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Permit me, as I take office as President of the Association, to speak to you about the future; not only about the coming year which is, of course, the immediate and intimate concern, but about the long-term goals and directions of psychoanalysis, and about the role of our Association in this future. The dwelling on generalities can be a flight from the tasks at hand; yet, a sense of direction and a concern with a cohesive set of values are indispensable if we wish psychoanalysts to remain more than a group of skilled technicians. Goals and values make people strong, and they appear even to contribute decisively to biological survival. Their absence—manifest either as disillusionment and sarcasm or through the espousal of an uninspired technology—tends to usher in extinction, whether the end comes dramatically or via a process of silent diffusion.
What are our values and how are they related to and reflected in the functions of our Association? Clearly, our organization must take into account the practical objectives of the profession, the requirements of the education of future generations of psychoanalysts, and the general enhancement of the