Report from the Chairman and the Hon. Secretary for the period 1999-2001.
On behalf of the Executive Committee; presented at the EFPP General Meeting in Luxemburg, 30-31st march 2001

It is the second time that the delegates meeting is being organised in Luxembourg. This meeting corresponds with the 10 years of EFPP! Indeed, ten years ago, the EFPP was founded in London. A long and constructive period, thanks to the commitment and enthusiasm of all the past and present delegates of EFPP. When looking at the delegates list we are glad to note that some friends are still delegates allowing continuity in the work but some newcomers underline the evolution of our Federation.
When reading this general report as well as the more specific ones by the treasurer, section co-ordinators etc. you will notice the enormous amount of work the members of my executive committee have to deal with. In this report we want to show you the continuity of the work undertaken so far but also underline some important projects we started to develop in the mean time.
2 years ago the delegates expressed their wish to have more time for discussion in the section and for getting more complete information about possible changes in legislation about psychotherapy on a European level. We hope that we were able to meet these wishes.

It is expected that this report has been read by all delegates previous to the meeting so that it has not to be presented in all details.

Honorary Life Chair of EFPP.
It is for the first time, that Brian Martindale is not with us, and what is left, is gratitude for his having founded EFPP. You will remember that at the last delegates meeting in 1999 the assembly (voiced by Maria) expressed the wish to honour Brian for the tremendous work he did in favour of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Europe especially in founding and chairing EFPP. The executive organised a small ceremony at the Oxford conference, where he was honoured by the title of Honorary Life Chair of EFPP.

This is the moment perhaps, to remember our friends and colleagues whom we have painfully lost since the last Delegates Meeting. Those who shared with us the joyous Gala Dinner two years ago will not forget Barbara Diepold, the German C&A Delegate performing with other German colleagues a delightful "a capella": joyful and witty as she was. She died this spring. Recently we heard of the death of Tom McGrath, the Irish observer in the Adult Section. He was a lively contributor at our conferences, although we knew him less, - and that makes the loss in its own way sad. To Barbara and Tom we owe deep gratitude.

News from the EFPP networks.
Changes in membership.
As you remember, in 1999, the General Meeting amended the bylaws of the EFPP by introducing the full member and associate member. It was absolutely indispensable as the EFPP had admitted a certain number of colleagues from Central and Eastern Europe. Due to a different historic development during the second half of the 20th century, psychoanalytical therapy could not develop as much in this part of the world as it did in Western Europe. Nonetheless, EFPP wants in any case to open up to and invite these countries to co-operate. As a first step we had admitted those colleagues as guest members, a status that was not defined as such in our bylaws. Since the amendments to the constitution in 1999, the status of guest member no longer applies.
It is true, that the training criteria have much evolved considerably during the last decades in Western Europe. But we are convinced that, together with the progressive integration within the EEC, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will develop in not too far ahead training criteria corresponding to those described in the EFPP bylaws

The Constitution of 1999 defines as Associate Members those that do not yet have training standards that correspond to those EFPP bylaws for that section, or if they do have such training standards, do not yet have a core group of at least six persons trained to those standards and who are active in training within those organisation(s). Associate members may send two delegates to meetings of that section of the EFPP and to general meetings, but do not have voting rights and may not be elected onto the Executive Committee.

The following countries have been accepted as associate members:
Adult section: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
Child and Adolescent section: Russia, Lithuania,

We hope to be able in the not too distant future to consider their request for being admitted as full members.
Whereas the status of "associate members" and "full members" refer to countries or national networks, the term "observer" is reserved for individuals whose country is not represented in the EFPP. The idea is to allow these individuals to inform themselves about the EFPP in order to found an association with the characteristics required to become a member of the EFPP.

The executive is happy to announce that we accepted as full members the following sections:
Czech Republic: adult, child and adolescent and group section
Israel: adult section
Portugal: group section
Congratulations to these sections.

Central and Easter European countries and EFPP.
After the political changes in the early nineties, psychotherapy expanded quickly in C&E Europe. Despite a deeply rooted psychoanalytic tradition in some of these countries, modern psychoanalytic thinking and psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice were less developed compared to Western Europe.
A C&E European sub-committee composed of C&E colleagues has been initiated. These are Nina Vasilyeva (Russia), Ludek Vrba (Czech Rebublic) and Ants Parktal.(Estonia) The aim of this small committee is to bring the colleagues from C&E Europe together to reflect on their past and the influence of the past political regime on the society and on the place of psychotherapy. We hope that this will help the C&E countries to develop their own space within EFPP.
The tasks of this sub-committee are of major importance for the development of psychoanalytic psychotherapy since other non-analytic oriented organisations are investing a lot of time and finances in these countries to seduce psychotherapists to join them.
We wish to stress here the enormous work done so far by Lydia Tischler who was helped in her task by Maria Eugenia Cid.

Expanding the existing networks.
The EFPP has always made clear that its target is to group ALL the national associations of psychoanalytical psychotherapies in a network, regardless of the theoretical psychoanalytic orientations. Within this network each organisation can, of course, preserve its complete autonomy. The assembling of all the associations/societies of a country within a single network is a must if we want psychoanalytic psychotherapy to represents an compact practical, institutional and political force rooted in psychoanalytic theory in each member country and not to become diluted by a range of professional organisations which are not of psychoanalytic orientation. During the first years of the existence of the EFPP, such links had been established. Nowadays, we have to recognise that this task of linking has been neglected or even forgotten. In some of the "large" European countries, there are numerous well established and serious associations/societies, existing for a long time, but not being members of our Federation. We hope that the delegates will take up the dialogue with these societies/associations in the near future. We would like to suggest that if certain associations/societies do not correspond to the EFPP criteria, they could at least be associated to the national network whilst their training criteria are being amended and updated.

Delegates and Delegates' Meeting: amendments to the constitution.
As you see on a separate document, 'proposals to amend the constitution' the ARPP (Swiss Francophone adult section) is proposing, that past delegates should become eligible for the Executive in order to enhance rotation of the delegates and allow more people to take active part in the decision making process of EFPP. We gave much thought to the ARPP's thoughtful suggestion, and how to enhance rotation altogether. Is it the right way to alter a "basic principle" of our Federation, that the Executive is personally and organically rooted in the Delegates Meeting, or are there any other ways of enhancing rotation?

We have stated that it gets increasingly difficult for a new delegate to understand the stakes at the EFPP. The new delegate often feels a little bit lost and needs 2 years to familiarise with the treated topics. Many delegates think that these 2 years are lost time. As a remedy, the executive committee is proposing that the delegate who is to give up his delegate functions can be accompanied by his/her successor at the General Meeting..

This will also be valid for the members of the Executive Committee who can block the post of a delegate for years. Let us take the example of a person having been a delegate for 6 years and who is afterwards elected into the Committee where he may stay for further 8 years. Thus, this person will be a delegate for 14 years. This is not sound. We wish that if a member of the national networks is elected onto the committee, the networks have the possibility to designate a "shadow or supplementary" delegate without voting rights.

Sections.
You will find the reports of the co-ordinators of the 3 sections in this mailing. Therefore, we will not give details about the work of the sections. Elections will take place in each one of the three sections.
In the adult section Serge Frisch stands for election. If he is re-elected, the executive decided to ask him to continue his chairmanship of EFPP.
In the group section Jan van de Sande has resigned from his post shortly after his election in Luxembourg for personal reasons. Rudolf Balmer, co-ordinator of the group section, has to stand for re-election for a second term of 4 years since he was elected 4 years ago.
In the child-adolescent section Wim Heuves has also resigned for reasons of lacking time due to work overload.
We would like to thank our friends Jan and Wim for their positive contributions to our Federation and particularly to their respective sections.
Those who would like to stand for elections are asked to send a short letter mentioning their motivation/reasons and their vocational curriculum.
The Committee wishes of course that the best candidates will be elected to replace the leaving delegates. Please think about the fact that there is an a heavy imbalance among the different parts of Europe represented within the Committee.

Project : Family and couple section.
Since its foundation, one major goals of EFPP was to bring together the largest number of high qualified psychoanalytic psychotherapists, regardless of their theoretical orientation and model for practising. Therefore, the EFPP represents therapists working with individuals, whether with adults or children, side by side to the colleagues using the group method.
But psychotherapy is evolving: not only its theory but also its technical modalities, which become more refined and diversified.
In a certain number of countries, we have observed during the last years that the family therapy and/or couple therapy has tremendously developed. Although this approach had been linked for a long time to the systemic approach, many psychoanalytical psychotherapists could no longer identify themselves with the systemic approach as practised today. Thus, they developed their own analytic training theories and models. Nowadays, an increasing number of psychoanalytic family therapists regroup themselves and form independent associations/societies. Are we to give up and let develop outside the EFPP a new European organisation, or are we to offer a proper space to these colleagues within the EFPP, which would reinforce the importance of the EFPP. Obviously, we chose the second alternative.
Maria Eugenia Cid and Rudolf Balmer have chaired an international working party on this very important project of EFPP (see their report) and will present their arguments for discussion at the delegates meeting.

Research in EFPP.
Over the last years research is becoming one of the hottest issues in the field of psychotherapy. Under the pressure of insurance companies or political authorities research changed gradually over the last years from a purely clinical (typically single case study) to a research trying to prove the efficiency of psychoanalytic psychotherapy also in the sense of cost-effectiveness.
Talking about research one encompasses a vast field of methods: "single case studies" as presented by Freud are not less or more "scientific" than outcome studies, studies of process, naturalistic or otherwise etc. All these levels of research are important for the future of our profession and should not be in a fighting opposition.

The executive decided to co-opt Olivier Nicolle as research convenor. His task is to initiate a permanent group in EFPP composed of colleagues interested or active in the field of research. The aim of this group is manifold: reflecting on research by bringing together colleagues actively involved in research projects, helping colleagues to initiate research studies and to establish links between research teams from different countries for common research programmes… The delegates are asked to link all those active in research in their country up with Olivier Nicolle to set up this research network.

E.C. and psychotherapy.
A small working group composed of Margareta Mörner, Karin Bell and Serge Frisch had a meeting with Mr Abilio Pereira, assistant administrator for regulating the qualification issues for different professions at the Directorate-General XV Internal Market and Financial Services. You have received an exhaustive report about the information we gathered.
Important point coming out of this was that nothing will happen in Brussels i.e. no European directive will be elaborated as long as not all the European countries have national psychotherapy laws. This puts the weight on the national EFPP networks to intervene in their national ministries if they want to influence the elaboration of the national psychotherapy laws. Unfortunately we observe that the EAP is in many countries more active in this field than analytic colleagues.
You all know that the EAP produced much confusion amongst less well informed colleagues with their European Certificate of Psychotherapy (ECP). This ECP was presented as on official document from Brussels. This happens to be a lie. The ECP is a private document of EAP and NOT AT ALL an official document from the European Commission. In the mean time EAP had to recognise that this "Certificate" had a minimal impact in Europe. As far as we know, not a single society of psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy society joined EAP.
EFPP thought that it might be of interest to delineate our own "analytic" views as opposed to those of EAP. A working party was formed. The project was to elaborate an EFPP Certificate in each one of the 3 sections. Karin Bell (adult section), Effie Lignos (C&A section) and Luc Michel (group section) agreed to chair these working parties. We thought that this work would be possible by internet discussions and exchanges. But it didn't work.
So we have planed to invite all the delegates to start working on this project (or decide that we don't need it) during special section meetings on Saturday afternoon at the delegates meeting.

The EFPP Monograph Series and other publications
Under the direction of the chief editor John Tsiantis 2 new monographs have been edited by the EFPP and published at Karnac Books, London. The first Psychoanalytic psychotherapy of the Severely Disturbed Adolescent with Dimitris Anastasopoulos as senior editor and with the collaboration of Effie Layou-Lignos and Margot Waddell.
John Tsiantis is senior editor of Work with Parents : Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents. Siv Boalt Boethious, Birgit Hallerfors, Ann Horne and Lydia Tischler are the other editors.

Others are planned:
- Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy : the narcissism of minor ? or major? differences?
- Research Monograph
- Dreams in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

I am happy to mention that the Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the N.H.S has given a loan to EFPP to cover the full costs of production for the Research Monograph. EFPP will pay this loan back in a period of 2 years. Our gratitude to Dr Jessica Kirker, Chair of the Educational Trust of APP.

Thanks to Maria Cid we are negotiating with a Spanish book publisher who is interested in publishing all the EFPP Monographs in Spanish. This would open the large Spanish speaking market in South America to the EFPP. But still many important questions remain without solution as for instance who will pay for the translation costs.

John Tsiantis, the initiator and tireless promoter of the project "Monographs" has done a wonderful job. The quality of the contents of the monographs as well as the diversity of the treated subjects are unanimously recognised. John, together with senior editors, has also achieved that the selected texts deal with clinical topics that concern a lot of professionals. I would like to point out that John had always insisted that the diversity of the opinions as well as of the national styles of the contributors is represented. His term as chief editor will come to an end by December 2001. Even if everyone can be replaced, it is obvious that it won't be easy in the case of John. Dear John, I ask you to accept our gratitude.

To find a successor to John, the Executive Committee has initiated a small work group comprising Julia Pestalozzi, Liselotte Grünbaum, Maria Cid and Serge Frisch. It will be their task to make a job description, to meet interested people, and to make recommendations to the committee as to the decision to be taken shortly.

In the frame of this mailing concerning the publications, I would also like to mention that Karin Bell is busy editing a book in German with some of the papers presented at the EFPP Cologne conference (March, 1998), Loss of Identity, Migration and Persecution. This book will be published at the editions Psychosocial Verlag, Giessen and is expected at the time of the delegates meeting. Thank you Karin.

I would like to draw the attention to the initiative of Jean-Claude Rouchy, chief editor of the French Revue de Psychothérapie Psychanalytique de Groupe. He has dedicated an issue of his review to the topic: Psychpopathologies du lien. Some papers of the conference of the group section of the EFPP in Barcelona have been taken up in the aforementioned issue. The issue also contains 2 papers dealing with the presentation of the EFPP .

We would be very glad if the two last examples would have an incentive effect, and if those among you who are responsible for reviews could dedicate an issue to the EFPP conferences, or accept some papers of our conferences in their reviews.

Do promote psychoanalytic psychotherapy in general and EFPP in particular, it is important that the Monographs become more and more well known in and outside our professional field. We have observed that well reviewed Monographs sell much better than those which are less reviewed in national or in international reviews. Under the leadership of John and in close connection with the section co-ordinators a pool of reviewers (as well as colleagues who could stimulate reviewing) from all European countries is actually being constituted. Interested colleagues are asked to contact John Tsiantis or their Section Co-ordinator.

EFPP Conferences.
You know that a few years ago EFPP decided to assign a professional company, namely Options, with the task of organising our congresses. EFPP expected a financial aid from this collaboration. Options wanted to organise two congresses per year for us. We rapidly recognised that our goals and our style were too different to co-operate. Thus, we stopped our co-operation without any financial loss for our federation. Nevertheless, we had programmed 2 conferences per year for many years. This seemed to be too much for many of you, and you were right. You showed us your disagreement. However, we have to wait for the year 2001 to return to a more normal rhythm of one congress per year.
As a innovation of the Executive is that for the past two years Inger Larsson, has been wholly dedicated to conference matters and this is an enormous improvement in the management of congresses. We owe much gratitude to Inger.
As a reminder the conferences since the last General Meeting in 1999.
- February 1999: Louvain-La-Neuve, first European meeting of the Roman countries of EFPP: Les cliniques psychotherapeutiques aujourd'hui organised by the Fédération Francophone Belge de Psychothérapie Psychanalytique.
- May 1999: Barcelona, group section: From Fragmentation to Cohesion. Undications for Group Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. In collaboration with Asociación Española de Psicoterapia Psicoanalítica and Assiciacío Catalana de Psicoteràpia Psicoanalítica.
- October 1999 : Rome, child and adolescent section : Internal objects and Psychic Change in psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. In collaboration with AIPPI (Roma), ARPAD (Roma), ASARNA - APPIA (Torino), ASNEA (Milano) ASNE - SIPsIA (Roma), CSM HARRIS - AMHPPIA (Firenze).
- March 2000 : Oxford (UK), 3 section conference on Changing times, changing relations. In collaboration with The Tavistock and Portman Trust, The Association of Child Psychotherapy, The Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the NHS, and The Group Analytic Society (UK).
- May 2000: 2nd Syros (Greece) Summer Workshop by the Hellenic Society for Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in collaboration with EFPP
- October 2000 : Nicosia (Cyprus), adult section conference on The influence of the psychotherapist on the outcome of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. In collaboration with the Cyprus Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Studies (CAPPS) and the University of Cyprus.

We would like to thank all our friends and colleagues who assisted us without any hesitation and with an enormous investment of time, energy and enthusiasm at preparing these congresses, which were very successful under the scientific and human aspect. These conferences had, indeed, a high scientific level concerning both the main speakers and the presentations in workshops. Many thanks to all those who presented papers at these conferences.

Nevertheless, we should think about organising special workshops in the frame of which young colleagues could present their " first paper ". They really shouldn't have to wait for years to have the right to make their first "perfect" presentation. One of the goals of our conferences should be to encourage young colleagues to dare to present their reflections.

Some countries are not well represented at our conferences despite a huge number of psychoanalytic psychotherapists. We shall start discussions to understand this phenomena to improve the collaboration between EFPP and the colleagues of these countries.

Future conferences:
- May 2001: 3rd Syros Summer Workshop on Eating disorders: mainly clinical discussions for a maximum of 25-30 colleagues. This year's invited guest is Gianna Williams.
- September 2001 : Caen, (France), Child and Adolescent Section conference on The psychotic child and adolescent and his family.
- 13-15 September 2002 : Lausanne (Switzerland), 2nd Francophone Conference of the 3 sections on La Psychothérapie avec fin et la Psychothérapie sans fin": la question du temps en psychothérapie psychanalytique.
- 2003 : 3 sections conference (expected in Stockholm)
- 2004 : Group section.
- 2005 : Adult section.

You see that the conferences are planned up to the year 2003. We would be very grateful if some of you would consider organising a conference up from the year 2004. We know how much work and stress it is for those who take over this job. But from our experience I can assure you that we had a lot of fun and we have learned a lot at organising these EFPP conferences. You will be assisted by Inger Larsson who will help you at establishing your budget, discussing the timing for the printing of the pre-programmes, final programmes, etc.. We have learnt a lot from the previous conferences and would be happy to share our gained experience with you.

You can read in this mailing that the second francophone conference for the 3 EFPP sections will take place in Switzerland, in Lausanne in 2002. We could imagine that this initiative will serve as a model for other conferences, e.g. regional conferences, conferences for Germaphone, Anglophone, or Scandinavian countries. We hope that some of you will take up this suggestion…

We would like to stress the absolute necessity to begin the planning of conferences early enough. We actually know that the earlier a conference is announced, the larger the number of participants will be. An essential aim for our Federation. As you can read in the financial report, our income from membership fees are absolutely insufficient to cover our current expenses. Up to now, the financial surplus realised at the conferences helped us paying the deficit.

We propose to organise Study Days focused on a special topic and with a restricted number of participants (50 to 70 persons) to cover the organisation costs. The idea is to create a workshop atmosphere in which participants will be able to know better each other and to have thorough discussions about a particular theme. The topics may be clinical, theoretical, political, institutional…. The organisation of such Study Days will only be possible by keeping costs at a minimum. Thus, invitations would be sent per E-mail, and the organisers of these Study Days would ask you, in your function as delegate, to inform your members directly. We hope that you have proposals for future projects. Be assured that the members of the Executive Committee will give you all possible support.

Web page and Newsletter.
During the General Meeting in 1999, Wim Heuves proposed to develop an own EFPP Web-site. We have been delighted to see that the site has been built up and filled progressively. However, the number of colleagues visiting our Web site is unbelievably low. We have also to update the contents as soon as possible and to make the site more interactive.
To inform the members of the national networks about the activities of the EFPP, we decided some years ago to publish one Newsletter per year. Meanwhile, we have stated that the printing costs but above all the posting costs reach amounts up to £ 8.000 for each issue. We just cannot afford such horrendous expenses.
Thus, we had the idea to publish the Newsletter in the Web once per year. Reflecting about it, we had to acknowledge that this formula is no more up-to-date due to the enormous speed of the communication in the Web. Therefore, we would like to develop a Newspage that would be continuously updated, and where the old texts would be regularly replaced by new ones.
The Web can only be vivid if you and your colleagues visit it regularly, and if you send us small information texts or comments to tell us about your opinion upon scientific or professional matters, or to inform colleagues in other countries about important events at which you participate, or which you are confronted with. We urgently ask you for your contribution, so that our Web will be animated and vivid.

Finances.
£ 14.000. That is the amount collected through membership fees, which the Committee receives yearly from the networks to cover all the organisational expenses and projects of the EFPP. We have to recognise that this amount is absolutely insufficient and no longer support even a minimum functioning. Our Treasurer, Miranda Feuchtwang, evaluated the minimal expenses at £ 18.000 per year. What do we do not to be bankrupt?
After attentively reading the budget prepared by Miranda Feuchtwang, you can see that this Executive Committee has begun its work in 1999 with £50. This did not provoke waves of enthusiasm amongst the new elected members. Several projects had to be stopped and the publication of certain Monographs delayed.
After this meagre period you can see that the financial situation has been stabilised due to a tight-fisted management and to a certain surplus realised by the congresses. I would like to point out that the congress of Oxford allowed a surplus of 14.000£. Warmest thanks to the organisers! Additionally, most of the executives paid their telephone, fax and E-mail costs, others even paid their travel expenses. This is not a sound situation and has to be changed!
During the General Meeting in 1999, we mentioned the initiative of fund raising in England. Despite the voluntary support of professionals in fund raising, we have to state the failure of this initiative.
Therefore, the Committee is forced to propose the increase of the member fees by 5% in 2001/02 and a further 5% in 2002/03. We know that this increase is unpopular. However, it does not even compensate the lacking 4000£ required for a minimum functioning.
We hope to discuss these topics at the General Meeting in order to find constructive solutions.

Last but not least
I wish to express my warmest "Merci beaucoup" to all the delegates and the colleagues behind them who inexorably and with devotion work for EFPP in their countries to spread analytic thinking and develop psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the public sector.
Merci beaucoup too to the members of my executive committee: Margareta, Miranda, Julia, Liselotte, Inger, Maria, Rudolf and Olivier as well as to Joyce. I feel deeply touched by their work done with competence, rigor, engagement and always with love and humour. This working group atmosphere shows the maturity of our Federation which is the image of the maturity of all the component societies of EFPP.

Dr Serge Frisch
Chairman of EFPP

Dr Julia Pestalozzi
Hon. Secretary of EFPP

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