President's Report

When NCSPP began in 1986 the needs of a community were clearly in view (at least in hindsight); in recent years there has been less clarity about what these needs might be. When this organization was founded 21 years ago, its central aim was to provide an institutional base for senior clinicians immersed in psychoanalytic thinking who were unable to pursue analytic training at the Institute, as well as to offer a way for a new generation of psychoanalytic practitioners to maintain their identities.1 The founding of PINC and the opening of the American Psychoanalytic Association institutes to non-medical applicants has preempted the first aim. Moreover, in addition to the increased diversity in psychoanalytic organizations — which also include the Lacanian School and the Lacanian Society, the Jungian Institute, the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and the Psychotherapy Institute, to name a few — there has also been a rapid growth in the number of community-based educational offerings, such as those by SFPI's Extension Division, PINC's Extra-Curricular Education Committee, NCSPP and PINC's joint Intensive Study Groups, and NCSPP's Scientific Meetings and courses. When NCSPP began, the number of community-based or extension-school offerings was much smaller; now it may at times seem difficult to distinguish the offerings of one group from those of another. Thus, NCSPP no longer stands out in terms of the second aim since there now exists a multiplicity of ways to maintain a psychoanalytic identity outside of belonging to an institute.

Another historical force impacts our professional lives. The place of Psychoanalysis and its attendant practices (psychoanalytic psychotherapy, psychoanalytic couples therapy, and the like) has declined in the wider clinical world, and has been doing so for over a quarter century (much like the co-occurring rapid development of global warming!). NCSPP's interest in the formation of the Access Institute was a direct response to thi