The forty-second congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association will explore “Psychoanalysis: Method and Applications” at its meeting in Nice, France, July 22–27, 2001. There are two compelling reasons to attend. One is the importance of the topic, covering current challenges and opportunities facing psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic education as their boundaries, method, and applications invite increasing controversial discussion. The other is the unparalleled glory and delight of southern France in the summer.
The structure of the congress should be familiar to attendees of the American Psychoanalytic Association meetings: plenary addresses followed by discussion groups, major panels on important topics, meet-the-author sessions, papers, clinical workshops, and theoretical workshops, with equal representation from Europe, North America, and Latin America.
This summer's plenary speakers will be Jean-Luc Donnet, with discussant Cesar Garza Guerrero; Arnold Goldberg, with discussant Irma Brenman Pick; and Isodoro Berenstein, with discussant Norman Doidge. There will be a three-part panel series oh “Creating the Psychoanalytic Process: Opening the Process, Being in the Process, and Closing the Process”; and panels on these among other topics:
Psychoanalysis and Allied Therapies
“The Controversial Discussions”
Ethics of Psychoanalysis
Confidentiality, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis
What Is the Psychoanalytic Method? Research on Psychoanalytic Process, Outcome, and Education
Changing Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Into Psychoanalysis
Child Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis and Allied Therapies
Writing and Reading Psychoanalysis Across Borders
Research: Evidence-Based Medicine and Psychoanalysis
Roy Schafer, Anne-Marie Sandler, Andre Green, Madeleine Baranger, Jean Laplanche, and Max Hernandez will be featured in meet-the-author sessions
Workshops will include the following:
The Changing Nature of the Family Structure
The Seduction Theory and Incest
The Role of Visual Interaction in Psychoanalytic Method
Psychoanalysis and Art
Problems of Technique with Severely Ill Patients
Teaching the Psychoanalytic Method
The Ideas of Wilfred Bion
Applying the Psychoanalytic Method in an Inpatient Setting
Addictions
Psychoanalysis and Film
Several hundred excellent papers were submitted for review, and approximately fifty will be presented. Presidential addresses by Otto Kernberg and incoming president Daniel Widlöcher and an overview panel chaired by Kernberg will bring the scientific program to a close.
The plenaries, certain of the panels, and the presidential addresses will be simultaneously translated into English, Spanish, French, and German. There will be multi-lingual discussion groups.
Under the intelligence, imagination, and gentle but firm hand of our excellent program chair, Jorge Canestri, the congress will be highly stimulating and instructive, both in its content and in the process of exchange with analysts from the international community. It is remarkably interesting to talk with colleagues from other cultures and other psychoanalytic traditions about the nature of psychoanalysis, common problems, and innovative solutions. At one of the recent IPA congresses, I participated in a lively and instructive group discussion on the problems of psychoanalytic education. Some of the European institutes are experimenting with new educational structures that prompted me to rethink how we teach psychoanalysis in the U.S.
If you already know how magical and intoxicating the south of France is, you will not need convincing to return for the congress; if you have never been to this area, you must either analyze your resistance to pleasure or get a new travel agent. To say that it is superb in sight, sound, feel, smell, and taste has all the pathetic limitations of thinking rather than experiencing. The museums, the food, the coast, Cannes, Monaco, Antibes, San Remo, Vence, St Paul de Vence, and the ambience will fill your dreams. Join us!
Robert Alan Glick, M.D., is the co-chair for North America on the IPA's Program Committee for the 2001 Nice congress. He is the director of Columbia University's Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia.