Paris Psychoanalytic Society

The Paris Psychoanalytical Society (SPP) is the oldest psychoanalytical organisation in France. Founded with Freud’s endorsement in 1926, the S.P.P. is a component member of the International Psychoanalytical Association (I.P.A.) as well as of the (E.P.F.).

Sigmund Freud’s French contemporaries initially neglected the significance of psychoanalysis. Between 1910 and 1918 there was marginal interest, with some publications and translations by Emmanuel Régis and Angelo Hesnard. Analytical practice was introduced by Morichau Beauchant in Poitiers, but without national impact. It wasn’t until 1920, with the arrival in Paris of one of Freud’s students, Eugénie Sokolnicka, that psychoanalysis began to influence Parisian literary circles, and then, gradually, doctors and psychiatrists.

The “Société psychanalytique de Paris” was founded on November 4, 1926. One of its founders, René Laforgue, had corresponded with Freud and had referred the Princess Marie Bonaparte to him for analysis and ultimately training. The arrival in Paris of Rudolph Loewenstein, trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, would permit the incorporation of the fledgling group, initially of nine then twelve, members (René Allendy, Marie Bonaparte, Adrien Borel, Angelo Hesnard, René Laforgue, Rudolph Loewenstein, Édouard Pichon, Eugénie Sokolnicka). Disputes among the founders as to the place of Freud’s ideas in France were rampant. The first Institute of Psychoanalysis opened in 1934, with Ernest Jones giving the inaugural address, and congratulatory telegrams from Freud and Max Eitingon.

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