December will feel much different this year with no Waldorf, no cold wind funneled down Park Avenue, no New York. The American moves to Miami and takes with it an exciting program that all members will want to see.
An ambitious and innovative group of panels and papers awaits the participants in the 77th winter meeting. Homer Curtis will give the morning plenary, “Psychoanalytic Ecumenism and Varieties of Psychoanalytic Experience.” Dr. Curtis will explore the ways that a religious fervor toward psychoanalysis can restrict an analysts's ability to use new ideas. He will also address another effect of holding a religious attitude about one's ideas, namely, a militancy that can produce “a new Protestantism.” Dr. Curtis will also examine the potential for undirected ecumenism to lead to a stale homogeneity and will speak to the need for attention to the issues of qualification and standards, especially as they apply to psychoanalytic education and certification.
Bennett Simon will give the afternoon plenary, a paper titled “Incest: See Under Oedipus Complex. On the History of an Error in Psychoanalysis.” This presentation will trace the history of the concept of incest from Freud, through Fenichel, Brenner, and others, to our current notions of incest as fact and as fantasy. Incest will be offered as an example of dissociated knowledge (a fact of life of some children) that moved away from the center of the psychoanalytic stage to being regarded as primarily a fantasy. The nature of our mistakes—how we make them and how we attempt to correct them—will be the core of the paper's quest.
Harold Blum will chair the panel “On the Clinical Relevance of the Contributions of Winnicott.” Psychoanalytic data will be presented in an examination of terms that have become part of our psychoanalytic language: holding environment, transitional object, and good enough mother. The panel members will discuss the value and usefulness of Winnicott's concepts from the clinical perspective and from the standpoint of developmental validity. British and American presenters and discussants will participate, giving the audience a rare and special chance for comparison of views.
Lawrence Friedman will chair a panel on “Classics Revisited: Freud's Papers on Technique.” In this all-day panel, the emphasis will be on comparative history: What clinical problems, in the minds of the panel members, was Freud struggling with at the time he wrote those papers? How do the discussants grapple now with those same issues? How do Freud's papers illuminate our current dilemmas?
One panel, chaired by Jose Barchilon, will be conducted in Spanish: “El Tratamiento de la Personalidad Narcisista” [“The Treatment of the Narcissistic Personality”].
In the Panel for Psychoanalysis, “Psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union,” Homer Curtis and the panelists will discuss their recent trip to Moscow and their interchange with Soviet psychiatrists. There will also be a discussion of an upcoming trip and the future possibilities for psychoanalytic education in a changing Soviet Union. Joseph Schachter will chair the panel The Stability of Gains Achieved During Analytic Treatment, From a Follow-Up Perspective.” Stanley Coen will conduct the Psychoanalytic Dialogue, “The Origins of Male Homosexuality.” The Film Presentation features The Red Balloon (Lamorisse, 1956). Bruce Sklarew will chair the meeting, and Eleanor Galenson will be the discussant. The special program for psychiatric residents and psychology and social work students is “The Value of Psychoanalytic Principles in Understanding the Beginning and Ending of Treatment.” It will feature Edward Weinshel, Paul Ornstein, Homer Olsen, and Stephen Firestein. The Meet the Author session will focus on Psychoanalysis and Motivation (1989, The Analytic Press) by Joseph D. Lichtenberg.