About IFPE

Contemporary psychoanalysis is characterized by a rich and creative pluralism in conceptualization and theory. Significant differences currently exist amongst the various theoretical and methodological positions that derive from the more contemporary orientations of: existential-humanistic, relational, transpersonal, philosophical, integrationist, and, hermeneutic psychologies -to name just a few. These various psychologies rest on different philsophical assumptions, premise different understandings as to the basic nature ofpeople, posit different methods of knowing about people, and assume different purposes, objectives, and understandings for the analytic discourse. Psychoanalysis has been irreversibly altered by these different ways of seeing, knowing, and representing life, people, and reality as it is rethought, reinterpreted, and rewritten in the cultural context of the 21st century.

Founded in 1991, the Federation is an inclusive organization whose membership is open to anyone with a self-defined and -proclaimed interest in the various discourses of psychoanalysis, such as clinical, academic, artistic, literary, or philosophical. The range of thinking that characterizes contemporary psychoanalysis has different perspectives in education, epistemology, ethics, and theory. These perspectives speak to the many equally meaningful interpretations of psychoanalytic discourse. The Federation provides the opportunity for interpretive encounters with these richly diverse and creative perspectives of the world, people, life, and psychoanalysis. A defining dimension of the Federation's uniqueness as an organization is its inclusiveness of this diversity of thinking, the threads of which are woven, at once, into the philosophical fabric of its governance structure and annual interdisciplinary conferences.

The Federation seeks to create an alive space in the understanding of psychoanalysis in which each person can evolve.