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".[1] 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.[2] 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.[3]
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.[4]
Lacan refused such a condition and left the SFP to form his own school which became known as the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP) in June 1964.