VARIETY
Edith Kurzweil
THE FREUDIANS MEET IN MONTREAL
If
Freud is dead, as so many claim, the psychoanalysts ap–
parently have not been notified . As over fifteen hundred of them,
from allover the world, arrived with their spouses in Montreal at the
end of July for the Thirty-fifth International Psychoanalytic Con–
gress, they discussed the many issues Freud had dealt with in one of
his last clinical papers,
Analysis Terminable and Interminable.
While
some of the contributors thought that in this essay Freud had flagged
all
of the problems analysts still have not solved, and others pin–
pointed where they believed he had been too pessimistic, they agreed
that psychoanalysis is alive and thriving.
At their previous meeting in Hamburg two years ago , the
analysts gathered in Germany for the first time since Freud had been
expelled, and the topic had to do with the Nazi past and how to come
to terms with it. The atmosphere was full of emotional turmoil. But
in Montreal, the Paris of North America-with its abundance of
first-rate restaurants and other tourist attractions - both the locale
and the topic of the meeting set the tone for a mellow and amiable
mood. Even the business meeting, I was told, went off without too
many clashes, in spite of the fact that the IPA adopted a bevy of new
amendments to its constitution and bylaws . Essentially, a good deal
of power was shifted from the American and European associations
to the Latin and South American ones. For there, psychoanalysis is
a growth industry. Thus it seemed only fair to rotate the presidency
between the three continents, and to allocate three vice presidents to
each of them as well . Even the resolution to admit American so–
cieties whose members have no medical degrees, and thus do not be–
long to the American Psychoanalytic Association, was passed with–
out a hitch. (A number of clinical psychologists have sued the IPA,
the APA, and a few others for restraint of trade.) These societies
now may apply for acceptance and will be evaluated by customary
IPA standards .
At this meeting, I was struck once again by the dissonance be-
