The Agalma Foundation was founded in 2010 by Professors François Ansermet and Pierre Magistretti, with the support of Dr Christian de Saussure.

Ansermet and Magistretti have co-written many texts on psychoanalysis and the neuroscience, including the books "A chacun son cerveau" (Biology of Freedom), Odile Jacob 2004, and "Les énigmes du plaisir" (The puzzles of pleasure), Odile Jacob 2010.

The Agalma Foundation was created in order to further pursue their ideas.

Its aim is to offer a research and problem-setting space deriving from the confrontation of psychoanalysis and certain contemporary perspectives, staging a new way of approaching Freud’s thought and clinical psychoanalysis.

Its task is to develop theoretical, clinical and experimental research between the neuroscience and psychoanalysis, and to promote activities that bring together the arts, science and psychoanalysis in mutual dialogue.

The foundation is thus a laboratory for problem-setting and ideas, lending support to projects, meetings and exchanges between researchers in different disciplines who share a common interest in the questions generated by psychoanalyis.

François Ansermet is a psychoanalyst, professor of children’s psychiatry at the University of Geneva, where he is the director of the University’s Department of Psychoanalysis, as well as the Chief of Services for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Geneva University’s Hospital (HUG).

Pierre Magistretti is a neurobiologist and professor at Brain Mind Institute of the EPFL and at the Center of Psychiatric Neurosciences, CHUV-UNIL.

Christian de Saussure is a psychiatrist in Geneva accredited by the Swiss Federation of Doctors (FMH) who teaches at the Universities of Geneva and Lyon. He is a council member of the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation.