Belgrade Psychoanalytical Society - Psychoanalysis in Serbia

Nikola Mikloš Sugar arrived in Belgrade in 1937 as a representative of the IPA. He was a member of the Austrian and the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society. Since he was originally from Subotica, he did not find it difficult to start the first training analysis in Belgrade. Psychoanalytic education lasted until 1941. Regretfully, Mikloš Šugar died in a concentration camp towards the end of the 2nd World War.

Vojin Matić

One of his four students, Vojin Matić, continued education of candidates for psychoanalysts during the fifties.
Hugo Klajn, who lived and worked in Belgrade, acquired psychoanalytic education in Vienna. He stopped working as a psychoanalyst and dedicated himself to theater direction - thus contributing to the development of applied psychoanalysis.

Vojin Matić succeeded, together with his students, to establish a Counseling Service for Children and Youth, which was closed down some ten years later for unknown - but certainly not professional - reasons.

Professor Matić was for a long time involved in psychoanalytic education, and his students managed to spread the influence of psychoanalysis to a number of their colleagues they worked with. In that way two of the psychiatric institutions in Belgrade had psychotherapeutic departments that applied psychoanalytic therapy. The so-called "first generation" managed to establish psychoanalysis in Yugoslavia of those times, and to make it strong enough for the next step - international recognition of Belgrade psychoanalysis.

The idea of connecting Belgrade Group with the world became stronger in mid-eighties. It was lucky that the member of Belgrade Group, Tamara Štajner-Popović, had the wish and the capability to realize the idea of connecting Belgrade psychoanalysis with the world, and its recognition.

Belgrade Society for Development of Psychoanalysis, Founding Conference, 1990. (left to right): Milica Jojić-Milenković, Ljiljana Milosavljević, Vojin Matić, Tamara Štajner-Popović, Vladimir Petrović, Katarina Radovanović, Ksenija Kondić, Vojislav Ćurčić

Belgrade Society for Development of Psychoanalysis was thus the organizer of East European psychoanalytic seminar, together with the IPA and EPF, in November 1990. In the course of the following several years, together with Petar Klajn and Aleksandar Vučo, Tamara Štajner-Popović managed, with the support of Co-Chairs for Eastern Europe, Han Groen-Prakken and John Kafka, to have the six prospective Belgrade analysts assessed. That happened, also thanks to the hospitality of the Hungarian Society, in the middle of economic sanctions against Yugoslavia. In the first half of 1995, five training analysts from various European countries assesed the six candidates and they all became IPA members. Professor Matić received, at the Congress in San Francisco, a well-deserved recognition for development of psychoanalysis in Yugoslavia. The certificate received, in his name, Tamara Štajner-Popović, who was to become the first training analyst of the newly established Belgrade Study Group within the International Psychoanalytic Association.

On the Eve of Proclamation of the First IPA Psychoanalysts from Serbia San Francisco, 1995. (left to right): Han Groen-Prakken, Aleksandar Vučo, Tamara Štajner-Popović

The Belgrade Psychoanalytic Study Group became a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) and the European Psychoanalytic Federation (EPF) in 1996. The IPA appointed its first and second Sponsoring Committee for the Belgrade Group. The know how and the engagement of experienced training analysts Groen-Prakken (Holand), Widlocher (France), Mac Carthy (England), Denzler (Switzerland), Golomb (Izrael), Szőnyi (Hungary) was decisive for the further development of the Group.

The appeal for solidarity and financial support with Belgrade colleagues during the bombing in 1999 that came from the President of the Group, Tamara Štajner-Popović, was supported by the at that time EPF President, Alain Gibeault and EPF Secretary, Betty Denzler and had a decisive influence on the Group's survival.

At its beginning, the Group had five associate members, one full member and one training analyst. Today Bp(p)S has seven training analysts, four full members, ten associate members and about thirty candidates.

BPSG of IPA changed its status into Provisional Society of IPA during the IPA Congress in New Orleans in 2004.

On the teritories of the former Yugoslavia and Balkans, the only two recognized Societies are The Belgrade provisional and The Greak Component ones. There are two more IPA study groups: in Croatia and Romania.