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Deciding to go to this congress was a big step for me.  Coming from a German-American family, the idea of attending the Congress aroused  such mixed emotions-- I had not been able to bring myself to visit Germany before this time in my life.  To my delight this visit was like a homecoming for me in so many ways. I found the Germany of my fondest hopes, an open accepting society in Berlin where diversity is celebrated and personal kindness abounds. ( I had a city bus wait for me when I arrived a few seconds late at the bus stop.)  I might be a bit biased since a big thrill for me was that no one ever asked me to repeat my name and everyone pronounced it beautifully.  But much more than any of this is the fact that I found Berlin to be a city much in the process of becoming something new and exciting. This brings me to the PCP Congress at Wannsee that I am supposed to be talking about. I found the Congress to embrace this spirit of becoming.  Wannsee is a beautiful section of Berlin and the beautiful new conference center, where the Congress was held, sat just across the road from the area's large lake.  The weather held sunny and warm for the whole conference and put everyone in a very good mood. This was chilled only by the fact that two blocks up from the conference center stands the stately mansion where, in 1941, Heydrich had Göring assign him to prepare the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe" at what has come to be known as the Wannsee Conference.

Jörn Scheer and his organizing committee of Norbert Ammermann, Ursula Bartholomew, Anna Catina, Rölf Deubner, and Ulrike Willutzki really knocked themselves out, literally, to see that this was a superbly run congress.  For example Anna Catina stayed up until 4:00am to receive a late arriving guest on the night before the meeting was to begin.  These committee members were everywhere at once seeing that things ran smoothly.  The papers were of very high quality and well scheduled except for the fact that I had wished that clinical papers and research papers could have been arranged in blocks so that one did not have to choose, for example, between two good clinical papers or two good research papers. I must say I really appreciated the fact that the conference schedule only required one and one half blocks of presentations before refreshments were served.

Again on a very personal level, I had my list of peak moments at the Conference: one was listening to David Vogel carry on about "Nietzsche, a psychologist for our time" and another was hearing from Richard Bell about how well we have done with our "Grids and Stats" in terms of making a real difference in the advancement of psychometric theory and application.  I am sure that everyone has their favorite list of presentations since there were so many excellent ones to choose from.  My only regret about the congress came in the closing session with the title " Will PCP survive after Y2K?"  For me there were too many defensive voices and not enough of the "vision thing".  But you have to remember I was a graduate student in the 60's when optimism was alive and "Man of La Mancha" was opening on Broadway with its lead song which implored us all to dream "The Impossible Dream". This was all followed by a "Gala Banquet" boat cruise on the Wannsee and was it gala and grand with high spirits and plenty of hope for the future.  For me I thought it was a very good sign that the boat did not sink and we are all still here to see another client, write another article, and teach another student.

  Dr. Franz Epting