The creation of the International Society for Psychoanalysis and Philosophy (ISPP) answers to a number of requirements that are mutually dependent : recognizing the convergence of research that started independently in different places not only at the occasion of conferences in Brazil, England, France, the Netherlands and the United States, but also through exchanges that were linked to joint PhD-projects that illustrate in different ways the intellectual fecundity that characterizes this field. The society wants to bring together practising psychoanalysts that are also philosophers – because of their previous education or because of their professional activities – and philosophers that find in the problematics that were initiated by Sigmund Freud and his successors a possible source for the renewal of contemporary thinking.

The international confrontation of problematics in this field showed us for more than ten years that certain countries – that means certain intellectual contexts – initiated already very early on forms and methods that allow to put into perspective a great number of varying relations between psychoanalysis and philosophy and, which is not simply equivalent, between philosophy and psychoanalysis. Similarly in some countries there exist intense relations between psychoanalytic clinical practice, academic research and medical practice. Hence, it is through the content of certain themes that were developed at the occasion of punctual meetings and conferences that we started to recognize the legitimacy and necessity of founding a more coherent organization that would support our field of research.

The ISPP aims at developing and facilitating academic exchanges of PhD-students and post-doctoral researchers and it wants to benefit from the confrontation of problematics that becomes possible because of the fact that it’s interlocutors are based in very different places such as Sao Paolo, Tokyo and Nijmegen, Leuven, New York, Mexico and Paris. This is not just an external circumstance, but an indication of the fact that the history of our contemporary societies shapes the different relations between psychoanalysis and philosophy from within. The ISPP is a bi-lingual society (English-French) that is also open to other languages, such as Spanish and Portuguese.

Apart from organizing international conferences, the ISPP actively encourages the foundation of local and regional networks of groups and individuals that are interested in the relations between psychoanalysis and philosophy. These activities will be announced on this site.