Communique from the Council and the Executive Committee of the EFP

Dear colleagues,

The spread of Coronavirus has quickly entered the daily life of our countries, our cities, our families. And unexpectedly, as a disturbing agent, it has entered the life of our analytic community. A few days ago, this virus was defined by the World Health Organization as a pandemic; its spread has become planetary. After its initial development in China, where its dissemination seems to have stopped, it has found its epicenter in Europe, firstly in Northern Italy. States are taking steps to contain its spread and reduce its devastating effects on health and on the economy.

With this Communique, the Council and the Executive Committee of the EFP intend, above all, to send a message of solidarity to all countries, communities, families and people affected by this pandemic, and to all our colleagues who are currently experiencing, at various levels, the concern produced by the development of this pathology.

Secondly, we verify that this situation radically modifies, as occurs in all aspects of collective life, the functioning of the life of our analytical community. The Congresses, the international, national and local activities that punctuate our work for the School under normal circumstances, are being gradually canceled or delayed due to the spread of the virus, for obvious reasons relative to health prevention, and according to the measures adopted by government authorities of each State. 

Moreover, the incidence of this pandemic intimately concerns the exercise of analytical practice in those places where contagion has become dramatic: avoiding physical contact, as indicated by health authorities, in the countries where the spread of the virus has spiked - principally in Italy -, has rendered problematic the analytical session in its normal operation. This raises a series of unprecedented problems for us, to which we are confronted in this urgent situation, and which concern the life of the analytical discourse in times of an epidemic such as the current one.

The European Schools of Psychoanalysis, and in particular their Presidents, are at work in this unprecedented situation to be able to, within the context of the EFP Council, face up to the problems that this entails for the transmission of psychoanalysis and for the exercise of its practice, both in Europe and in the world.

Domenico Cosenza, for the EFP Council and Executive Committee: 

Loretta Biondi (president of SLP) 

Laurent Dupont (president of ECF) 

Angelina Harari (president of AMP)

Bernard Seynhaeve (president of NLS) 

Oscar Ventura (president of ELP); 

Maria Bolgiani (Secretary of EFP) 

Alide Tassinari (Treasurer of EFP)