[The First International Psychoanalytic Congress]

In 1907 Ernest Jones visited Jung in Zurich.

Jones had not yet met Freud, though he had made himself very familiar with his writings and had been practicing the psychoanalytic technique with his patients in London since the end of 1906.

Ernest Jones was the first to suggest to Jung the international meeting in favor of psychoanalysis

It was Jones who suggested to Jung that an international meeting should be arranged to bring together colleagues from various countries in order to discuss their common interest in psychoanalysis. In view of this, it may be claimed that Jones was the man who first put forward the idea that eventually gave rise to the IPA.

Freud welcomed the proposal, and it was he who chose Salzburg as the best place for the projected meeting. Jones wished its title to be International Psychoanalytical Congress, but Jung decided to call it First Congress for Freudian Psychology.

However, this very informal meeting is now reckoned to be the first International Psychoanalytical Congress, although the International Association had not yet been founded.

It was during this meeting in Salzburg, on 27 April 1908, that the idea of an International Association was discussed and agreed upon.

Apart from this momentous decision, the most notable event at Salzburg was Freud's presentation of the case of the Rat Man; this aroused so much interest that he was persuaded to extend it to more than four hours.(*)

Freud himself gave a detailed account on this meeting in his History of the Psychoanalytic Movement:

In 1907 the situation suddenly altered and quite contrary to all expectations; it became evident that psychoanalysis had unobtrusively awakened some interest and gained some friends, that there were even some scientific workers who were prepared to admit their allegiance. A communication from Bleuler had already acquainted me with the fact that my works were studied and applied in Burgholzli.

In January 1907, the first man attached to the Zurich Clinic, Dr. Eitingon, visited me at Vienna. Other visitors soon followed, thus causing a lively exchange of ideas. Finally, by invitation of C. G. Jung, then still an assistant physician at Burghozli, the first meeting took place at Salzburg, in the spring of 1908, where the friends of psychoanalysis from Vienna, Zurich, and other places met together.

The result of this first psychoanalytic congress was the founding of a periodical which began to appear in 1909 under the name of "Jahrbuch fur Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen", published by Bleuler and Freud, and edited by Jung.

An intimate comradeship in the work done at Vienna and Zurich found its expression in this publication. (Sigmund Freud 1914, translation by A. A. Brill, 1917.)

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From http://www.ipa.org.uk

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