Twenty papers will be presented and there will be thirty-four discussion groups on selected topics at the annual fall meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York, December 14-18. The Presidential Plenary Session Address, “Bridges to the Future,” by Herbert Gaskill will be on Saturday, December 17th. K. R. Eissler will give a Plenary Presentation on December 16th on “Creativity and Male Adolescence.”
A recent innovation in the program is the presentation of a paper that is longer than the customary 15-18 pages. This paper will not be read at the meeting, but will be pre-circulated to an interested, small number of analysts who will discuss the work with the author. The long paper at the fall meeting, by Evelyne Schwaber, is on “The ‘Self’ Within the Matrix of Analytic Theory—Some Clinical Reflections and Reconsiderations.” The Program Committee is continuing the successful three-day clinical workshop format. One workshop, chaired by Stuart Asch, will be on “The Negative Therapeutic Reaction.” A second on “The Manifest Dream, the Latent Dream and the Psychoanalytic Process” will be chaired by Roy M. Whitman and co-chaired by Joseph Natterson.
There will be four panels: “Conceptualizing the Nature of the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalysis,” Samuel Ritvo, Chairman; “Language and Psychoanalysis,” Theodore Shapiro, Chairman; “Current Concepts of Object Relations Theory,” Mark Kanzer, Chairman; and “Psychoanalytic Knowledge of Group Processes,” Burness Moore, Chairman. Charles Brenner's recent book, Psychoanalytic Technique and Psychic Conflict, will be the subject of the Meet-the-Author session. Rebecca Z. Solomon and Marian Tolpin will discuss the book. Interdisciplinary seminars and interdisciplinary colloquia will also be held, as will a special Seminar for Psychoanalysts on “A Neurobiologist's View of Brain and Behavior,” chaired by Eric Kandel of New York.
Again this fall, the meetings will be preceded on Saturday and Sunday by a two-day workshop, sponsored by the American, for mental health professionals on “Special Problems in Brief Psychotherapy.”
The spring meetings will be held in Atlanta at the Hyatt Regency from May 3-7, 1978, which is the week prior to the meetings of the American Psychiatric Association. Hans Loewald will make the plenary presentation. The panels currently scheduled are: “Recent Findings from Infant Observation: Implications for Psychoanalysis,” to be chaired by Daniel Stern of Cornell University Medical College; “The Nature of the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy,” to be chaired by Robert Wallerstein, and “The Interrelationship Between Academic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis,” which Paul J. Fink will chair. George Engel will chair a panel that will present and discuss the implications of follow-up studies on the child with a gastric fistula, studies that originated in Rochester more than twenty years ago. Also being scheduled for May are discussion groups, three-day clinical workshops, and interdisciplinary seminars. Papers to be presented will be selected during the winter by the Program Committee.