A House:
The premises were bought in 2015, to allow EPF Societies and members to have a home to invest and where to meet. At present, these venues host a number of official EPF meetings (such as today’s), as well as meetings of EPF committees. They may also host conferences or working weekends organised by members of EPF societies.
The House is now, also, the permanent home of the EPF’s archives, and the Archives Committee – which Jasminka Suljagic is telling you about today – looks after them there.
As you know, this House belongs to every member of our societies, and we strive to make it a welcoming home — with our local team and with the support of the House Committee, who now consists of seven officially appointed members, in alphabetical order: Rui Aragāo Oliveira (Portuguese Society), Valérie Bouville (DPV), Luba Brezinova (Czech Society), Fabienne Fillion (Belgian Society), Andrea Gaddini (SPI), Piotr Krzakowski (SPP), and Philip Roys (BPA), in addition to Christos Zervis, ex officio member as EPF Treasurer, Frank Goderniaux, EPF Assistant, and myself, as Chair of the EPF House. We normally meet online once a month, in addition to two official in-person meetings — one in September in Brussels and another during the Annual Conference.
We tried, after the beautiful painting exhibitions organised previously by Serge Frisch, to continue to make welcoming this House, and to improve and decorate it. Further improvements to the House will continue to depend on close collaboration with the Board of Directors. Given the many responsibilities currently carried by the Board of Directors, some of these projects have necessarily progressed more slowly than we had hoped. Nevertheless, we remain committed to making the House increasingly welcoming. We look forward to a less austere environment for the future!
A place:
More than just a physical place or an address, it is intended, in essence, to be a kind of task, a way of being in which the individuals—its constituents—allow themselves to be absorbed by their activities, in an intensification of their sense of existence, a state of full presence.
And, like any home, it can welcome them on various occasions: official EPF meetings, such as todays:
- One of the General Assemblies
- Some of the Meetings of the Board of Directors.
- Today is the second Symposium which take place in the House : in 2022, was held a « Symposium on Time », which has been edited in German and recently in English (‘Time and the experience of time’, Routledge, 2025). But it is the third organised by the EPF: we have had in 2015 a first one, in Berlin, on Psychoanalysis in 2025.
- The “Educational Conferences,” under the responsibility of one of the EPF Vice-Presidents: the longest established, the Forum on Education, brings together training analysts on the first weekend of December; the NQAS (formerly NMS) in June, and the NQTAM in September, are more recent, from 2024 onwards, an annual “Candidates’ Seminar” has also been held.
- The EPCUS, which meets in October for the Students, which Charlotta Bjorklind is telling you about today.
We host also other events as the conferences organised by EPF members, and even by certain guests from the IPA; for example, the PEC is meeting here regularly, and Committees from the EPF and the IPA can organise joint conferences there.
Different groups of colleagues use to meet in the House, whether they are societies, EPF committees or informal groups called ‘interest groups’; they can plan to work together – not always with a specific aim in mind, at least to begin with – and meet up here as well..
There are also Groups whose aim is to bring colleagues together for the purpose of intervision. Two of them originated in Small Conferences (NQTAM 2018, NMS 2016); another Group is the French-German Group. They clearly express that the House represents for them a place intimately linked to their meetings, and a symbolic home. Others may not state this as clearly, but I believe the feeling is widely shared. These groups meet regularly in the House, once or twice a year.
This allows me to insist: the House is open to any group wishing to meet there; all that is required is to do submit a request to the Chair of the House and to Frank Goderniaux. It is also open to candidates, provided that their group is under the responsibility of a member. All these meetings serve the EPF’s aim of fostering exchanges among European analysts — and future analysts — in order to build a common identity despite our differences, and to advance scientific work and research.
Its Dynamics, and the role of the House Committee:
The Committee’s role is to consider research themes or the organisation of new seminars (I shall return to this last point). But the spirit that drives the Committee is closely linked to a democratic approach to the life of an institution. It is, moreover, a group of psychoanalysts, and this implies a way of thinking and developing ideas that may – or may not – become projects. The nine analysts who constitute this Committee come from different countries and have different analytical cultures, and they work together particularly fruitfully, in a space open to all – to all colleagues – where they can listen to and appreciate different points of view; where they can try to put themselves in each other’s shoes, not only out of generosity, but also to multiply and broaden their experiences and perspectives through these others, by following their train of thought, and thus enrich themselves as a community.
We therefore meet every month via video conference, and twice a year in person.
During these meetings, we try to speak freely, sometimes without any specific theme, strictly speaking. And some ideas emerge, allowing us to offer a wide variety of activities: at the start of our term of office, we carried out a satisfaction survey amongst recent users of the house, focusing on the house itself rather than on the content of the meetings in which each person had taken part. This survey resulted in a near-consensus regarding the quality of the welcome and the premises themselves.
For us, this involves reflecting on various topics. We have done so with regard to supervision, and, thanks to the support of the Board of Directors, we were recently able to organise a seminar for supervisors. This project – which is experimental and, we hope, a pilot one – was a resounding success, and will enable us to explore in greater depth what supervision means for the supervisees, but above all for the supervisors themselves.
The participants were pleased to have been able to share their experiences – and sometimes their difficulties – in a neutral setting and with colleagues from societies other than their own, which allowed for a level of confidentiality that is difficult to achieve when the supervisee is a candidate, who may be known to others and, above all, is likely to become a colleague.
We have also been exploring the history of the EPF, though we have not yet managed to finalise a project on this theme, and we are currently working on another subject, namely “the analyst outside his office”. We are looking at what has been written about an analyst’s work with judges, as a hospital psychiatrist and so on… And, of course, at our own personal experiences. How can psychoanalysts draw on their experience, perceptions and frame of reference in circumstances where acting in the same way as they would with a patient in their office is neither possible nor advisable? This, in fact, also applies to the work of the supervisor.
Naturally, we very quickly turned our attention to the training of analysts, and indeed to our very conception of psychoanalysis itself.
These various topics enable us to engage in rich and often in-depth discussions, which are, of course, interesting and enriching for us, but which we hope will also benefit the EPF by facilitating meetings that allow interested colleagues to share their experiences and explore their ideas in greater depth.
Indeed, as well as welcoming colleagues who wish to work together within the House, and offering them support where needed, we will have to consider different ways of fostering exchanges and encounters, which enable European analysts (among whom I naturally include those who, although from countries outside Europe itself, are culturally European analysts) to recognise what they have in common, despite differences that are sometimes narcissistically highlighted.
In a sense, we are helping to build Psychoanalytical Europe!
And we will not be able to do this unless we recognise that each of us – and, more broadly, everyone we interact with – will have to be listened to and taken into account, regardless of their institutional position, reputation or experience. This does not exclude the recognition of differences, but is based on the value of every word. As far as I am concerned, this is the lesson I have learnt from my long involvement with the EPF’s ‘small conferences’, first by attending them, and then by organising them.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasise the importance of the EPF House — both the premises and the House Committee — as a place designed to foster creativity among colleagues and to host their meetings of all kinds (provided they relate to psychoanalysis, of course!). To host meetings, to host ideas, and to host plans: this is our mission.
We wish to continue along this path in close collaboration with the EPF Board of Directors, while respecting each other’s autonomy. Our roles are complementary but distinct: the Board of Directors is responsible for guiding the scientific life of the EPF according to its strategic priorities, whereas the House Committee’s role is to remain open to diverse initiatives, fostering ideas, and creating opportunities for colleagues to meet and develop projects together. This collaboration naturally requires ongoing dialogue and coordination. As the House committee relies on the approval of the Board of Directors for the implementation of of its projects, we continue to work together to strengthen this partnership, recognizing that it is an evolving process.
All that is made possible thanks to the commitment of the House Committee and, above all, to the dedication of our team in the House. I want to insist on the importance of the presence and the work of Frank, our pillar, and Zack, who watches over it. Many thanks to both of them.
Joëlle Picard, on behalf of the House Committee.
Symposium for the 60th anniversary of the EPF.