Our purpose
Psychoanalysis belongs to a major intellectual and clinical history. Yet it can remain alive only by continuing to read its texts, to set its schools against one another and to question the transformations of its time.
Such is the project of the Institut national de psychanalyse: to create a space of transmission and dialogue around psychoanalysis, its legacies and its contemporary questions.
A space of transmission and dialogue
A discipline is not passed on by repeating a fixed doctrine. It is passed on through study, discussion and the confrontation of points of view.
The Institute seeks to foster shared work among psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, practitioners, researchers and anyone engaged in reflection on psychoanalytic thought. Its role is not to erase divergences, but to allow them to be set out, understood and debated with rigour.
This approach connects the history of psychoanalysis to the questions practitioners and patients meet today. It gives a central place to the singularity of each subject, to their history and to the way they enter into relation with others.
Plural legacies, studied in their differences
Psychoanalysis was built from authors, schools and concepts that are not to be conflated. Freud is its historical starting point, but his work gave rise to many developments, extensions and controversies.
Jung, Lacan, Winnicott, Ferenczi, Kohut and other authors have offered different readings of the unconscious, of desire, of psychic development, of trauma and of the therapeutic relationship. The contributions of Carl Rogers, outside the classical psychoanalytic tradition, can likewise nourish a reflection on empathy and the quality of the relationship.
Studying this plurality does not mean mixing the approaches indiscriminately. On the contrary, it means understanding the coherence, the contributions and the limits of each.
Explore the legaciesPsychoanalysis facing contemporary transformations
The conditions in which we speak, work and seek care have changed profoundly. Social media alters our relation to the image, to intimacy and to the gaze of others. Remote consultation transforms the setting of certain therapeutic encounters. Artificial intelligence introduces new technical interlocutors into exchanges that may touch upon the intimate.
Digital tools, video consultation and artificial intelligence
These developments do not make psychoanalysis obsolete. They compel it to sharpen its questions: what becomes of listening when the relationship passes through a screen? What place does silence keep at a distance? How are we to think solitude, the permanent exposure of the self, or speech addressed to a machine?
The point is neither to celebrate technology nor to reject it. It is to examine what it transforms, what it makes easier and what it cannot replace in a human relationship.
Relieving without reducing the person to their symptom
A symptom is not a whole person. It can be studied within the context of a history, a subjectivity and singular relationships, without minimising either its reality or the immediate suffering it causes.
This requirement calls for holding two responsibilities together: seeking to relieve what prevents living, and leaving room for understanding what repeats itself, defends itself or speaks through the symptom.
Discover our approachKeeping the project alive through identifiable work
The life of the Institute is built through published texts, documented meetings, confirmed programmes, named speakers and accessible reports.
The site gradually presents the Institute’s content and events. Practical information is published once its date, place, programme and arrangements are confirmed.
See the announced seminars