Dear Editor:
I have just received and read the current issue of the Newsletter, and I am really pleased that you undertook to devote almost the entire issue (except for the one page on the Weiss-Sampson workshop) to the Montreal IPA Congress and associated activities. I think that the coverage was eminently comprehensive and thoughtful and interesting in the best journalistic sense.
As is usual in this kind of comment, one can also find little things to raise questions about. I have two of them. On page 4 there is a picture at the bottom in which “Leo Rangell, Harold Blum, and other participants” are identified as participating in the meeting. The two “other participants” whose faces are very, very clear are Serge and Ruth Lebovici, both of them well-known members of the Paris Society and Serge himself a very distinguished past president of the International. It is kind of parochial that he wouldn't be mentioned by name to an American audience, not all of whom know him obviously by sight. The second little thing is about Ellen Rowntree's otherwise excellent article about the change in the Bylaws concerning the relationship between the IPA and the American. On page 10, two aspects of the 1938 agreement are stated: The first has to do with the autonomy of the American in training matters and the second has to do with the exclusive franchise that the American has had over the IPA affiliation in the United States. What the change in the Bylaws will allow is the formation and affiliation with the IPA of organized analytic groups in the United States outside the framework of the American. It does not have to do with the issue of direct membership of individuals in the IPA as is misleadingly implied. There is such a thing as direct membership of individuals which is limited to people living in countries or regions where there is no organized group with which they can be affiliated, like if there were qualified analysts who happen to live in some of the countries in Africa or in Eastern Europe where analytic organizations are not yet allowed, etc.
Other than these two points, I found nothing to find fault with and very much to be appreciative about on behalf of the IPA. Thank you very much indeed.
Cordially,
Robert S. Wallerstein, M.D.
Editor's note: Many thanks to Dr. Wallerstein for pointing out our errors in the last issue of the Newsletter; and a sincere apology to Serge and Ruth Lebovici.