In this article the history and process of the founding of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) will be addressed. After World War II, the IFPS was the first international association of psychoanalysts established outside the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). Particular to the IFPS was the inclusion of psychoanalytic institutes and groups that were not members of the IPA; a liberal and open approach to new psychoanalytic methods and developments; and the waiver of imposed regulation – within a certain framework – on the terms of psychoanalytic training. In the received history of the psychoanalytic movement, non-IPA psychoanalysts have been neglected. This article intends to shed light on the organization of those so-called psychoanalytic dissidents, who identified as psychoanalysts, but were deemed by the IPA establishment >only< psychotherapists. The history of the IFPS provides material for the analysis of this important but difficult controversy, still markedly perceptible within the psychoanalytic community today.
The International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) was established in 1962. The first 20 years of the Federation were a time when psychoanalysis was divided into so-called liberal and orthodox factions. The (then orthodox) International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) did not admit all psychoanalytic societies, and some societies did not want to join it. In the IFPS, non-IPA-psychoanalysts from Europe, the USA, and South and Middle America came together to discuss their new approaches to psychoanalysis and to find ways to better cope with their patients’ problems. At the beginning an informal organization of autonomous societies, the IFPS persisted for 12 years without a charter. The first three secretary generals came from the German Psychoanalytical Society and greatly influenced the first few years of the IFPS. The IFPS held several international conferences, and new psychoanalytic societies became members. In 1977, after the VIth Forum in Berlin, the IFPS fell into an identity crisis. The conflicts centered on the assumption of responsibility, the authority of the members, and how to understand the aim and sense of the organization. This article deals with the theoretical background of the early IFPS and the development of its self-concept.