Between chaos and petrification: a summary of the Fifth IPA Conference of Training Analysts

The Fifth IPA Conference of Training Analysts was devoted to the problems in the integration of different theoretical and clinical perspectives in the formation of psychoanalysts, the dialectical tensions between rigidity and stultification on the one hand, and a chaotic 'anything goes' on the other. Seven presentations, from the three major geographical regions and representing a range of theoretical perspectives, though drawing upon common and shared clinical and training experiences, were widely divergent in both their descriptions and their prescriptions. The presentations by Janice de Saussure of Geneva, by Charles Kligerman of Chicago, by Marcio de Freitas Giovanetti of São Paulo, Raquel Zak de Goldstein of Buenos Aires, André Green of Paris, José Infante of Chile and André Lussier of Montreal, are arrayed along a spectrum from the most conservative to the most sweepingly radical critique of our organisations and our practices; what is shared by these seven quite disparate presentations from so many ideologically and geographically diverse quarters is a widespread dissatisfaction with so many aspects of, and so many consequences of, the operation or our extant tripartite training structure bequeathed to us by Eitingon and his colleagues almost 75 years ago and hardly changed at all ever since.