Mandate

The purpose of the Project Group on Conceptual Integration is to find ways and means to enable members of the IPA to contribute to such integration of psychoanalytic theory as current reliable knowledge of psychic reality makes possible. Its goal is to substitute conceptual and clinical enquiry for chronic controversy without diminishing critical questioning and without encouraging ideological orthodoxy or authoritarianism. Its purpose is to clarify theoretical differences where logically irreconcilable differences exist and to explore directions in which their resolution might be found and to find and clarify real agreement, when it exists, despite apparent difference and even contradiction. It does not seek for or demand certainty; it is satisfied with ascertaining what is most probable on the basis of current clinical knowledge. Its aim is not to promulgate truths about psychic reality but to find ways and means to promote the broadening and integration of knowledge about psychic reality by psychoanalysts.

The Project Group will be made up of a chair and two members from each region.

Its methods of working may include but need not be limited to:

a) a survey of the literature on the subject with a view to selecting and formulating topics for work and to prepare a select bibliography that can be up-dated including works on the nature of an integrated psychoanalytic theory;

b) a continuing survey of incompatibilities in basic concepts and contradictions in theories;

c)the use of working groups to enquire into specific conceptual issues on the model of the EPF working parties but with methodologies and tasks as required by the overall objectives of the Project Group;

d)such consultation and collaboration with the working party committees of the EPF, FEPAL and NAPSAC as may, from time to time, be mutually beneficial;

e)consultation and collaboration with the International Research Board

f)consultation and collaboration with Congress Scientific Programme Committees of the IPA, EPF, FEPAL, NAPSAC and APsaA;

g)such consultation and collaboration with the editors and editorial boards of the psychoanalytic journals as may, from time to time, be mutually beneficial;

h)organization of conferences when justified by results and the unavailability of other equally effective communicative alternatives.

It will be the responsibility of the Project Group to plan, organize and implement some or all of these strategies, to facilitate them and to exercise oversight over them and to develop methods for the reporting, recording and publishing of results. It is anticipated that the work of the Project Group will result in a publication of their findings.

It will be the responsibility of the Project Group to provide an annual report on its work to the Board of Representatives and such interim reports as may from time to time be required by the Board.

It will be the responsibility of the Project Group to propose an annual operating budget to cover operating costs to the Budget and Finance Committee that is timely and in sufficient detail. If the Project Group decides to use working groups the costs of those working groups will be included in the CAPSA budget.

Board approved July 2009