Membership Committee Report

The business of the Membership Committee has evolved considerably in the past year. Until recently, the primary responsibilities of the committee have been to help new members get oriented to the organization and to facilitate the yearly publication of the NCSPP Directory. While these will continue to be important aspects of the committee's work, including the new NCSPP Speakers Bureau as one of the committee's responsibilities has greatly expanded our overall mandate.

The Speakers Bureau is an outgrowth of discussions that began last year around the goals of expanding and diversifying NCSPP's membership base and educating the broader community about what psychoanalysis has to offer. The Membership Committee wishes to recognize the creative efforts of the NCSPP Board last year in getting the outreach concept off the ground and moving toward realizing it. Special recognition is also due to past Membership Chair, Billie Lee Violette, LCSW, for her significant role in outlining the potential benefits of a Speakers Bureau program and taking the lead at the beginning.

It was with this much broader mandate, and many new faces, that the Membership Committee began meeting early this year to brainstorm about ways to put NCSPP's outreach goals into action. We began with one component of the Speakers Bureau, a graduate school lecture series, already in place under Adam Beyda's diligent leadership. At the time of this writing, we are nearing the formal addition of two outreach events to the NCSPP calendar for spring of next year. The first is a public lecture and case presentation on the related topics of therapist burnout and working with difficult patients across clinical settings. The second will be an introductory course on the fundamentals of doing psychoanalytic work in various contexts. The course will be geared toward graduate students and professionals largely unfamiliar with psychoanalytic concepts, but who are curious about the ways these ideas may be helpful in their