THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHOANALYTICAL ASSOCIATION

After 100 years of psychoanalytic theory and practice, what concept of mental health do we analysts use? When and under what circumstances can a person be said to be in good mental health? What is our position, as psychoanalysts, regarding the question of ‘normality’ in the human mind?

Freud referred more than once, with considerable nostalgia, to the ten years of "splendid isolation" during which psychoanalysis was developed by him. No doubt he felt that this period began when his collaboration with Breuer came to an end in 1894, leaving him to continue his work alone in the absence of any colleague with whom he could discuss it. But since the publication of Freud's letters to Fliess, we know that they carried on a very lively correspondence in which Freud used Fliess as a sounding-board for his developing ideas; and we know further that some of these were certainly stimulated by Fliess's own theories. Moreover, the two men met on numerous occasions for what Freud jokingly referred to as their "congresses". This word was a portent of things to come. To this extent, then, Freud was not totally isolated in his work, though it is true that he had no collaborators in Vienna, Fliess being a Berliner.

In 1902, probably on the initiative of Stekel, who had been his patient, Freud invited four men (Stekel, Adler, Kahane and Reitler) to meet him in order to discuss his work, and they formed what they called the Psychological Wednesday Society, since they met every week on that day. By 1908 there were 14 members and the name was changed to the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society; it was in this year that Ferenczi joined it. Besides the members, there were some guests who later became important for psychoanalysis; these included Eitingon, Jung, Abraham and Jones, each of whom later became President of the IPA.