BRAZILIAN SENATE HONOURS IPA ANNIVERSARY

Address of Professor Charles Hanly

25th November

Address of Professor Charles Hanly on the occasion of the recognition of the IPA by the Brazilian Senate

Dear Members of the Senate, dear colleagues and friends of psychoanalysis,

It is a great pleasure and a privilege to address you today as the Brazilian Senate is honouring the International PsychoanalyticalAssociation. As President of the IPA, I am very grateful to the Brazilian Senate for distinguishing our Association in this way, and I would like to thank Dr. Leonardo Francischelli, President of the Brazilian Federation of Psychoanalysis, for inviting me to address you today. Unhappily, I must address you in absentia.

The tribute of the Brazilian Senate comes at a very significant time for our Association, as 2010 marks its 100th anniversary. The IPA’s beginnings were modest: hardly a hundred members, for the most part colleagues and friends, at the Nuremberg congress in March 1910. But the founders were prestigious: Freud, Ferenczi, Abraham and Eitingon. It is on the shoulders of these great pioneers that psychoanalysis is grounded and has flourished. During its first 100 hundred years, our Association has grown and prospered and it now counts over 12,000 members in more than 40 countries.

Knowledge and practice of psychoanalysis continues to spread. Although it would have been unimaginable even thirty years ago, the IPA is now actively developing psychoanalysis in China, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In October this year, we held our first major Asian conference in Beijing, a conference devoted to “Freud in Asia, Evolution and Change” which marks the beginning of institutional psychoanalysis in China and the expansion of psychoanalysis in Asia. This event, itself a model of international scientific and professional cooperation, brought to fruition several decades of cross-cultural dialogue between mental-health professionals in the East and in the West.

The recognition that the Brazilian Senate is offering to the IPA today is especially gratifying for psychoanalysis is thriving in Brazil, a country which counts close to 1,200 IPA members distributed among twelve component societies. In addition, three study groups developing toward becoming yet more Brazilian component societies of the IPA. With the active support and encouragement of the IPA they are on their way to becoming scientific, professional societies that will deliver high-quality psychoanalytic training programmes to yet other young Brazilian candidates who aspire to become psychoanalysts.

A distinguished Brazilian colleague, Dr. Leopold Nosek, is currently president of FEPAL, the Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies in Latin America. Brazilian psychoanalysts are also actively at work to expand psychoanalysis beyond their frontiers. A programme of co-operation and education involving the Community of Portuguese Language Countries is developing an interest in psychoanalysis-psychotherapy in Portugal’s former colonies, under the leadership of Dr. Pedro Gomes de Oliveira Lopes and Dr. Ney Couto Marinho. Only last week, a three-day conference devoted to “Mozambique: Rebuilding hope” was organized in Rio de Janeiro. It is a great pleasure to celebrate these developments of psychoanalysis in Brazil at a time when Brazil itself has so much to be proud of on account of its economic growth and social improvements.

Brazil is the home of many distinguished clinicians, scientists and humanists who contribute to the international work of sustaining and building psychoanalytic knowledge and practice.

The IPA is a unique international professional and scientific organization. Like other international learned societies, the IPA advances its field of study through its Congresses. But the IPA also maintains minimum professional, training and ethical standards throughout the world as other learned societies do not. Freud felt that he had to work toward the day when there would be training institutes to guarantee the authenticity of the teaching and the competence of the taught; it was this and nothing else that he wanted to achieve by the founding of the International PsychoanalyticalAssociation. For 100 years the IPA has sought to sustain Freud’s mandate to maintain high standards of training, practice and ethical conduct. As trade, finance, communications technology and the political search for international civility move us along the road toward a “global village”, Freud’s mandate will become increasingly important in itself and as a model of international scientific and professional cooperation.

Psychoanalysis has contributed to the transformation of our social values; it has been beneficially active in shaping the world in which we now live. It has brought to light and offered a better understanding of the mental health problems of people traumatized by war, social violence, natural catastrophes and poverty. It has changed our attitudes towards children and towards the family. It has led to the decriminalization of homosexuality in many societies and to a better understanding of sexual orientations. This year, the IPA is embarking on a major outreach initiative, with the aim to expand and strengthen the contributions of psychoanalysis to the communities in which we work and live. Dr. Plinio Montagna is the Latin American Chair of the new IPA Committee on Outreach to our communities. Many colleagues, among whom many Brazilians, are already demonstrating in practical ways the usefulness of psychoanalysis in helping to solve social problems of many kinds. We are very grateful to them, as we are grateful to the Brazilian Senate for the recognition it offers today to psychoanalysis.

My sincere thanks for your gracious recognition of the achievements of psychoanalysis and of Brazilian psychoanalysts.

Professor Charles Hanly

President

International Psychoanalytical Association