Société Française de Psychanalyse

The Société Française de Psychanalyse (SFP) was a French psychoanalytic professional body formed in 1953, of which Jacques Lacan was a founding member.

The early 1950s were a time of growing disagreements within the Société Parisienne de Psychanalyse (SPP), which is a member body of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). The dispute centred around the president Sacha Nacht and the vice-president Lacan and the focal point was Lacan's practice of "short sessions". In January 1953 Lacan became the organisation's president, but in June of the same year, after further disagreement and a vote of no confidence, five members resigned from SPP. One of the consequences of this move was to deprive the new group of membership within the IPA. These five were Lacan, Dolto, Lagache, Favez-Boutonnier and Reverchon-Jouve. They formed a new group, the Société Française de Psychanalyse (SFP) and sought affiliation with the IPA.

In the following years a complex process of negotiation was to take place to determine the status of the SFP within the IPA. Lacan’s practice, with his controversial innovation of variable-length sessions, and the critical stance he took towards much of the accepted orthodoxy of psychoanalytic theory and practice led, in August 1963, to a condition being set by the IPA that the registration of the SFP was dependent upon Lacan being removed from the list of training analysts with the organisation.

Lacan refused such a condition and left the SFP to form his own school which became know as the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP) in June 1964.