Reports of panels held at the 47th Congress of the InternationalPsychoanalytic Association, Mexico City, 3–6 August 2011

Opening plenary1

Peter Dunn, Reporter

Professor Charles Hanley convened the 47th Congress of the IPA in Mexico City. Luisa Marino wel-comed participants on behalf of the IPSO. Governor Marcelo Luis Ebrard Caubon extended the goodwishes of the people of Mexico City. Professor Hanley reviewed the goals of the IPA and the work of the100th anniversary year. Steven Ellman discussed the organization and goals of the proceedings in hiscapacity as chair of the Scientific Program Committee. The Committee had opted for a plenary formatwith associated discussion groups to maximize the opportunity for the exchange of ideas. The programwas designed as a group inquiry into the core concepts of sexuality, dreams and the unconscious with theaim of furthering the conceptual integration of psychoanalytic theory.

Consistent with the anniversary theme that looking back is a precondition for moving forward, thefirst paper illuminated the birth of psychoanalysis. Seeds of core psychoanalytic concepts by Ilse Gru-brich-Simitis is based on the recently published letters between the lovers Sigmund Freud and MarthaBernays. The author studied the letters in search of the seeds of ideas that would later develop into thecore concepts. She was able to isolate passages in which Freud described the rudiments of such conceptsas sublimation and unconscious identification. In other passages Freud’s comments on his own dreamsindicate an awareness of the contribution of the day residue and, in one instance, the role of displace-ment in disguising Martha’s dream image. Large sections of the letters read like an intellectual dialogueand not the love letters of a genius to his muse. Grubrich-Simitis concludes that Martha’s contributionhas been overlooked and her intellect underestimated.

The Opening Plenary concluded with the announcement that Bernardo Bertolucci was the recipient ofthis year’s Award for Extraordinarily Meritorious Service to Psychoanalysis. Andrea Sabbadini acceptedthe award on behalf of Bertolucci and read a commentary to accompany a documentary that the directorhad prepared for the Congress.

Dreams2

Susana Vinocur Fischbein, Reporter

Introducing the panel, Gertraud Schlesinger-Kipp associated the various layers of dreams with ancientMexican cultural traces that function as day residues. She posed several questions about the status ofdreams in current psychoanalytic theory and technique – as the royal road to the unconscious or theexpression of unconscious fantasies and the defence against them – and dream life as a source of creativ-ity, problem-solving and thinking. She also recalled the Programme Committee’s questions concerningdreams: their function, their role, the value of their interpretation in the treatment and the significance ofthe analyst’s reverie.

Luis Mart�n-Cabr� introduced his presentation with a transference dream that embedded anotherdream to demonstrate that dream interpretation remains a privileged tool of knowledge acquisition andpsychic change. As a unique means of approaching the transference relationship and a crucial aid in con-struction, dreams reactivate and symbolize ‘unruly’ mnemic traces of traumatic experiences from a phaseof presymbolic and preverbal mental functioning stored in implicit memory.

1• Presidential welcome (Charles Hanly)• An introduction to the Congress (Steven Ellman)• The 21st IPSO Conference (Luisa Marino)• Seeds of core psychoanalytic concepts: On the courtship letters of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays (Ilse Grubrich-Simitis, Germany)• Bernardo Bertolucci: Film and psychoanalysis (Andrea Sabbadini, UK)Panellists: Charles Hanly (Canada); Steven Ellman (USA); Luisa Marino (Italy); Ilse Grubrich-Simitis (Germany); Sabbadini (UK).

2Moderator: Gertraud Schlesinger-Kipp. Panellists: Harold Blum (USA); Luis Mart�n-Cabr� (Spain); El�as da Rocha Barros (Brazil); FredPine (USA).

Int J Psychoanal (2012) 93:489–516 489

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