Dr. A. Corel was a psychoanalyst in private practice in Paris and a member of the Paris (SPP) and the Argentine (APA) societies. He died of Covid. Before becoming an analyst, he was an extremely well known and highly esteemed medical doctor and researcher in Argentina. 

His analyst in Argentina was Rebeca Grinberg. In 1976 he became a psychoanalyst of the APA with a wonderful paper on construction in Freud’s work at a time when that concept was not widely used or recognised. In his approach history is constructed in the psychoanalytic process. After leaving Argentina and taking up residence in Paris, he became a member of the SPP.

Antonio Corel was an extremely modest person, a deep thinker who worked mostly behind the scenes. He never put himself forward but helped wherever he was needed, and on several occasions, he had sacrificed his career for his family. Whoever wanted to get to know him better needed a little effort, but they then came into contact with a highly sensitive person whose delicacy of thought could be felt not only in his personal relationships but in his intellectual work, for instance in his 2013 paper for the ‘Psychoanalytic Inquiry’, where he described the “field, where the ‘field’ concept grew”. In this article he elaborated the intellectual atmosphere, in which the concept of the ‘psychoanalytic field’ (Beranger’s, 1961) developed.

For many years Antonio was active as a cinema critic and part of the jury of the famous ‘Mar del Plata’. He also contributed to ‘Diario la Prensa’ where he was responsible for the discovery of many authors. He looked at films from the perspective of a very deep analytic understanding, and in 2004, writing in the IJP about Theo Angelopoulos, a man against frontiers, he said “Angelopoulos’s cinematic writings seem to converge with our psychoanalytical method. We also recover fragments, necessarily anachronistic since they belong to different times and spaces and are thus able to reconstruct the patient’s history”. He cited A, the protagonist of the film: “The end will be my beginning. And so, it is for us.” To be “ready for new beginnings, having acquired a new gaze”, was like a motto for Antonio’s life.

Highly appreciated by all, he acted for many years in the working parties of the EPF as a moderator of the ‘listening to listening-groups’ of Haydée Faimberg. For around 25 years, he took part in the ‘French-English clinical meetings’, co-chaired by Anne Marie Sandler and Haydée Faimberg. For more than 15 years he was a reviewer for the ‘International Journal’ and the ‘Quarterly’. He presented papers at different Inter-national Congresses reading Shakespeare fluently in English and offering accounts of  ‘Angelopoulos’ and Orson Welles in ‘Citizen Cane’. In Finland, a congress was orga-nized for him on Construction.

For his wife, Haydée Faimberg, their daughter Claudina Corel and her husband Laurent Mathiew, their son Eduardo Corel and his wife Marina Ivanova Corel, for their four grandchildren and for the whole analytic community, his death leaves an inner void, an irretrievable loss.

Dieter Bürgin  (Swiss Psychoanalytical Society)

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With deep sadness we announce the passing of our colleague Alfred Dumitrescu (May 12, 1955 - February 10, 2022), psychologist, psychoanalyst, president (3 terms) of the Romanian Society of Psychoanalysis, member of the Ethics Commission and the Training Committee of our Society, an extraordinary clinician with a remarkable institutional and team spirit.

The psychoanalytic community has therefore lost a keystone of the Romanian psychoanalytic movement. He died exactly 32 years after the founding of the first post-1989 psychoanalytic institution, the Romanian Psychoanalytic Society (February 1990). Having been one of its founders, this "birth-death" coincidence is highly significant both in our field of psychoanalytic thinking and in that of the culture and historical space in which we exist and profess. 

Alfred Dumitrescu had an unwavering devotion to psychoanalysis, to the profession of psychoanalyst and to the activities of the Romanian Society of Psychoanalysis, and his openness and participation in numerous events of the European Federation of Psychoanalysis and the International Psychoanalytic Association provided an opportunity to strengthen connection with the great psychoanalysis.

No doubt, when someone we know, close to us, passes away, we have a tendency to adjust our memories and representations of that person. Fredi is one of the remarkable people who has filled life with his presence long enough that these adjustments inherent in any evocation are not a necessity. Organically, he knew how to be and to offer a vectorial manifestation of consciousness, being constantly a man able to contain and coagulate the ideas and free movements of everyone.

In the register of the everyday human, interstitial to any role played, Fredi rose to the height of his humanity. This, we all know, is in the rara avis category. Each of us desires to succeed for oneself. We each feel deeply at such an inspiring "contamination."

We will deeply miss his inner strength, the support in every difficult human, collegial and institutional moment, his lively and healthy humour, the keen eye, his right words, his bright mind and thinking, his vitality, the ability to create connections, to transmit, to be where he was most needed, and many, many others for which he has made us grateful for over 30 years.

On behalf of the Executive Committee of the Romanian Society of Psychoanalysis

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Manuela Utrilla:  A generous and fertile Delta of life

By Milagros Cid

 

I don’t know if there is any task more painful and at the same time more comforting than composing an emotional memory of someone as beloved as Manuela was. She left us on 4 February 2022 with the serenity, courage and wisdom that marked her professional and personal history, leaving a great void   in our hearts and in the institutional life of the APM.

I will try to present a brief portrait of her professional life, which will be inevitably incomplete and panoramic, since it was so wide and versatile. 

After completing her studies in medicine at the Complutense University in Madrid and following a brief period with Lopez Ybor, she decided to continue her training outside of Spain, where there were other opportunities and a different social and cultural atmosphere.

She began her career in Brussels, in the Neuropsychiatric Center of Brussels (CNP) with Professor Titeca, where she became familiar with the severe pathologies of psychiatric in-patients investigating the interaction between mental disorders and electroencephalographic alterations. In this sense, as Freud did, she went from neurology to psychoanalysis.

To begin her training as a child psychiatrist she moved to Geneva where she trained with J. de Ajuriaguerra. Once qualified as a child psychiatrist, she was the head of the team at a Pedagogical Medical Center (CMP).

She received her doctorate in medicine and her qualification as a child psychiatrist at the University of Geneva, a qualification that was necessary to work as a child psychiatrist in Switzerland.  

During this time, she created a day hospital for autistic children (Eole, after the Greek god of the wind). These experiences and her work on multidisciplinary teams familiarized her with group and institutional processes which have been the object of numerous publications translated to various languages. (Some of them are currently edited in French, English, Italian and Greek.)

In parallel with these activities, she trained as an analyst in Geneva where she was supervised by M. Roche, and in Lyon, at a top-rated analytical center, where she was supervised by J. Cosnier, J. Bergeret, and J. Guillain, among others, thanks to the smooth exchange that then existed between Geneva and Lyon and between Lyon in Paris. S. Lebovici and other Parisian analysts regularly visited Geneva and Lyon, in a climate of intellectual stimulation that produces a certain nostalgia.

Her contact with R. Diatkine, who regularly visited Geneva to train in child psychoanalysis took place in this context, which was complemented by frequent scientific exchange meetings in Paris.

With R. Diatkine and S. Lebovici she also became familiar with the practice of child psychoanalytic psychodrama.

She was a professor at the school of Social Studies in Geneva.

During this period, she moved to New York to study first-hand the theories and work of M. Mahler. She spent a month collaborating with Mahler’s team, which included P. Kernberg and A. Bergman, who were known for their work on child psychoanalysis and autism, respectively.

When she returned to Madrid, she continued practicing psychodrama with groups in the Child psychiatry department at La Paz Hospital under the direction of Dr. Vicente and at La Concepción clinic where Dr. Rallo’s psychiatric department represented a psychoanalytic reference and training center, organizing at the same period several groups in private practice, which many of us had the privilege of attending.

She also collaborated as a teacher at Prof. A. Fernandez’s university chair, giving classes on group theory.

In the Madrid Psychoanalytic Association (APM) from the very beginning she carried out an important work in training and institutional tasks. She was a committed supervisor and analyst. I believe that her clinical acuity, her finesse, and her capacity to understand unconscious processes  were related to her freedom of thought, that she talk about so often, in addition to her poetic way of thinking, perceptible also  in her scientific writings,  in a privileged harmony with her solid and rigorous theoretical and clinical personal training,

Through her close working and friendship with D. Widlöcher, she promoted the organization of   a clinical group with the Psychoanalytic Association of France (APF), the APM-APF group, or the APF-APM, depending on where the group was meeting, once a year. This group lasted more than 10 years and left an unforgettable memory for its dynamism and richness in its participants.

Her profound institutional commitment developed both in the APM, where she held different positions of responsibility serving as Secretary, Director of the Institute, Director of the Journal, Director of Publications, and President; as well as in the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) where she was Chair of a Sponsoring Committee for the Psychoanalytic Society for Research and Training (SPRF), member of the Committee for Study of the Rules, and European Representative to the Board of the IPA.

In the European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF), under the leadership of E. Sechaud, she was representative for Latin America, in contact with Latin American Psychoanalytical Federation (FEPAL) to plant the seed of what would later become the Spanish Language Psychoanalysts Encounters. For many years, she was also co-chair of the free clinical groups at all EPF Conferences, as well as participating as a principal speaker in various EPF congresses.  

She collaborated actively with European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (SEPEA), where she was a member of the Board of Directors for many years and served as a representative of SEPEA to its equivalent Swiss society (ASUPEA), carrying out intensive training activity in conferences and supervision, specifically in Versailles, where she travelled regularly to direct a group of clinical case development. She was named Member of Honor of the SEPEA, which gave her enormous satisfaction.

Her extensive written scientific work, demonstrated by her many books (15 as sole author and 22 in collaboration) and more than 100 articles published in national and international scientific publications show her creative versatility and her intense intellectual curiosity. She always approached different topics, interweaving her intense intellectual curiosity with her clinical practice and her integrated and living meta-psychology.

In addition to her extensive professional career in the field of psychoanalysis, I would like to highlight other important elements of her vital attitude and her love of life, which would not be the exclusive domain of science.

She was a tireless traveler, an avid reader, an intrepid swimmer, a passionate music-lover, and an imaginative and colorist painter, as well as being an excellent host, faithful friend, and world-spanning chef, to the delight of her friends.

Her activity as a writer has also been demonstrated in various books of poetry, one of which she wrote in French, entitled Delta: la mort d’une rivière? (Delta: the death of a river?) where she unfolds in a beautiful way certain reflections on life and death from a serene and vital perspective, which at this moment is so comforting to read.

She also wrote two novels, with a third that was practically completed, and various books of poetry. These books were only published under her name after she retired from her clinical practice due to her conception of analyst-patient ethics. Her book on Melancholic constellations is pending publication and is expected for September, a date which Manuela looked forward to with impatience and delight after a long germination period. She was also preparing another on countertransference, in an extraordinary demonstration of her capacity for thought and her love for knowledge and investigation.

I hope that this portrait serves as a small homage to the figure of our beloved, admired, and respected colleague and friend Manuela Utrilla, who has enriched us so much with her vitality, her knowledge, and her wisdom. Along with the pain of her loss she has left us, in addition to her important scientific legacy, a beautiful and deep life lesson, expressed in the first stanza of a poem she wrote:

 

La mort n’est pas une solitude

Mais un jardin fleuri

Au fond de l’Ocean

Ou viennent s’enlacer les Deltas de la vie

 

Death is not a solitude

But a blooming garden  

At the bottom of the Ocean

Where the Deltas of life come to embrace

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A few words for Manuela, in the name of the Executive Board of the Madrid Psychoanalytical Association (APM)

From the Executive Board of the APM, we would like to express our deep sorrow over the loss of our beloved Manuela Utrilla.

Manuela was a great psychoanalyst and a great person, an example of creativity, love of knowledge, and passion for psychoanalysis. She was a tireless worker and a dedicated advocate for the ideals that she believed in and transmitted to those around her with enthusiasm and generosity. She embarked on, and embarked us on, An Odyssey of Thought, which would allow Weaving Dreams, eventually landing in a port where “wisdom emerges when the love of knowledge and the knowledge of love unite”, in the words of Raimon Panikkar, which she made her own when her book An Odyssey of Thought was published.

Remembering together the beautiful and profound words she so generously shared with us, and which could not help but move those who heard them, we recall her final statement in the tribute offered to her by the APM. Manuela said: “Without limits, there is no thought, without thought there is no freedom, and without freedom there is no love”. We believe that Manuela is one of those human beings who leave a deep footprints in those of us who had the pleasure and good fortune to know her, listen to her, and learn from her, and in those footprints we can continue walking together.

Many thanks, dear Manuela, for your important legacy.

Mercedes Puchol

President of Madrid Psychoanalytical Association

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Manuela Utrilla Roblès

Le Bureau de la SEPEA a la grande tristesse de faire part de la disparition, le 4 février 2022, de sa collègue et amie le Dr Manuela Utrilla Roblès, Membre Titulaire Formateur de l’Association Psychanalytique de Madrid et Membre de la SEPEA.

Née le 29 août 1935 en Espagne, Manuela Utrilla obtient sa licence en médecine à Madrid en 1961.

En 1962, elle part pour Bruxelles où elle travaille comme Assistante en électroencéphalographie, devient Directrice Adjointe du Service d’électroencéphalographie du Centre Neuropsychiatrique de Bruxelles et écrit son mémoire de Doctorat sur les liens entre toxicomanie et schizophrénie.

En 1966 elle part pour la Suisse, afin d’effectuer une spécialisation en psychiatrie et psychothérapie infantile à l’Université de Genève, notamment avec les Pr. J de Ajuriaguerra, René Diatkine, Gaston Garrone et René Henny. Médecin assistant dans le service de psychiatrie du Pr Julian de Ajuriaguerra, elle dirige ensuite un hôpital de jour pour enfants psychotiques et autistes dans la région genevoise et enseigne à l’Institut d’Études Sociales de Genève, tout en étant chercheuse boursière du Conseil de l’Europe pour l’investigation des institutions thérapeutiques. Elle occupe plusieurs postes de responsabilité et d’enseignement au Service Médico-Pédagogique de la Ville de Genève, tout en se formant à la psychothérapie de groupe et au psychodrame analytique.

Parallèlement, elle entreprend une analyse personnelle et une formation analytique à la Société Suisse de Psychanalyse, qu’elle termine en 1982.

Durant toutes ces années, elle a également suivi les activités du futur Groupe Lyonnais de la Société Psychanalytique de Paris, ainsi que les divers Séminaires de Perfectionnement, Congrès Psychanalytiques de Langue Française et Congrès de la Fédération Européenne de Psychanalyse.

En 1983, elle rentre à Madrid où elle est nommée Professeur à l’Université de Madrid et Membre Associé de l’Association Psychanalytique de Madrid (APM) en 1983, puis Membre Titulaire en 1986, Membre chargée d’Enseignement et Directrice de l’Institut de Psychanalyse de l’APM en 1993. Jusqu’aux dernières années de sa vie, elle a participé très activement à la direction et au développement de l’Association Psychanalytique de Madrid tout particulièrement en psychanalyse de l’Enfant et de l’Adolescent.

Elle a également dirigé la Revue de Psychanalyse de l’Association Psychanalytique de Madrid, développé l’enseignement et la pratique en psychosomatique à Madrid, parcouru le monde pour découvrir les différentes manières dont étaient organisés les soins dans les institutions psychiatriques, participé aux activités de la Fédération Européenne de Psychanalyse (FEP) et de l’Association Psychanalytique Internationale (API) pour coordonner les formations psychanalytiques en Europe du Sud…

Ses liens avec la communauté francophone de psychanalyse sont multiples et fidèles. Membre de la Société Suisse de Psychanalyse avant de rentrer en Espagne et de devenir Membre de l’Association Psychanalytique de Madrid, elle a participé régulièrement et activement aux Congrès des Psychanalyse de Langue Française, travaillé tant avec la SPP qu’avec L’APF, et avec diverses organisations dans le champ de la psychiatrie infanto-juvénile, de la thérapie familiale, du psychodrame et de la thérapie institutionnelle.

Enfin, elle a donné une place toute particulière à sa collaboration avec la SEPEA, dont elle était très fière d’être membre, puis membre d’honneur. Outre sa collaboration scientifique à nos rencontres, Manuela a accepté plusieurs charges institutionnelles. Notamment, en tant que membre de notre Conseil d’Administration, elle a assuré pendant plusieurs années les liens entre la SEPEA et l’ASUPEA, société suisse « sœur » de notre association européenne.

Manuela Utrilla laisse une œuvre écrite considérable, non seulement dans le domaine de la psychanalyse – vingt livres personnels et autant de contributions à des ouvrages collectifs – mais également dans le domaine de la littérature – deux romans – et de la poésie – quatre recueils de poèmes.

Nous disposons de plusieurs de ses articles en français, notamment dans la Revue Française de Psychanalyse, la Revue Française de Psychosomatique, les Libres Cahiers pour la Psychanalyse et Le Coq Héron. En revanche, nous n’avons accès qu’à un seul de ses livres, publié grâce à Elsa Schmid-Kitsikis dans sa collection aujourd’hui disparue : « Traiter l’enfant en institution. Le point de vue d’une psychanalyste ». … Et nous serions bien contents de pouvoir découvrir dans notre langue, par exemple : « Qui sont les coupables ? Parents, enfants et thérapeutes. Interactions », « Psychodrame analytique d’un enfant asthmatique », « En tissant des rêveries. Rencontres avec parents et enfants », « Corruption, limites et psychanalyse », ou « Une odyssée de la pensée. Influences, liberté de penser et violence » ou encore « Leaders et leaderships », « Psychanalyse et mal-être de l’homme dans le monde actuel », « Convulsions dans les institutions psychanalytiques » en trois tomes, et enfin son dernier livre « Constellations mélancoliques dans l’odyssée de la pensée », avec la collaboration de Sabin Aduriz et de Milagros Cid.

Lors de l’hommage que lui a rendu l’Association Psychanalytique de Madrid en octobre 2021, le Dr Milagros Cid Sanz dit que l’écriture de Manuela est une ode à la vie psychanalytique, où l’auteur « montre que penser est bien différent d’approuver, de discuter ou de classifier… penser, c’est créer ». « … Sans limites – écrit Manuela – il n’y a pas de pensée, sans pensée, pas de liberté, et sans liberté, pas d’amour ». Elle voit dans l’écriture de Manuela son optique sur l’éthique et la psychanalyse, une réappropriation du savoir du corps, de la sexualité, des affects, du langage, de l’imagination et du désir. Elle souligne aussi la poésie et l’humour qui imprègnent son approche des situations, son équilibre permanent entre comédie et tragédie, illusion et réalité, avec « … sa manière exquise d’échapper à ses désillusions avec l’espoir qu’il ne s’agisse pas seulement d’utopies… »

Manuela était porteuse de lumière, de chaleur et d’amour. Elle avait un respect de l’autre et une délicatesse dans la relation humaine qui nous manquera cruellement, mais qui nous servira aussi désormais d’exemple de ce que la psychanalyse peut apporter de meilleur à l’humanité.

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It is with much sadness that the EPF Executive has to announce the passing of Professor Daniel Widlöcher. He died on December 14, 2021, at the age of 92 in Paris.

Daniel Widlöcher was a highly esteemed psychoanalyst, he made important clinical and theoretical contributions to the field of psychoanalysis. He was President of the EPF from 1979 - 1983, and he was President of the IPA from 2002 - 2006. 

Before, he was one of the founding members of the French Association of Psychoanalysis (APF) in 1964, and he served twice as its President, 1974 -1975 and 2007 - 2008.  

The EPF will keep Daniel Widlöcher in grateful and honourable memory and we are in complete agreement with the following appreciative obituary by the APF and its President Dominique Suchet. 

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Daniel Widlöcher by passing away on December 14, 2021 brought mourning to the French  Psychoanalytic Association (APF), and beyond the international psychoanalytic community.

He was one of the founding members of the APF in 1964, with Jean Laplanche (1924-2012), Jean-Claude Lavie (1921-2020), and also with W. Granoff, J.-B. Pontalis, D. Lagache and J. Favez-Boutonnier. He served twice as its president in 1974 - 1975 and in 2007 - 2008. He was a full member in 1971 and honorary member since 2014.

He was President of the European Federation of Psychoanalysis (FEP) from 1979 to 1983 and then President of the IPA from 2002 to 2006. He succeeded Otto Kernberg and preceded Claudio Eizirik. 

A training in philosophy, a double doctorate in medicine and psychology, allied with a great culture and a deep interest in art, painting, music, literature to maintain throughout his career a question always to the lookout, on the functioning of the psyche of human. He explored the mechanisms that make each singular human fate shape its own course, which a single theory can never capture.

Psychiatrist at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (Paris) where he would later become head of department and then professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University, he met psychoanalysis with Lacan at the French Psychoanalysis Society (SFP). A choice guided by Lacan's proposal to open the field of psychopathology and Freudian concepts to all other fields of the human sciences. However Lacan by breaking in 1953 with the Psychoanalytic Society of Paris (SPP) of which he was president due to a conflict with the director of the Training Institute (S. Nacht), and by creating the SFP (French Society of psychoanalysis) had in fact registered it outside the IPA. A procedure for the recognition of the SFP by the IPA ultimately led to the rupture of some of its members with Lacan and the split of the SFP. It continued under the name of EFP (Paris Freudian School) while the APF was created in 1964. And it is undoubtedly out of fidelity to this principle of refusal of any imperialism of thought that Daniel Widlöcher took part in the rupture with Lacan, and actively in the founding of the APF. But not without having been the one who went the furthest, the longest, to attempt conciliation, understanding and negotiation, to hold discrepancies together.

In this spirit of openness, meeting, and discussion Daniel Widlöcher continued his commitment to the promotion of psychoanalysis and the training of psychoanalysts. His entire career as a professor in psychiatry has been devoted entirely to the Pitié-Salpêtrière university hospital group where he founded, with many students, the foundations of clinical and psychotherapeutic education. He has also taught psychology at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences of Paris-Nanterre, Paris-Sorbonne and was Educational Director of the Psycho-Pathology diploma at the Institut de Paris V. President of the School of practicing psychologists and of the Association for Research Methodology in Psychiatry. President of the Psychology and Psycho-physiology Association at CNRS and Director of the INSERM Unit "Psychopathology and pharmacology of behaviours".

But first of all, psychoanalyst and clinician Daniel Widlöcher has never ceased to testify that we cannot oppose the thought mechanisms of psychic life to those of the practice of psychoanalysis nor to those of institutional dynamics and no doubt neither to those of our so-called personal life. We have the same ideals, we take the same risks, we engage the same qualities. He explored metapsychological concepts, compared them to advances in neighbouring scientific fields. He surprised, questioned, disturbed but always enriched the reflections by opening horizons when we believed that the case was heard. Beyond an agreement, was it not important to convince that a scientific approach involves debates, questioning and that, according to him, only interdisciplinarity would make it possible to foresee the conditions of change? Because deep down it is undoubtedly the question of change and the resistance to change that runs through his work. The change had for him an indisputable territory, that of psychopathology, and one only has to look at the titles of the psychoanalytic revew that Daniel Widlöcher initiated or directed: With Pierre Fédida: La revue internationale de psychopathologie (PUF) in 20 issues from 1990 to 1995 offers, with works in English and French, a high-level working tool allowing international exchanges and theoretical confrontations; or the titles of his works since Métapsychologie du sens (Metapsychology of meaning) Ed. PUF 1986, Traité de psychopathologie, PUF, 1994; Nouvelles carte pour la psychanalyse (The new maps of psychoanalysis), Ed. Odile Jacob 1996; Clivage et sexualité infantile dans les états limites, Nouveau paradigme pour la psychanalyse ? (Divide and infantile sexuality in borderline states, New paradigm for psychoanalysis?) PUF, 1999; Sexualité infantile et attachement (Childhood sexuality and attachment), PUF, 2001; Psychanalyse en dialogue (Psychoanalysis in dialogue), Ed. Odile Jacob, 2003; Les psychanalystes savent-ils débattre ? (Do psychoanalysts know how to debate ? ) Ed. Odile Jacob, 2008 ; Psychanalyse et psychothérapie (Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy) Ed. Erès, 2008.

It promotes a living questioning of theoretical conceptions therefore to oppose dogmatism, but also a living questioning of the institutional conditions that we give ourselves to fulfil our mission of transmitting psychoanalysis. Daniel Widlöcher, just as he put his conviction of the need for analysts to account to a community on the principle of the creation of the APF by defending his membership in the international psychoanalytic community, he likewise engaged in international psychoanalytic life. When he was president of the APF he proposed meetings between societies or interdisciplinary discussions while taking the strictest positions concerning the modalities of formation in the most orthodox Freudian fidelity, and he has in the same spirit been President of the European Federation of Psychoanalysis (FEP), then President of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). He promoted the defence of analytical doctrine by combining a concern for pluralism and a rejection of the trivialization of concepts and practices. He argued what one might call "a gathered diversity" of training models. He was the initiator of the "Three Models of Training" movement which was finally adopted in 2007 at the Berlin Congress under the chairmanship of Claudio Eizirik. Those who worked with him in the executive office of the FEP or the IPA testify to his "quiet strength", he never lost his calm and always remained friendly and respectful of the other even during clashes of ideas.

Attentive to the joint desire for emancipation and belonging of psychoanalysts, he also welcomed and supported the desire of colleagues wishing to found new associations of psychoanalysis throughout the world, or in France with the Psychoanalytical Society for Research and Training (SPRF) when it was incorporated into a Study Group, breaking away from the 4th Group before being recognized as an IPA Company in 2005.

Throughout his career Daniel Widlöcher has not ceased to transmit these essential qualities: the demand for curiosity with his rejection of any unifying thought, and the desire for action. His embodied proposition to think that the psychoanalysis he loved and that we love is both a theory and a practice of communication, a theory and a practice of encounter, let's not be afraid of words, and a practice of listening where there is a very specific work that he called co-thought in the service of the emergence of meaning is this thing so simple and clear that the psychoanalysts who have met it and those who will read it will keep.

Dominique Suchet

President of the French Psychoanalytic Association (APF)

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It is with deep sadness that we have to announce the death of our former President Dr Jorge Canestri, Rome.

 

He passed away on 7 May 2021. 

 

Our colleague Antoine Nastasi died on April 14, 2021, after a three-year struggle with serious illness. During that time, he continued to work as closely as possible on the numerous projects he had launched before falling ill. He was a Founding Member of our Society, the Psychoanalytic Society for Research and Training (SPRF), after having been a member of the “Quatrième Groupe”. For many years, he was deputy director of the Centre for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Jean et Evelyne Kestemberg.

Antoine was particularly committed to the psychoanalytic treatment of psychotic patients. Together with Liliane Abensour, he founded and was one of the chief editors of the journal Psychanalyse et psychose.

Antoine’s ability to listen and his enthusiasm also found an outlet in his talent for psychodrama therapy. He trained many therapists in this original technique.

His research on psychosis led to the creation of Margelle, an association devoted to treating psychotic patients thanks to a combination of private therapy and hospital care. This network also includes several members and candidates of our Society.

Antoine’s warmth, generosity and open-mindedness will be sorely missed by us all. As a training analyst, he supervised many of our candidates and his non-dogmatic stance was very much appreciated.

Indeed, his vision of psychoanalysis was based on scientific rigor combined with the use of metaphorical, even poetic representations of psychic functioning, thanks to which he managed to to convey the singular and mysterious quality of the psychotic mind.

Antoine was also an accomplished poet. Before he died, he learned that a book of his poems was about to be published by the Editions l’Harmattan.

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It is with deep sadness that the EPF Executive has to announce the death of  Terttu Eskelinen de Folch. 

The EPF owes her a lot. Terttu Eskelinnen de Folch was President of the EPF from 1991 to 1995. Before she was General Editor of the EPF from 1980 to 1987. She passed away at the age of 90 years on February 12th,  2021, after a long illness. Her death is a big loss for the EPF and the whole psychoanalytic community. We commemorate her with deep gratitude and appreciation. 

The following obituary has been written by a group of her friends from the Spanish Psychoanalytic Society.

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IN MEMORIAM OF TERTTU ESKELINEN

On February 12^th, Terttu Eskelinen (Pielavesi, 1931–Barcelona, 2021) passed away. Our teacher, friend, and beloved colleague, come to us from northern Europe, she made this land, language and culture hers, and joined in the struggle for freedom and democracy in Catalonia during the hard years of the Franco dictatorship.

Of firm convictions and admirable vitality, she was deeply in love with her husband Pere Folch, and devoted to her daughters Laura and Helka, and to grandchildren Pere and Mark. She also had a profound love for psychoanalysis, which she professed with great conviction, for scientific truths, as well as for culture in its multiple expressions. She loved literature, and most especially the works of Shakespeare, which she had extensive knowledge of. She was likewise enamored of music and art. She was an excellent hostess who knew how to bring people together to create a friendly environment. She also knew how to create groups in a professional and scientific setting. Warmth, harmony, and friendship were all important to her in her relationships, and were what she strove for. Her Scandinavian features and decided yet tender ways made her at once mysterious, captivating and unique. Her culinary skills were just one more expression of her great vitality.

At a young age Terttu Eskelinen left her native Finland for Switzerland in search of training. She completed psychoanalytic training at the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society where she met and worked with Raymond de Saussure and Jean Piaget. She later complemented her training at the British Psychoanalytical Society where her teachers included Anna Freud, Hanna Segal, Ester Bick, Betty Joseph, Herbert Rosenfeld, and Donald Meltzer among others. During her years of professional practice she made numerous scientific contributions to psychoanalysis, in the  papers she wrote, but also through her editorial task (1980-88) for the Bulletin of the European Federation which she performed from Barcelona. Later on, her contributions were made through her presidency of the European Psychoanalytic Federation (EPF/FEP) for four years from 1991-1995.

Terttu also established and maintained links between the psychoanalysis taught and practiced at our Society, which she cofounded with other analysts, and the British Society. She did this by teaching Klein and bringing over such eminent analysts as Joseph Sandler, Betty Joseph, John Steiner, Ruth Riesenberg, and Michael Feldman to teach and supervise. She herself was teacher and supervisor to many analysts at the Spanish Psychoanalytic Society. In 2003 she was granted the Award for Distinguished and Meritorious Service to the IPA. In 2004 she received the Sigourney Award for her scientific contribution to the development of psychoanalytic thinking. In 2016 the European Federation of Psychoanalysis gave her their Award for a Distinguished Contribution to Psychoanalysis. Terttu was also an honorary member of the Finnish Psychoanalytic Society.

As a speaker of multiple languages, two of which were spoken by a minority population, she was well aware of the problems of communication during her time serving on the executive committee of the European Federation of Psychoanalysis, as well as in her professional trajectory. She always prioritized building bridges between different cultural and psychoanalytic communities. She actively participated along with Han Groen-Prakken in the diffusion and teaching of psychoanalysis in eastern European countries, and gave classes between 2001 and 2003 at the Dubrovnik summer school in Croatia, training professionals in psychoanalytic psychotherapy for children and adolescents.

In her commitment to promote frameworks for dialogue, her participation at the meeting of the United Nations Organization which took place at the UN headquarters in New York in 2005 is quite noteworthy. Terttu attended as a member of the IPA-UN subcommittee on “unlearning intolerance”. The aim was to help UN specialists that work in conflicts originating in the intolerance of differences.  

Terttu Eskelinen distinguished herself for her analytic work with children and in many other aspects, for her contributions to the role of the woman and mother in the most fundamental structuring of the human mind from the beginning of life. She linked this to the contempt with which western patriarchal culture treated women. She thought it to be an expression of the difficulty men often had to recognizing this feminine role and accepting, not a central role, but rather a position of necessary collaboration with the mother. In the analytic relationship she advocated a systematic view of transference/countertransference and stood out for her intuition and admirable ability to understand the patient in the here-and-now of the session. She showed how to detect and follow the subtleties in the relationship sequence in the session from the patient´s free association to the analyst´s interventions and subsequent patient responses to then be able to move forward. She valued and appreciated contributions made by teachers and colleagues, including the younger analysts who were encouraged to learn about the psychoanalysis practiced abroad.

With her death we have lost an excellent psychoanalyst, a beloved colleague, and a dear friend who gave us many lessons in life. She will be sorely missed, but kept as a referent to inspire us in our work and lives. 

Friends of Terttu Eskelinen

Spanish Psychoanalytic Society

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Tribute to  John S. Kafka

EVEN LIVING AND DYING IS NOT A QUESTION OF LIFE AND DEATH

With much sadness we share the news of the death of our senior colleague, teacher and dear friend Dr. John S. Kafka, who died from heart failure on October 13, 2020 in Bethesda, Maryland, USA.  Born in Linz, Austria, in 1921, John Kafka was 99 and practiced as a psychoanalyst until recent weeks! His remarkable life was like a breathtaking journey, which included the direct witnessing of the rise of Hitler and the Nazi regime in his native Austria, a brief study of philology in France interrupted by World War II, fleeing Nazi occupied Europe in 1940, serving in U.S. Army from 1944 to 1946, studying psychology in the 1940's and 50's, doing a psychiatry residency at Yale University, followed by psychoanalytic training; and working with psychotic patients at the famous Chestnut Lodge together with renowned pioneers in the field including Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and Harold Searles.  John Kafka was a clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University’s School of Medicine, a supervising and training analyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, a research consultant for the National Institute of Mental Health, and a board member of the Freud Archives at the Library of Congress in Washington.  

Kafka’s highly original book “Multiple Realities in Clinical Practice,” published by Yale University Press in 1989, was translated into Russian in 2007.  He was also the Chair of the IPA Visiting (2004) and Sponsoring (2005-2008) Committees to Moscow. 

He leaves behind his wonderful wife Marian – a creative neuroscientist, who many of us remember well from our Schools.  Earlier this year John and Marian celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary!  

John’s overall and longstanding contribution to the development of psychoanalysis in Eastern Europe was really unforgettable and unprecedented. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, in 1988 John Kafka and Han Groen-Prakken were appointed as co-chairs of the IPA's East European Committee.  Sharing a strong belief that “Psychoanalysis  (neither clinical work, nor psychoanalytic training, nor psychoanalytic theory building) have ever existed and developed in an average expectable environment» (Kafka, 2004, p.1), John and Han put much of their efforts to co-ordinate and give shape to the enthusiastic and robust, but often chaotic and sometimes controversial initial activities in the  “East” in the late 1980's and early 1990's. They had, as John formulated it himself: 

“to react against attempts to get us involved in any political power or "turf” issues, such as an IPA versus "Europe” competition. The fact that Han Groen-Prakken was also during some time president of the EPF and the first chair of the EPF’s East European Committee was a strong defense against possible divisiveness. Many decisions were taken in joint EPF - IPA Committee meetings… While welcoming the educational contributions from individuals and psychoanalytic societies, we also had to react against some competing attempts to "colonize" the East by psychoanalytic missionaries representing exclusive ideological or national psychoanalytic orientations (Kleinian, Ego-Psychological, French, German, etc.) Today most orientations are well represented in summer schools and seminars and East European candidates may well be exposed to a broader perspective than many candidates in the West (Kafka, 2004, p.2)

The task of setting up high-quality educational programs in the East: 

“in the absence of training analysts and the presence of well-educated eager potential analytic candidates, many of whom had already become sophisticated connoisseurs of psychoanalysis,” - writes John – “presented us with the challenge of inventing an unconventional laboratory of psychoanalytic education that we had to sell as an experiment to the IPA and the EPF…  The implementation of these steps demanded a great amount of work from committees of the EPF, the IPA and East European colleagues. In brief, the steps were:

1) Rigorous evaluation of individuals on the basis of their knowledge and performance, and relative neglect of the usually specified pathways that led to their level of knowledge and functioning.

2) Organization of the shuttle and condensed training-analysis arrangements, partly in response to the fact that some who had their training in the West, chose to remain abroad (Kafka, p.3) <…>  

Over the years, ad hoc ways of operating evolved into guidelines and more or less flexible requirements and regulations. They formed the basis of the ever more clearly formulated standards and regulations of the Han Groen-Prakken Institute established to function as the educational institution wherever study groups do not yet exist” (Kafka, 2004, p.3).  

Looking back to those years today, we can really appreciate the caliber of John’s and Han’s wisdom and hard work which were essential for building the groundwork and establishing the main principles of such a stable and fruitful IPA-EPF cooperation in Eastern Europe, which has from 2002 been fulfilled by the PIEE (2002-20014) and by the EPI (from January 2015 till present.)  

As a result of those joint efforts, initiated and shaped by John Kafka, Han Groen-Prakken, Eero Rechardt, Paolo Fonda, Gilbert Diatkine and other colleagues, there are recognized Component and Provisional Societies and Study Groups in Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia, Moscow, Romania, Croatia, Lithuania, Estonia-Latvia, Bulgaria and Ukraine, as well as 60 trainees and 17 Direct IPA members and pre-Study groups in the EPI regions in St.Petersburg, South of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Siberia and Kazakhstan.     

               With great appreciation for John’s outstanding, generous contribution to the “East” in his various roles as an IPA representative, we will never forget him as a dedicated, highly-requested and inspiring teacher, keynote speaker and supervisor at dozens of our schools, seminars and conferences, where he was always so attentive to both students and colleagues.  We will remember him as a wonderful person and friend with a sharp and receptive mind, able to carefully listen to another point of view, but also to stand up and passionately defend ideas and principles he felt important.  We remember as well his help for people who needed his hand, and his spirited sense of humor. John was an elegant dancer, an inexhaustible swimmer and skier, a talented painter and a trilingual punster, and an avid lifelong fan of art, literature, cinema and fine food. We remember the papers and talks he gave to us at various schools and meetings with captivating ideas and titles; here just a couple of them: “When you die, you will miss me. Some thoughts and questions about narcissism”, “Have ever been bored in your dreams?”.  

At the last Summer School of the PIEE he attended (Budva, 2014), at the panel “Pain and Time” John presented a beautiful and really moving paper “From Despair to Poignance”.  Let’s listen to some of his words from that last meeting of the PIEE and the last time many of us saw John in-person: 

“There are moments in a personal analysis that are remembered with great clarity.  These moments are thought of  as  nodal points even if the reasons for their importance are not clear.  One such moment in my own analysis occurred when, after a session in which I felt that a great emotional weight had been lifted off my shoulders, I had the absurd thought  “even living  and  dying  is not a question of life and death.”  I remember exactly where I was when I had this thought… I do not remember the content of the session in which I experienced this lifting of an emotional weight.  As I write this, I not only remember breathing more easily but also finding  myself breathing easier and more deeply now.   The world seemed brighter,  colors more vivid  and, when I focus on the memory, I experience even now an echo of that change and a widening of the world.  I realize that I am describing the lifting of depressive affect, but the reference to depression is too broad, too vague (Kafka, 2014, p.1)  <…>  

Over the years I have tried to understand the meaning of the specific words “even living and dying is not a question of life and death.”  The words have a fixity in my mind that resembles the fixity of  words in a dream (Kafka, 2014, p.2)   <…>  

Michael G. Flaherty, in his paper  “Time and the  Horizon of  Poignancy: Notes on Temporally Induced Sorrow”  differentiates  poignancy from other affective responses to loss.  He does so by assembling   “ ...  a ... formula for poignancy from a number of concrete instances in everyday life and literature.”  (Flaherty, 2012, p. 92)    ....  “We do not abruptly end a conversation or leave someone’s presence unless we are thoughtlessly or pointedly rude.  Ending one’s involvement with another person (even temporarily) is fraught with symbolic implications for mutual respect in interpersonal relations.  Will I ever see that person again?  Each moment is irretrievably lost, which makes it precious in our sight, its loss poignant precisely because we know our days are numbered.  “Farewell is the song Time sings,” writes Margaret Atwood (Atwood 2009, p. 365).  It is not an anxious tune but a poignant  one (Kafka, 2014, p.4).” 

 

Yes, it's a poignant tune, John… And yes, you will be so much missed!

 

On behalf of the name of the Han Groen Prakken European Psychoanalytic Institute:

Igor M. Kadyrov, Christoph E. Walker, Endel Talvik, Gabor Szonyi, Joëlle Picard, Tomas Kajokas

 

References:

Kafka, J.S. (2004)  Psychoanalysis Never Developed in an "Average Expectable Environment". Paper presented at the 1^st “Psychoanalyst at Work Conference” of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Moscow, 7-9 May, 2004.  4p.    

Kafka, J.S. (2014) From Despair to Poignancy. Paper presented at the panel “Pain and Time”, PIEE Summer Seminar  “Psychic Retreat and Psychic Change”  Budva/Montenegro, 22-28 September, 2014, 9p.

(Published on 20th of October, 2020)

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As EPF Executive we are very sad to announce that our highly appreciated colleague Dr. Tatjana Pushkaryeva, member of the Ukrainian Psychoanalytic Society, has died in a tragic accident July 2020.

The EPF owes Tatjana Pushkaryeva a lot, because she was a pioneer of psychoanalysis in Ukraine, both for adults and as well for children and adolescents. And she was also a committed lecturer for the dissemination of psychoanalysis especially in Eastern Europe within the framework of the European Psychoanalytic Institute (EPI). In her commitment for the dissemination and promotion of psychoanalysis she has earned great merits.  But this did not pertain only to Eastern Europe: at the 2019 EPF conference in Madrid she contributed to the Parent Infant Workshop and during this conference she also celebrated with us the start of the EPI training programme for child- and adolescent psychoanalysis. As part of this programme, she was activ at the 5th annual EPI integration conference in Paris July/August 2019. Her passing is a painful and sad loss for us.
In the following you will find an honourable obituary, written by Paolo Fonda, Italy:

 

It is with great sorrow that I write of the passing of my beloved wife, Tatjana Pushkaryeva (Kiev, Ukraine), who died on 5.7.2020 in an accident in the Alps.

She was Russian, graduated in Medicine in Stavropol, and worked as a General and Child Psychiatrist. In 1986 she moved to Kiev where, as Doctor of Medical Sciences, she became Scientific Chief of the Centre of Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy at the Institute of Pediatrics, Obstetrics, and Gynecology of the Ukrainian National Academy of Medical Sciences. She was also a member and representative in Ukraine for the World Association for Infant Mental Health.

She was one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in Ukraine and one of the key organizers for several PIEE Schools as well as for the remarkable EPF East European Seminar in 2000 on a ship that sailed along the river Dnepr. On this occasion, people from the West and the East and the IPA and EPF Presidents laid the foundations for the further development of psychoanalysis and systematic training in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. Most of her training took place in Switzerland, and in 2007 she became one of the first two IPA Members in Ukraine, and a few years later was one of the founding members of the Ukrainian IPA Study Group.

As Training Analyst, she dedicated herself to the preparation and teaching of candidates of the newly born Study Group, but she also taught at several PIEE seminars, including the most recent EPI School-2019 in Paris. She was also a founding member of the Ukrainian Association of Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy (EFPP) and furthermore, she sought to enrich and broaden the professional education of analysts and psychotherapists, as she considered this essential to strengthen the position of psychoanalysis in the environment. She translated several analytic books and papers from English to Russian and regularly organized seminars in Kiev with renowned Western analysts. She was Teacher and Supervisor of Infant Observation Programs according to the Tavistock Clinical Model and introduced the Parent-Infant Psychotherapy following the A.Freud Centre method. She taught also at the Slovenian Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Society (EFPP) in Ljubljana.

Her analysands, supervisees, students, and colleagues greatly appreciated her dedication, professionalism, wisdom, empathy and warmth.

Paolo Fonda, Trieste, Italy

(Published on 20th of July, 2020)

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It is with deep sorrow that the EPF has to announce the death of Prof. Dr. Dr. Horst Kächele, Ulm, Germany. He passed away on Sunday, 28 June 2020. Horst Kächele was an outstanding psychoanalytic researcher and clinician and he was a highly appreciated colleague as well. His death is a deep, painful loss for the whole psychoanalytic community. We are very grateful for all of his psychoanalytic contributions. Please, find an honoring obituary below, written by Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber and Mark Solms.

Death of Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Horst Kächele, Ulm

After a long and painful illness Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Horst Kächele died on 28 June 2020 surrounded by his family. With his passing, international psychoanalysis loses one of the pioneers of research in psychoanalysis, a dedicated, pugnacious psychoanalyst and a warm-hearted personality.

With great passion he championed a vision of open, self-critical and empirically based psychoanalysis, which, through careful, demanding research, opens doors to the academic world of universities, psychiatric clinics, evidence-based medicine, without neglecting art and literature. He developed into a marathon runner for empirical research in psychoanalysis.

Even as a young professor, in the 1980s, Horst Kächele founded the Ulm Workshop for Empirical Research in Psychotherapy, which received great national and international acceptance and admiration. Many of the leading psychoanalytical research groups from all over the world presented their projects in the innovative, creative and inspiring atmosphere of the historically famous building of the Ulm University, and networked with each other. A second milestone was the “Sonderforschungsbereich 129, Psychotherapeutic Processes" of the German Research Foundation, which brought psychoanalysis a great deal of recognition in the world of science and supported many young scientists who were able to write their doctoral theses and habilitations within this framework. Thus, many of them, including myself (Marianne Leuzinger Bohleber), owe their academic careers to Horst Kächele. As creator of the so called “Ulm School of Psychotherapy” as well as being chief of the Center for Psychotherapy Research in Stuttgart (1988-2004), he built a bridge between psychoanalysis and the international community of psychotherapy researchers, and became president of the Society for Psychotherapy Research in the 1990s.

After studying medicine in Marburg, Leeds (England) and Munich (1963-69), Horst Kächele accepted the invitation of Helmut Thomä for a scientific position in the Department of Psychotherapy at Ulm University. He combined his research activities with his psychoanalytic training at the Ulm Institute for Psychoanalysis (1970 – 1975). Helmut Thomä and Horst Kächele became one of the most fruitful psychoanalytic research duos. Together they wrote a three volume textbook for psychoanalytic therapy which has since been translated into 23 languages and is now considered a classic. The two authors received the Mary Sigourney Award in 2004 for this achievement.

Horst was passionately committed to the dissemination of psychoanalysis, especially in Eastern Europe, where he is revered with great gratitude as a teacher. In 1996 he became Honorary Professor of the Faculty of Psychoanalytic Medicine, University St Petersburg. As a staff member of the Research Training Program (RTP) of the International Psychoanalytical Association, he has made a significant contribution to the international promotion of young researchers in psychoanalysis. Especially among his colleagues in South America he is revered as a messenger of psychoanalytic research.  With many of them he remained in intensive exchange, through the mail list of the RTP Fellows, the Open Door Review or joint research projects, as e.g. with Juan Pablo Jimenez as Profesor visitande permanente del Universidad de Chile.

So, Horst was a most productive researcher with a large amount of publications but also a great master of intergenerational networking. In a generous manner, with a unique dedication and passion, he literally carried his psychoanalytic and scientific knowledge all over the world, always ready to engage in fierce controversy and debate and to set out for new shores of knowledge. Thus, at the age of 65, he obtained a Ph.D., and after his retirement as Professor Emeritus in the Medical Faculty, he accepted a new professorship at the private International Psychoanalytical University in Berlin, which, as he said, became a "new institutional home".

Horst Kächele leaves behind a large gap, as psychoanalyst, researcher and dear friend. He always seemed to us like a candle burning at both ends, perhaps one of the reasons why he left us so soon, at the age of 76. We share our grief with his wife Beate, his three daughters, the grandchildren, his brother, friends and colleagues. We will miss him!

Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber      &       Mark Solms

(Published on 8th of July, 2020)

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It is with great sorrow that we communicate that the Swedish/Danish psychoanalyst Stefan Bálint died on August 25, 2019, after a bicycle accident earlier in the summer. It is a great loss for the Danish Psychoanalytical Society and for the European psychoanalytic community.

Stefan Bálint was of huge importance for the Danish Society and had many former analysands, supervisees and students in the Society. He was the president of the Society in the 1990’s and in the early 2000’s he was part of the Society’s Training Committee. In the 1970’s he was one of the initiators that made it possible for Swedish psychologists and psychiatrists to train as psychoanalyst’s in the Danish Society in Copenhagen. This initiative has since then given the Danish Psychoanalytic Society its special characteristic of being a bi-national Society with members from both Denmark and southern Sweden.

Stefan Bálint lived and worked in Malmo, Sweden, where he was born and grew up. He was also a member of the Swedish Psychoanalytical Society. Stefan’s engagement in psychoanalysis was great, and since the early 2000’s he was part of the EPF working party on “Listening to listening” where he was a much-appreciated moderator of clinical groups. Besides his psychoanalytic work, Stefan Bálint was also an important figure in the Swedish Bálint-group environment, leading a number of Bálint-groups, training new Bálint-group leaders and being part of a research project for the development of the Bálint-group method.

Stefan Bálint was an exceptionally warm and vital person and he had an outstanding clinical sensitivity, which was a benefit for anyone who had the chance to work with and learn from him. We remember him with gratitude.

Maria Fitger

President of the Danish Psychoanalytical Society

(Published on 16th of October, 2019)

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The EPF has the sad duty to announce the passing away of our former treasurer Duveken Engels. We will honor her and publish here the obituary of our colleague Gerda Frijda:

 

The Dutch Psychoanalytic Society sadly announces the passing away of Duveken Engels.

Duveken has been a very active and valuable member of our Society. Not only was she a conscientious clinician, but she also has served as treasurer, secretary, and several terms as President, under critical circumstances.

Apart from this she was extensively involved in educational and training activities abroad.

First in Rumenia and Lithuania, and later at the Han Groen Prakken Institute for Eastern Europe. For these last achievements our former Queen has appointed her Knight in the Order of Oranje Nassau in 2012.

Her managerial capacities led her to the EPF, where she has served a double term as treasurer, from 2003 on. With sharp insight Duveken has played a part in creating a sound financial basis for the EPF, and she made a contribution towards new transparency in rules and arrangements. Because of her experience and connections in Eastern Europe she was at the same time appointed liaison officer for the PIEE. She also has been a member of COWAP.

In all her positions and roles she impressed with dedication, loyalty and sincerity.

Duveken died last April, after a sickbed endured with dignity and courage.

(Obituary published on7th of July, 2018)

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It is with deep sorrow that we as EPF Executive have to announce the passing of our highly respected former President Anne-Marie Sandler.

Anne-Marie Sandler died July 25^th, 2018.

Anne-Marie Sandler was President of the EPF from 1983 to 1987.

She was also training analyst in adult, adolescent and child analysis and a Distinguished fellow at the British Psychoanalytical Society, Honorary Member of the German Psychoanalytical Society (DPG), Director of the Anna Freud Centre from 1993-1996, President of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1990 to 1993 and Vice-President of the International Psychoanalytical Association from 1993 to 1997. In 1998 she was awarded the prestigious Sigourney Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Psychoanalysis, in 2015 she received the EPF Award for a Distinguished Contribution to Psychoanalysis.

Anne-Marie Sandler had been linked to and engaged in the EPF since its very first beginning. Even if she had stated in an interview 2015, that she experienced the start of the EPF “…somehow ‘second hand’, through the engagement of my husband Joe….” (Josef Sandler), she accompanied the very first European Conference in Geneva in June 1970 with great interest and enthusiasm. This first Conference had been a symposium on child analysis. She intensified her commitment in a second Conference in Aix-en-Provence 1976, after her husband Josef Sandler had become EPF President in 1975. Cooperating with him, she participated in developing the new organizational structures of the EPF, and in 1983 she took over the presidency of the EPF from Daniel Widlöcher in Jerusalem. She stayed in charge of the EPF until 1987. In the years following her presidency, she remained very active in the EPF. Due to her outstanding capacity for building bridges between different psychoanalytical societies and psychoanalysts, she supported and contributed essentially to the continuous growth of the EPF until today.

Her integrative capabilities and European orientation rooted in her early experiences and encounters with different European cultures and languages. She was born in December 1925 in Geneva, Switzerland, and she grew up in a francophone environment with a German nanny. Both parents had a Jewish-German background, but Anne-Marie Sandler´s relation to German culture and language had been cut off abruptly as the Nazis came to power in Germany. Between 1950 und 1954 she trained as a child analyst at the Hampstead Clinic, London, and between 1965 and 1968 as a psychoanalyst at the British Psychoanalytical Society. In the beginning of the new millennium, it was her readiness for reconciliation as Chair of a Joint Steering Committee of the IPA, which helped the German Psychoanalytical Society (DPG) to become reintegrated in the IPA and the EPF. This step also facilitated the rapprochement between the two German societies, German Psychoanalytical Association (DPV) and German Psychoanalytical Society (DPG).

Anne-Marie Sandler´s death represents a big loss not only for the people who learned from her but also for the whole psychoanalytical community. She is not with us anymore, but she will stay in our minds and thoughts as a most stimulating model. She leaves us with a large number of publications and besides her outstanding achievements in psychoanalysis, we commemorate her as a person of deep humanity and tolerance. She expressed these characteristics also in her following statement: “Thanks to the EPF I gained a greater awareness of the fact that other people work differently and it doesn´t disturb me anymore. Others are not bad or stupid, they are thinking differently and probably their environment is different – The EPF helped me a lot into realizing this fact. “[1]

But we all know that this attitude was reciprocal: the EPF also learned from Anne-Marie Sandler to open up and to acknowledge differences for the sake of mutual exchange and communication.

Anne-Marie Sandler´s open mind and her personal work will remain in our memory and they convey a great message: Psychoanalysis and life are not fixed in books but are a way of thinking, of listening and finally of being!

 

We commemorate Anne-Marie Sandler with deep gratitude.

 

Jorge Canestri, President

Heribert Blass, Vice President

Eva Schmid-Gloor, Vice President

Martina Burdet Dombald, General Secretary

Katy Bogliatto, Treasurer

Charlotta Björklind, General Editor

 

Further information about the person and the life of Anne-Marie Sandler can be found on the website of the Institute of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Please click here if you would like to open this page !

 

(Obituary published on 28th of July, 2018)

It is with great sorrow that we communicate the passing away of Dr. Michel de M'Uzan who greatly influenced the French psychoanalytic approach thanks to his own particular way of thinking. His work included the psychosomatic, masochism, the exploration of identity disorders and the repetition compulsion. Michel de M'Uzan was a full member of the SPP (Société Psychanalytique de Paris), a member of the board of the Revue Française de Psychanalyse and co-chair of "Le fil Rouge" (Presses Universitaires de France) since 1972.

(Obituary published on 14th of January, 2018)