Switzerland (French-Speaking)

SWITZERLAND (FRENCH-SPEAKING)

Freud's ideas found their first echo in Geneva, a psychological milieu infused with scientific tradition and thus offering a more favorable reception in French-speaking Switzerland than in France. As early as 1900 Théodore Flournoy and his student and successorÉdouard Claparède, professors of psychology in the science faculty of the University of Geneva, enthusiastically welcomed these new ideas and contributed to spreading them.

The psychoanalytic movement began in French-speaking Switzerland in the 1920s when the first French-speaking psychoanalysts joined the Société suisse de psychanalyse (Swiss Psychoanalytic Society), founded in Zurich on March 24, 1919, by Emil and Mira Oberholzer and Oskar Pfister. At approximately the same time, in September 1920, physician and non-physician psychoanalysts created the Geneva Psychoanalytic Society. This short-lived society, which was never enrolled with the International Psychoanalytical Association, disappeared at the end of the 1920s.

During the first period (1919-1952), the first psychoanalysts, for example, Charles Odier and Raymond de Saussure, worked to make Freud's ideas known not only in French-speaking Switzerland but also in Paris, where they helped found the Société psychanalytique de Paris (Paris Psychoanalytic Society), the Revue française de psychanalyse, and the Conférence des psychanalystes de langue française (Conference of French-Speaking Psychoanalysts). During the 1920s contacts with Swiss German psychoanlaysts were rare, but came to be strengthened after the departure of the Oberholzer group in 1928 and under the presidency of Philipp Sarasin, who instituted the Swiss society's teaching commission. Psychoanalytic life in Geneva was initially dominated by Henri Flournoy, Charles Odier, and Raymond de Saussure, along with Charles Baudouin, who later founded his own school of psychoanalysis. Henri Flournoy (1886-1955), physician and psychoanalyst and son of Théodore Flournoy, trained with Johan H. W. Van Ophuijsen in Holland, then with Freud and Hermann Nunberg in Vienna. His teaching played an important role, and along with Odier, he introduced training analysis to French-speaking Switzerland. Odier set up in Paris in 1922, and Saussure followed suit in 1937. Marguerite A. Sechehaye (1887-1964) developed symbolic realization, a method of psychoanalytic therapy for schizophrenics.

Prior to the Second World War, psychoanalysis began to spread through French-speaking Switzerland outside of Geneva. In the Valais canton its development was linked to Dr. André Repond (1886-1973), director of the Hôpital de Malévoz psychiatric clinic, as well as Dr. Norbert Benoziglio and Germaine Guex, who helped create the first psychoanalytically informed medical-psychological consultations. The outbreak of World War II saw the return of Odier to Switzerland to settle in Lausanne, whereas Saussure left for the United States in 1940, where he remained until 1952.

As soon as he returned to Geneva in 1952, Saussure gave a distinct impetus to psychoanalysis in French-speaking Switzerland by organizing training. In Geneva he was assisted by Michel Gressot, physician and psychoanalyst, then in 1956 by Marcelle Spira, a Swiss psychoanalyst trained in the Melanie Klein school in Argentina, and in Lausanne he was assisted by Germaine Guex, Marcel Roth (1911-1992), Etiennette Roch-Meyerhof (1914-1989), and Madeleine Rambert (1900-1973), child psychoanalyst. These psychoanalysts had a lasting influence by virtue of their scientific accomplishments and the training they provided for many psychoanalysts from various parts of the world. They were later joined in Geneva by Olivier Flournoy, son of Henri, who trained in Paris and the United States, and in Lausanne by René Henny, child and adult psychoanalyst and professor of child psychiatry, and by Christian Müller and Pierre-Bernard Schneider, who were psychoanalysts and directors of psychiatric institutions. René A. Spitz stayed in Geneva for six years during the 1960s and contributed to training there. Julian de Ajuriaguerra, director of the psychiatric institutions at the University of Geneva from 1959 to 1973, and René Diatkine, on regular visits from Paris, also stimulated the development of child and adult psychoanalysis. In the Tessin canton, the Swiss Italian region under the authority of the teaching commission of French-speaking Switzerland, Pier Mario Masciangelo organized psychoanalytic training from 1959 onward.

The Centre Raymond de Saussure (Raymond de Saussure Center) was inaugurated in Geneva in 1973. This equipped French-speaking Switzerland with premises specifically for psychoanalytic seminars, conferences, and a library. Prior to that, meetings were organized in university psychiatric institutions. From this point onward psychoanalysis developed considerably, particularly in Geneva, around Janice de Saussure, Raymond's wife, an active member and vice president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, as well as around Marcelle Spira, Olivier Flournoy, and Claire Degoumois. In Lausanne psychoanalysis developed around Marcel Roch,Étiennette Roch, and René Henny. In the 1990s there were too many French-speaking Swiss training analysts to mantion them all, yet it may be helpful to cite those who have made names for themselves through their psychoanalytic publications. Some of them practice as psychoanalysts while occupying positions in university psychiatric institutions for adults, like André Haynal and Antonio Andreoli; in institutions for children, like Bertrand Cramer, Juan Manzano, and Paco Palacio; and in institutions for adolescents, like François Ladame. Others engage mainly in private psychoanalytic practice, like Georges Abraham, Graziella Nicolaïdis, Nicos Nicolaïdis, Danièle Quinidoz, and Jean-Michel Quinodoz, all based in Geneva. Pyschoanalysis in Switzerland is characterized by pluralism, a fact reflected in the variety of schools of thought, French-speaking psychoanalysts being influenced by French psychoanalysis, as well as British, mainly Kleinian, psychoanalysis, and German-speaking analysts being influenced mainly by ego psychology.

Psychoanalytic institutions have adopted a federalist structure that reflects Swiss trilingualism (German, French, and Italian) and its cultural diversity. For this reason the activities of psychoanalysts in French-speaking Switzerland are centered around institutions that are both national (monthly meetings of the Société suisse de psychanalyse with simultaneous translations, generally held in Berne) and regional (meetings in the Centre Raymond de Saussure in Geneva). Daisy de Saugy, historian and psychoanalyst, is responsible for keeping the archives.

The entirely bilingual German-French Bulletin de la Société suisse de psychanalyse appeared from 1965 to 1969 and then appeared regularly twice a year from 1979 onward.

In French-speaking Switzerland other trends now claim to represent psychoanalysis, but their practice and technique is closer to psychotherapy than to the psychoanalysis instituted by Freud. Geneva has a Charles Baudouin center for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, as well as a Jungian group, and a Freudian study group unites Lacanians around Mario and Mireille Cifali in Geneva and around François Ansermet in Lausanne. This group has published the journal Le Bloc—Notes de la psychanalyse since 1980.

Jean-Michel Quinodoz

Bibliography

Ellenberger, Henri F. (1952). La psychiatrie suisse.Évolution psychiatrique, 17, 139-158, 719-723.

Meerwein, Fritz. (1979). Reflexionen zur geschichte der Schweizerischen gesellschaft für psychoanalyse in der deutschen Schweiz. Bulletin de la Société suisse de psychanalySE, 9, 25-40. (With French translation: Réflexions sur l'histoire de la Société suisse de psychanalyse en Suisse alémanique.)

Roch, Marcel. (1980).Á propos de l'histoire de la psychanalyse en Suisse romande. Bulletin de la Société suisse de psychanalySE, 10, 17-30.

Saussure, Raymond de. (1967-1968). L'histoire de la psychanalyse en Suisse romande. Bulletin de la Société suisse de psychanalySE, 6, 1-4.