The inception of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS)

Abstract

Abstract In this article the history and process of the founding of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) will be addressed. After World War II, the IFPS was the first international association of psychoanalysts established outside the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). Particular to the IFPS was the inclusion of psychoanalytic institutes and groups that were not members of the IPA; a liberal and open approach to new psychoanalytic methods and developments; and the waiver of imposed regulation – within a certain framework – on the terms of psychoanalytic training. In the received history of the psychoanalytic movement, non-IPA psychoanalysts have been neglected. This article intends to shed light on the organization of those so-called psychoanalytic dissidents, who identified as psychoanalysts, but were deemed by the IPA establishment “only” psychotherapists. The history of the IFPS provides material for the analysis of this important but difficult controversy, still markedly perceptible within the psychoanalytic community today.