President's Report

Despite the complex current political climate, our organization has been working hard to look at how NCSPP can contribute to the needs of our communities. We have had difficult conversations within our executive committee, board, and committees regarding our own biases and how we can agree on what direction we want to take regarding social justice. The board is in absolute agreement that we are dedicated to healing our clients and communities from the harm of injustices. We have also moved from a processing and introspective approach to making strides with actionable movement.

Our Community Mental Health (CMH) Committee has started consultation groups to begin in the fall of 2018. Led by David Cushman and Stefania Pifer, the CMH committee consultation groups will be offered to providers who work within CMH agencies and with CMH clients in private practice. Issues such as serious mental illness and underserved, impoverished, and complex PTSD are among some of the topics that will be discussed with case consultation. Dr. Diane Adams and I will begin a new case consultation group discussing cases that include cultural identifications. We are actively recruiting and looking for leaders to facilitate similar groups featuring diverse topics. The board is seeking to expand the outreach of NCSPP to multiple communities and disciplines to encourage a new generation of psychoanalysts to think differently about how our work can apply to a variety of topics and issues. Recently, we had our annual lecture with Orna Guralnik, who led a cutting-edge discussion related to dissociation and complex identities with challenging conversations on how we see ourselves and others. We were fortunate and grateful to have Orna agree to join us that day. Those who attended the lecture are still talking about how riveting the discussion was.

As always, we would like to thank Michele McGuinness, our administrator, without whom we would be absolutely lost. She is a formidable force and holds us to