Robert Neuburger

(1939) Psychologist, psychoanalyst, specialist in the field of couples, enrolled at the University of Brussels, has been Vice President of the French Society of Family Therapy. Co-director of the family therapy center of the Parisian Mental Health Society, scientific director of the CEFA (Center for the Study of the Family Association), has been professor at the Free University of Brussels and a trainer and supervisor of systemic-relational therapists in France and abroad.

Julien Besse: It had been some time that I was gallivanting across France to meet and film some truly exceptional people who had left their mark on the psychotherapy landscape, capturing the essence of their personality and energy. I’ve always regretted only knowing Victor Hugo through his immense and transcendent writings. If only I could have seen him, heard him, felt the human behind the genius.
It was with this same intent that one morning, fueled by deep determination and armed with the audacity of youth, I sent an email to Robert Neuburger to meet him. He called me back; I immediately recognized the characteristic and charismatic timbre of his voice. Before I even had time to process it, I found myself invited to spend a few days at his place, in the gorgeous canton of Valais in Switzerland. Upon my arrival, more dazzled by my host than by the immense and majestic mountains, he confessed with his characteristic humor that he had understood nothing of what I had proposed on the phone. His mischievous curiosity, piercing through the wise surface of his gaze, moved me – and that was just the beginning. As day turned to night, the magic grew. He shared the funniest anecdotes of his career with utmost simplicity, including one where he revealed having accompanied a family who had developed a game among themselves: guessing the most ridiculous thing about the therapist and discussing it after the session. And in that moment, I found the self-deprecating humor of such a wise man truly magnificent.

Juan Linares: Alfredo Canevaro and I were on the bateau mouche, part of the activities for speakers and participants of one of the first systemic conferences in Paris. We were both worried because the conference ended in the evening and the two of us didn’t have a bed for this last night. We talked among ourselves about how to organize ourselves, we both had the plane the next day. Next to us there was a man we didn’t know, he turns towards us and says: “I listened to what you are saying, your concern about finding a bed for this night. Come to my house, I have room, I’ll host you.” We went, it was a real pleasure, we enjoyed it together.