CIANS Collegium Internationale Activitatis Nervosae Superioris

Gian Franco Goldwurm (Italy) [1]

THE CONCISE HISTORY AND

PURPOSE OF CIANS [2]

Later on in the October 1960 in the castle of Smolenice

near Bratislav there was a symposium on corticovisceral relations together with other five societies and various scholars, and a �round table discussion about terminological problems� with the participation of Horsley Gantt, too.

According to Ruttkay Nedeck� �at this meeting of representatives from Western and Eastern countries, a preliminary agreement was obtained concerning the foundation of an International Association of Societies involved in the study of higher nervous activities�.

The cited article of Activitas Nervosa Superior of 1985 reports on the contrary that �the International Association for the Study of Higher Nervous Activity was founded on October 22nd, 1960�. �In 1962 an interim committee began to function which convened the first international conference in London in September 1964 and co-organized a symposium in Berlin in November 1964.�

Yet, from the testimonies at our disposition there are some contradictions on the real date of birth of a society called CIANS.

Evidently, the important idea of an international association that could foster a scientific dialogue between East and West with periodical meetings of the scholars was born at the end of the 50s in the mind of numerous scholars who elaborated successive projects.

But it�s well known that in those years there were great political difficulties, distrust and hostility, both from East and West, that probably hindered the realization of these projects. We were talking about the same things but with different terminologies (corticovisceral theories, psychosomatics), we were studying the same phenomena with different methodologies: it was necessary to meet and compare our knowledge.

Nevertheless the scientific value of this idea, also in my opinion, was changing into a political value, founded on peace and the living together of two worlds, that came true even through the cooperation and the exchange of experiences among scholars of similar subjects. At the bottom of their hearts they were sure that cooperation and the personal reciprocal knowledge could work in favour of peace, against a possible atomic war.

Time was ripe in the period of thaw, that is during the 60s.

In April 1966 in Washington at the V Congress of CINP (Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum) was organized a symposium on Classical Conditioning and Psychopharmacology where a group of participants, and I was one of them,

decided to create an association similar to CINP called also with a similar name: Collegium Internationale Activitatis Nervosae Superioris (CIANS). I remember that at that occasion I had to correct the Latin name it had taken.

As Thomas Ban (2003) says �The formal proposal to found an international organization was unanimously accepted by the group and CIANS was inaugurated with Horsley Gantt (American) as President and Juri Saarma (Estonian) as President-elect and other officers, in September of the same year, 1966, during the V World Congress of Psychiatry in Madrid.� This is confirmed in the note at the foot of the 1968 draft of CIANS Statute by members of the Committee on Constitution.

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[1] With the collaboration of Federico Colombo.

[2] Part of this work was presented at the Symposium for CIANS in 8^th Multidisciplinary International Conference of Biological Psychiatry �Stress and Behavior� held in St. Petersburg, May, 17-19, 2004.