President's Report

People drawn to psychoanalytic theory are naturally oriented towards introspection. There is a sense of pleasure involved in the hunt for understanding the complex tangle of emotions, unconscious drives, and desires that encompass the real and fantasized human experience. If insight and self-exploration in and of itself cured people of their neuroses and anxiety, the psychoanalytic community would be one of the most enlightened and evolved groups of people on earth. Alas, we, too, fall prey to our most base impulses, and I have yet to meet someone who has managed to quell their core anxieties completely. Early in our training, practitioners of the talking cure quickly learn that insight on its own does not ensure a client's pathway to mental health. Likewise, NCSPP halting programming for a year to allow for space to focus on the internal work of anti-racism did not ensure progress towards equity, inclusion, and social justice.

If this organization emerges from our time of reflection with only an understanding of historical wrongdoings and discernment of the problems within our institutional culture, then NCSPP will have failed the task at hand: implementing real and lasting change. In the face of historic injustice, the tendency is to start from a place of shame and guilt. While this can spur people into action, it can often result in performative measures meant to save face and gain self-serving reassurance of goodness. As a result, organizations are prone to grand proclamations of outrage and public displays of penitence followed by sweeping but vague commitments to change. I am often left wondering, what substantial actions did these establishments take, and how will I know if they achieved those goals? It is reasonable to pose these same questions to this organization, “What has NCSPP accomplished and what further steps need to be taken?”

Fortunately, Past President Todd Rising helped spearhead the creation of a comprehensive assessment report to understand the s