Abstract
The future of psychoanalysis is intrinsically dependent on the interest of younger generations, and the university setting is an essential arena for enabling students to encounter psychoanalysis. Universities have historically been places where student movements have contributed to struggles for democratic rights, reminding us that intellectual life and democratic culture have long been closely intertwined. The presence of psychoanalytic thought in universities is particularly important given the predominance of biological psychiatry and cognitive-behavioral approaches in undergraduate and graduate institutions worldwide. Psychoanalysis is often misrepresented as a field that lacks relevance to contemporary emotional problems and empirical methodology. However, when opportunities to encounter psychoanalytic thinking are available, presentations on psychoanalysis are often met with considerable interest among students. At a time when public discourse is increasingly characterized by polarization, simplification, and rapid consumption of information, psychoanalysis offers students a discipline that cultivates careful reading, critical reflection, tolerance of ambiguity, and independent thinking—capacities that are indispensable not only for clinical work but also for democratic culture.
As we know, psychoanalysis has to a large extent lost its place in European universities, although there are notable exceptions. The EPF's commitment to scientific outreach, together with the acquisition of the EPF House, has made possible an EPF initiative to address this issue. This paper will present the ongoing work of the EPCUS Committee, focusing in particular on the European Conference for University Students, which has taken place annually at the EPF House from 2016 to 2025. The conference has been highly successful in reaching and connecting students from different disciplines and from across Europe and beyond. By creating a forum for dialogue across disciplinary, cultural, and national boundaries, the conference seeks to foster precisely the kind of open intellectual exchange upon which both psychoanalysis and democratic life depend.
The paper will also briefly describe the EPCUS Committee's newly established collaboration with the IPA University Committee (IPAU). The IPAU Committee has a twofold focus: (1) mapping the availability of psychoanalytic research and academic career opportunities for psychoanalysts at universities worldwide, and (2) mapping the current presence of psychoanalytic teaching at universities at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Future collaboration between the two committees promises to be mutually enriching and to strengthen the presence of psychoanalysis in the university setting. At a time when psychoanalysis has become less visible within universities, such initiatives are important not only for the future of the discipline but also for preserving a mode of inquiry that has always possessed a quietly subversive core: by attending to the unconscious, psychoanalysis challenges certainty, invites self-questioning, and resists reductive understandings of human experience. Ensuring that new generations encounter this tradition is therefore of significance beyond the discipline itself.