General Characteristics
IPSO was established in 1973 to provide candidates with an opportunity to come together to discuss issues of training, theory, and practice, as well as to provide a social context for candidates’ cross-cultural engagement.
We are committed to the belief that exposure to the pluralism and diversity of psychoanalytic traditions is an important part of a candidate’s education. By offering opportunities to recognize and explore both our similarities and differences, IPSO helps candidates to bridge and appreciate the diversity and richness of the many psychoanalytic traditions.
Our goal is to make today’s world of psychoanalysis more intimately interconnected, and our Visiting Candidate Programs are an important part of that endeavor. The overarching aim of the Visiting Candidate Programs (VCPs) is to promote excellence in psychoanalytic training through the accumulated experience of all its participants.
Through a brief experience of immersion into a host institute’s broader cultural, social and intellectual life, IPSO’s Visiting Candidate Programs provide candidates with the opportunity to experience another institute’s curriculum, training model, and institutional functioning. Candidates are often excited to discover that the educational culture at other institutes is both similar to that of their own and also rather distinctly dissimilar from it.
IPSO’s Visiting Candidate Programs are intended to be stimulating not only for the individual candidate who participates, but also for the Institute community that, by hosting a candidate, invites him or her into the local psychoanalytic culture.
It is through immersion in such collegial partnerships that the IPSO Visiting Candidate program hopes to extend and develop linkages and dialogues within the wider international psychoanalytic community. Ideally, such discussions will generate research, international collaboration, educational creativity, and individual integration of theory and practice.
IPSO currently provides two different Visiting Candidate Programs: the classic Self-Funded Visiting Candidate Program (SF-VCP) and the new Financial Incentive Visiting Candidate Program (FI-VCP). You may access the links below for all the relevant information.
Please note that all applicants must be IPSO members in order to qualify for the program. If you have not yet joined, you will be required to do so prior to acceptance of your application for the Visiting Candidate Program.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email your IPSO Regional Vice-President Elect and the IPSO President Elect –– we will be delighted to assist you.
Vice-President Elect North America: Mary Sacco IPSO-NorthAmerica@ipso-candidates.org.uk
Vice-President Elect Latin America: Lucila Lusnich IPSO-LatinAmerica@ipso-candidates.org.uk
Vice-President Elect Europe: Paola Solano IPSO-Europe@ipso-candidates.org.uk
President Elect: Chrissy Wallace IPSO-PresidentElect@ipso-candidates.org.uk
