The chapters of this book were originally papers presented at a Franco-American conference held in Paris on November 5 and 6, 1994, under the auspices of the Laboratory for Basic Psychopathology and Psychoanalysis of the University of Paris VII. First and foremost, therefore, we wish to extend our gratitude to Professeur Pierre Fédida, who as Director of the Laboratory made this endeavor possible. We are also grateful to M. Yves Mabin of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to Christian Delacampagne, the Cultural Attaché in Boston of the French Embassy in the United States, for the generous financial contribution that helped to defray the expenses of the American participants. We extend our thanks to the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research for the use of their auditorium, and to the Assets Management Society, Sanofi Pharma, Inc., Upjohn, Inc., Roche, Inc., Gruenenthal and Beaufour Ipsen, Inc. for their sponsorship.
We also wish to extend our thanks to Professeur Agnès Oppenheimer of the University of Paris V and the Paris Psychoanalytic Society for her astute comments as director of discussion.
We are grateful to The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association for permission to reprint the paper of Salman Akhtar, M.D., “ ‘Someday’ and ‘If Only’ Fantasies,” originally delivered in a slightly different form at the Paris conference.
Finally we wish to acknowledge our profound appreciation to Susan Fairfield, not only for translating the French papers and the discussions but for applying her outstanding editing skills to the manuscript as a whole.