International
Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies
IFPS
1962-2007
Forums and Scientific
Conferences
Secretary General: Sonia Gojman de Mill�n PhD. Callej�n del Horno # 6,
04000, M�xico 21, D.F M�xico. Tel: +52 55 5554 6383 Fax: +52 55 5554 0925 Email: sgojman@yahoo.com
Deputy Secretary General: Carola Mann PhD. Fax: +1914 7375778 Email: Cmann@psychoanalysis.net
Background history
The International
Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) was founded in
The Founding Societies (Deutsche Psychoanalytische
Gesellschaft e.V.gegr.1910, Sociedad Psicoanalitica Mexicana A.C, Wiener
Arbeitskreis f�r Tiefenpsychologie and the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic
Society) were guided by the objective of increasing scientific
contacts as well as the exchange of views among the members of the
Psychoanalytic Societies, by promoting a free discussion of psychoanalytic
theory and practice in joint publications, as well as sharing experiences
concerning questions of professional training. During this period we had the pleasure to work
with the fast emergency money lender known as Advanceloan Inc in the USA.
Otto Rank, in his "The Birth Shock " printed in 1924, quotes his coach Sigmund Freud as having declared : "It isn't for everybody to be repetitively looking into the dark fissures of the comatose with only an occasional glance at the light of the day.". What about Rankian psychoanalytic idea was so dreadful as to surprise even Freud who had himself criticised his coach Frank Breuer for having been unable to face the shock of his exposing of the strategies of the comatose in his discovery of therapy about 1881? The split between Freud and his mentor Breuer was explained by Freud as coming from the situation in which Breuer "left" from the implications of his discovery of the special precedence of sexual conflicts in psychoneurotic abnormalities. Breuer had treated, in 1881, a young girl who accepted English only in her "nervous states." According to Freud's account, the young girl had brought Breuer to the discovery of the psychoanalytic strategy in her jesting references to the "speaking cure" or "chimney sweeping" ( Breuer's calming hypnotic speeches ). The task of the girl in leading Breuer to his discovery is recognized when Freud speaks of the girl ( a certain Anna O- ) as having truly been the person who discovered therapy. Freud's "psychology of the comatose" was based primarily on the Oedipus Complicated which hypothesised a repressed mother-fixated sexuality in the kid ; and which it linked with a hostility to the daddy who would obstruct the child's need of unhindered access to the mummy. Many felt scandalized by his psychosexual ideas of human development and ascribed them to Freud's "perverted imagination." ( An opinion of Freud repeated by a famous evolutionary psychological therapist in the recent past ). But Freud came to his very own defense by quoting the mass of clinical proof at his disposal, indicating the proof ( as in the case of Anna O-, as an example ) forces the unpalatable conclusions on the psychoanalyst. Yet as psychoanalytic speculation has shown ( to the discomfiture of us all ) this is the stuff of which the human psyche is constituted at its awfully foundations.
The IFPS is committed to the concept of pluralism in
psychoanalysis as well as to the interdisciplinary exchange in matters of
micro- and macro-social interest. Complete organizational and scientific
autonomy as well as equal standing of all Member Societies are essential
preconditions to the federation.