Dr. Samuel A Guttman has retired from the position of Chairman of the Program Committee. He had served on this key committee for seven years, and was its chairman for five. He has been succeeded by Dr. Martin Wangh.
It was during Dr. Guttman's tenure that the Program Committee introduced an innovation that has become a major and highly popular feature of the Association's national meetings, namely, the Discussion Groups. The attractiveness of these groups, which were started in 1962, is indicated by the fact that at the last ten meetings, 50% of the members of the Association and its Affiliate Societies who registered for the convention attended a Discussion Group.
Commenting on the Discussion Groups, Dr. Guttman said recently: “These groups were designed to bring together a limited number of members of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Affiliate Societies who come from different parts of the country. Members of these groups were of different psychoanalytic ages, experience and sophistication and were brought together for an interchange of ideas centered on a particular topic or area of psychoanalysis. Nothing about this interchange of ideas was prepared formally or “pre-cooked”
and there was no idea that the proceedings be reported or published. The groups have been limited to 20 participants. Their continuing popularity suggests the value of the groups as a form of post-graduate education.”
Another change in program format made during Dr. Guttman's chairmanship was to drop the traditional Sunday afternoon Paanel Reports, and to replace them with a program designed to appeal not only to analysts but to members of the American Psychiatric Association and to colleagues in related disciplines.
“One very basic idea has dominated the thinking of the Program Committee over the past five years,” Dr. Guttman feels, “and that was that innovations should be developed to increase the scope and effectiveness of the Program.”