EPF Award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychoanalysis

First announcement

It is with great pleasure that we announce the decision of the EPF Council on

4 November 2022 to give the

EPF Award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychoanalysis

to

Haydée Faimberg, M.D.

 

The EPF honours Haydée Faimberg for her outstanding contributions to the further development of psychoanalytic theory and practice, as well as for her continuous commitment to deepening clinical exchange within the EPF, spanning several decades.

In the field of psychoanalytic theory, her work on intercultural understanding in psychoanalytic concept formation and her research on the telescoping of generations during the transmission of narcissistic links and intergenerational conflict resolution patterns is outstanding.

For the clinical field, Haydée Faimberg developed the concept of ‘listening to listening’. In the context of the clinical situation, this concept, always used in connection with free association and evenly-suspended attention as constituents of the psychoanalytical method, is complementary to other concepts, such as that of the Oedipus complex, but above all it enlarges psychoanalytical listening.

Haydée Faimberg applied her concepts to a method for a particular discussion in a group of psychoanalysts to understand why a presenter of clinical material is working as he/she is, discovering the basic assumptions with which the presenter and the other participants discuss. Here and only for this particular purpose she uses ‘listening to listening’, Faimberg’s method for group discussion of a clinical presentation.

Haydée Faimberg formulated her approach to intercultural recognition in these touching words:

“[It is]to discover why we work as we work. And to overcome as only criteria to say one analyst is good because he works as I do… Better recognise otherness than idealise sameness.”

In this spirit, Haydée Faimberg initiated the first Working Party to discuss clinical material in the EPF in 2002 and has continued to chair the 'listening to listening' groups at the EPF annual conferences in the subsequent years. The method she developed has been used by psychoanalytic societies in Europe, North America, Latin America and at IPA congresses.

Haydée Faimberg is a full member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society (SPP), she lives in Paris. She is also a full member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA) and a member of honour of the Czech Psychoanalytic Society (ČPS), and in June 2019, she became the first ‘International Distinguished Fellow’ of the British Psychoanalytical Society (BPS). She is full member of the IPA.

She has received the Haskell Norman Award (2005) and the prestigious Mary Sigourney Award (2013), both for ‘outstanding achievements as a clinician, teacher and theoretician in psychoanalysis'.

We are now very pleased to honour her with the EPF Award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychoanalysis as well.

The EPF Award was presented for the first time in 2015 to Anne-Marie Sandler and to Professor Daniel Widlöcher. With the presentation of the EPF Award to Haydée Faimberg, we are taking up this tradition again.

The award ceremony will take place during the 36th EPF Annual Conference in Cannes from 24 - 26 March 2023.

On behalf of the EPF Executive

Dr Heribert Blass

EPF President