Dra. Raquel Zak de Goldstein
June, 2002

Concern, loyalty and belonging are some of the feelings that arise when we focus on thinking about our IPA. She is always a project, a living project, Freud's project, our project for the many needs of our community and for today's world.
1) There are at least three reasons to consider in relation to this project, to understand why people wish to belong to the IPA. These three streams arise from specific transferences. The essential transference is to Freud's theoretical corpus, in which we find the antidote for any dissolving effects of ideologization, which is so-called third blow to narcissism: the discovery of the unconscious, the mainstream that identifies us as a shibboleth of a psychoanalytic way of thinking. A second one has to do with seeking to belong to an institution to cope with basic human anxieties. A third one is a surprising, unconscious experience of support, an effect of belonging to the psychoanalytic community of the IPA, which is one of the sources of our capacity to bear the unbearable uncertainty associated with becoming an analyst. As I have understood, these three reasons are the basis to sustain psychoanalytic thinking and avoid psychic simplification.
2) Pluralistic frames of reference in interaction with these three transferences are also essential for the permanent working through of this uncertainty.
If I were Global Representative I would give priority to this point of view, in order to design ways to expand our presence and the significance of psychoanalysis.
Today, Francis Fukuyama also thinks in terms of “holding the helm in spite of the contradictory currents and contradictions of all communities”.
3) For instance, in his challenging book, Our Post-Human Future, this author also warns us against undesirable political consequences of biotechnological development, and asks for our deeper involvement in this brave new frontier, appealing again to ethics as a part of this problem.
4) Analytic thought and a sense of psychoanalytic community in permanent expansion beyond the boundaries are, in my view, like Scylla and Charybdis, guidelines for the constant updating that should include training and psychoanalytic education to sustain a hopefully undiluted expansion. As a kind of work in progress, always including this core identity and the specificity of psychoanalysis in essential areas and cultures, to ensure its vitality as cross-fertilization. Thus, the naturally strong presence of psychoanalytic thinking may go safely far beyond today's frontiers.
5) It may be useful to have a kind of think trust, an active, multi-referential body in fluid exchange with Comset teams, in order to shape standards and training programs. Training is a vital part of the future of psychoanalysis.
I would be very pleased to put my experience and enthusiasm into action, in a project which I believe reflects the feelings and the state of the art of our times.
As a Latin American psychoanalyst, I wish to share these aims and also all those permanent little discoveries that emerge from the subtle and sensual weave that continuously floats through pluralism in post-Freudian and contemporary psychoanalytic thought.