Colloquium and Conference on Training

 

The Conference on Training was, to a certain degree, the cradle of the EPF. Originally, it took place each autumn in London. Since only two members from each Society were able to participate in this annual event, it was decided in the eighties to offer an additional conference, open to all European training analysts. In 1994, the Council of the EPF agreed to organize two alternating conferences on training - the original Standing Conference on Training was renamed the „Colloquium on Training“, to which each Society sends two delegates, alternating with the „Conference of Training Analysts“ to which all European training analysts are invited. However, as the number of participants is steadily declining, it is at present uncertain as to whether this conference will continue.

 

Colloquium and Conference on Child and Adolescent Analysis

 

At the Council Meeting in 1985, the suggestion put forward by Victor Smirnoff for a Standing Conference on Child Analysis was accepted and, at the request of Moses Laufer, adolescent analysis was also included. In time, the need for an alternating annual colloquium as well as a conference once again became apparent. A cause of much reflection is the issue of whether child and adolescent analysis should be thematically separated, and whether subjects on the treatment of children and adolescents should perhaps once again be offered at the Main Conferences.

 

Clinical Seminars are highly valued within the EPF. In 1982, the first exclusively clinical seminar took place, achknowledging for the growing need for a forum of exchange for young European analysts. Each of the two members sent from the various Societies and Study Groups presents a clinical case. Four to five training analysts chair the small discussion groups differently composed each day. For many, these meetings spark a love for supranational, European, psychoanalytic discussion. Contacts that are made across political boundaries sometimes continue for many years in small working groups. Thus, the Seminar for Associate Members continues to grow in popularity, with summaries of the meetings regularly published in the Bulletin.

 

The EPF/NAIPAG Seminar is also an exclusively clinical meeting. Around 80 analysts, half from Europe and half from North America, meet to discuss clinical case material.

 

Finally, a mention must be given to the activities of European psychoanalysts in Eastern Europe, connected in particular to the names of Han Groen-Prakken and Eero Rechardt who, in 1987, took into their hands the task of finding a circle of colleagues with whom they would visit various cities and groups, whence it became clear that activities of all sorts were in motion. While the IPA had already formed an East European Committee, this was not taken upby the EPF until 1989, only two weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the first clinical seminar took place, providing a platform of exchange between East and West. Meanwhile, the East European Committee of the EPF has been formed, working on issues such as the information, transmission and promotion of psychoanalysis in Eastern Europe.