Program Committee

The Program Committee's first event in 2007 was the 19th Annual Lecture featuring Judith Mitrani, who discussed some clinical implications in the work of Frances Tustin for the psychoanalytic treatment of adult patients. Dr. Mitrani reviewed key concepts, such as the terrors inherent in primitive experience and the role of sensation in primordial terrors and the protective barriers against awareness of them. She illustrated how encapsulated remnants of the infantile experience in the adult psyche can hinder the psychoanalytic process when they are not detected and worked thorough. Scott Lines's clinical case presentation to Dr. Mitrani generated a very dynamic, creative, and effervescent dialogue with the audience. Later, at the honorary dinner, Dr. Mitrani told us that she was delighted with the program, and that the audience of the Annual Lecture was the liveliest and most intellectually stimulating group she has presented to.

The upcoming 2007 Fall Scientific Meeting, “The Fostering of Agency: Psychoanalytic Views on Working with Foster Children,” will feature a panel of three wonderful clinicians — Diane Ehrensaft, April Fernando, and Kelley Gin — who will offer their rich and creative thinking about the challenges faced by individuals and agencies in doing community-based psychoanalytic work with very traumatized children, specifically foster children and their families. The presenters will also discuss the vicarious trauma in providing psychotherapy to foster youth, as well as the group and agency reactions to working with trauma and abuse, and the challenges of supervising the clinicians who do this work. This panel first presented their work at the 27th Annual Spring Meeting of Division 39 in Toronto, Canada; so, we are honored to have them present to us locally.

Not long after closing the books on this year's Annual Lecture, the Program Committee reconvened to begin plans for the 2008 Annual Lecture. We are delighted to announce that out guest lecturer will b