Psychoanalytic theories and techniques: Dialogue, difficulties and future – Papers from the XXIInd IFPS Forum, Madrid, October 19–22, 2022

Abstract

What a huge relief and what great joy for all of us to be able to meet again in person after the two and a half years that had elapsed since the XXIst International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) Forum held in Lisbon on February 5–8, 2020, with the beginning of the pandemic lockdown only about one month later! This is why we were all so thankful to the Executive Committee of the IFPS and to Miguel Ángel González Torres, the president of the Centro Psicoanalítico de Madrid and the chair of the scientific committee of the Forum, and to the colleagues who collaborated with him in organizing the latest Forum. Among these had been Romulo Aguillaume, who had organized the previous Forum inMadrid inMay 1998, together with Alejandro GállegoMeré (1929–2000) both pioneers of the IFPS in Madrid. Two of the main speakers at that time had been Gaetano Benedetti (1920–2013) and Adolf Grünbaum (1923–2018), the former dealing with the psychotherapy of schizophrenia, and the latter with his philosophical critique of psychoanalysis (see Conci, 1998). More than 200 colleagues from 21 countries participated in the 2022 Forum, which was hosted by the Madrid Academy of Medicine, situated behind the Reina Sofia Museum, close to the Atocha Railway Station. Four were the guest speakers, 26 the colleagues who delivered the plenary papers, and 48 those who presented the individual papers, with simultaneous translation into English and Spanish. The Forum was also meant to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the foundation of IFPS (in Amsterdam on July 30, 1962), one of the topics of the historical panel that took place on the Friday morning. As usual, the Executive Committee (EC) worked the whole day on Tuesday October 18, starting with the report on the organization of the Forum by Miguel Ángel Gonzalez Torres, the financial report by Valerie Angel, and the report on the Section of Individual Members by Jan Johansson and Darius Leskauskas. In the second part of the morning, Marco Conci presented to the EC the application of the Milan Scuola di Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica (SPP) to become a member society in its own right, having separated from the Milan Associazione di Studi Psicoanalitici (ASP). After a long and articulated discussion the EC decided that a site visit to the new group would take place in the spring of 2023 – with immediate affiliation in the case of a positive outcome. A further prospective affiliation positively discussed was represented by the South Korean group, which was put in touch with the IFPS by the New York colleague Ernesto Mujica. One of the main events of the EC meeting, as well as of the meeting of the Assembly of Delegates taking place on Wednesday October 19, was the change to the editorial board of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis, with Gabriele Cassullo (Italy) succeeding Grigoris Maniadakis, who had collaborated with Marco Conci as a coeditor-in-chief since October 2014. The author of this Report started doing this work in June 2007, collaborating with Christer Sjödin (Stockholm). Both the EC and the Assembly of Delegates approved the new four-year contract (2022–2026) between the coeditors-in-chief and the IFPS, also considering the great success of the journal – an average of more than 20,000 downloads of papers a year having been reached in recent years. Last but not least, as far as the composition of the EC is concerned, Jô Gondar (Brazil) was elected to replace Jan Johansson, with Lucio Gutiérrez (Chile) and Terttu Mäkinen (Finland) as the two new alternate members, and with Juan Flores chairing the EC for two more years, until 2024. I can now come to the four guest speakers, the first one of whom was Juliet Mitchell (UK), the British pioneer of the theme psychoanalysis and feminism (see Mitchell, 1974). She inaugurated the Forum on Wednesday evening with a paper on “Ageless art: Louise Bourgeois and psychoanalysis,” through which she connected the family background of the