the outside world and assure its survival into the next generation — and, in more recent years, its evolution. Different psychoanalytic organizations emphasize different functions. There are psychoanalytic study groups of various sizes, societies that focus mainly on scientific issues, institutes or committees that serve as training arms of societies, regional associations of different sorts, and, finally, the IPA.
When psychoanalysis was not so threatened as it is today — particularly in the 25 years after the Second World War — the IPA provided some coherence for the psychoanalytic community through its international congresses and committee activities that required its members and officers to visit societies in other countries. Members of the IPA have benefited from the well-respected distinction between analysts fully trained according to IPA standards and therapists of other persuasions and other trainings. This distinction continues to be of paramount importance in every country except the United States. Membership in the American Psychoanalytic Association fulfilled this function in the past. Now The American has been joined by the IPA, to which independent psychoanalytic societies of North America look for their distinguishing accreditation.
Unfortunately, in the United States from 1938 until very recently, the written agreement that IPA would only recognize institutes of The American put up barriers that largely isolated American psychoanalytic training, practice, and thinking from ideas originating abroad. In retrospect, this appears to have been an expression of the “America First” attitude prevalent in the United States before World War II. IPA congresses were chiefly regarded as vacation travel opportunities and were not taken seriously by many psychoanalysts.
In the past few years, however, interaction across these boundaries has increased noticeably. American analysts have participated more fully in the IPA and in international congresses. More analytic papers and books have been translated into English. American analysts have become more conversant with ideas originating abroad. In small clinical conferences, North American, Latin American, and European colleagues have exchanged presentations and discussions of their clinical work. This kind of cross-fertilizing scientific and clinical activity has renewed interest in a reworking of psychoanalytic theory and technique wherever psychoanalytic groups are active. It is manifested by this very column in TAP and by a series of TAP articles on the IPA. It is particularly evident in the vigorous program pursued by the IPA's incoming administration, headed by Otto Kernberg. I am privileged to participate as incoming Secretary.
The problems facing psychoanalysis today are profound and worldwide. The earlier, largely positive cultural view of psychoanalysis has been reversed; the medical and psychiatric world has begun to take a dim view of psychoanalysis. Governments and health insurance agencies have put serious economic constraints
Robert L. Tyson, incoming Secretary of the IPA, is a training and supervising analyst (adult and child) with the San Diego Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California-San Diego; a member of the British Psycho-Analytical Society; and a fellow of both the American Psychiatric Association and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
on psychoanalysts' opportunities to practice, patients' ability to pay for analysis, and potential students' prospects of obtaining analytic training.
While specific conditions and factors vary, it is clear that the challenges to our profession today are immense. To deal with them requires a united effort. Only the IPA is in a position to organize and carry out such an effort, enlisting the cooperation and support of concerned colleagues in all countries where there are psychoanalysts. In the absence of the barriers that formerly prevented the IPA from working with individual societies in the United States, the IPA can enlist support not only by working with the American Psychoanalytic Association but also by engaging the interest and cooperation of its component societies. It already enjoys backing from individual members. Independent societies in North America do not share The American's history of isolationism, and we should all anticipate closer collegial bonds with our analytic partners in the tasks that now confront us. While a certain amount of institutional self-analysis is necessary with respect to internal conflicts, it cannot be allowed to divert energies that should be devoted to central concerns.
One action on which the IPA has recently embarked is revitalizing and reorganizing its Committee on Societies. Rather than focusing on internal dissension, this group will cultivate the interface between psychoanalytic societies and the surrounding culture — the media, intellectuals, the professions, universities, and government. An active and positive approach will contribute significantly to more favorable and multidimensional views of psychoanalysis and will counteract the one-sided, negative images that have become so prominent. It will also pursue problems of practice and insurance, collecting information and approaches that have been valuable and disseminating this information among IPA societies where it can be put to use. In a similar vein, a new Committee on the United Nations will introduce the value of the psychoanalytic point of view to all the governments active in the UN and concerned with the many facets of human development and welfare.
Psychoanalytic vitality at all levels can be significantly enhanced by coordinated and informed research efforts. While every psychoanalytic treatment is a research effort in one sense, there are ways to supplement and complement this central source of psychoanalytic knowledge. For example, coordinated studies of the effectiveness of psychoanalysis are high on the agenda. The IPA Committee on Research will be significantly expanding its embryonic efforts by bringing the latest developments in psychoanalytically relevant research to all IPA regions through a series of research conferences. The committee will also support research projects relevant to psychoanalysis, funding work by any qualified researcher, wherever located A third major effort already under way is the Psychoanalytic Research Summer School, held yearly in London. A very experienced faculty holds intensive seminars for carefully chosen applicants with the aim of increasing the sophistication of their research methodology, techniques, and interpretation. Graduates of this program have been enthusiastic about the benefits to be gained from this work-intensive experience, and the nucleus of a worldwide network of psychoanalytic researchers is already established as a result of the summer school program.
Language barriers are more formidable than stone walls as obstacles to intellectual interchange and evolution. They further isolate training centers and their faculty and graduates from intellectual discourse that would otherwise be available. A newly formed Committee on Translations will be responsible for nominating psychoanalytically relevant works for translation into other languages. This program will help disseminate new knowledge among our societies, as will the work of the newly established Committee on Inter-Regional Conferences. CIRC is organized to be responsive to local needs rather than imposing its own ideas on the conference-going public. It will bring psychoanalytic theoreticians and clinicians to analytic communities that have an interest in their work, rather than forcing members to travel long distances to such gatherings as the biennial International Congresses. The work of this committee will complement the Congresses, expand the IPA's educational influence, increase the effectiveness of our training programs, and support the life-long learning to which psychoanalysts are committed.