May 1995 was unique in our history. Our experiment, an “administrative only” meeting in Chicago, with its compressed, four-hour Council meeting, included in addition two unusual features described in detail elsewhere in this issue. First, the Council, acting as The American's board of directors, charged a four-member committee with investigating the functioning of the Executive Committee in relation to CGRI and its lobbying initiatives. The following hour brought us the first line-item budget (for 1995), with the promise of a 1996 budget to be presented to the Council in December. Steve Firestein presented alternative versions of fiscal priorities and policy to be studied and discussed by societies so that the Budget Committee, soon to be organized, can be informed of local positions.
Notable throughout the four days in Chicago was the increased involvement of our affiliate members at committee meetings, at Board and Council, and with the Executive Committee during the Sunday morning wrap-up. And it was not only affiliates who were feeling empowered. A sea change was evident when councilors asserted continued support of the four-point legislative agenda voted on in May 1994, supported funding for a lobbyist in Washington, and accepted the possibility of a raise in dues.
In contrast to this personal, intense involvement with highly charged issues, the American Psychiatric Association put on a relaxed face at its Miami meeting. Larry Chalfin, chair of BOPS, and I were both in Miami the very next weekend, showing the flag. Our booth in the educational section served as the physical anchor for our increased presence in this oldest of our “parent” organizations. Sunday morning Larry and I met with the Committee on Residents and Fellows to discuss what psychoanalysis has to offer them. We had on hand the pamphlet prepared for residents (also available at the booth) and a brochure listing over sixty of our members who were presenting at the meeting. Right off, a strong voice volunteered that our statement on homosexuality signaled a change that was important to residents. This was followed by two complaints, one about the excess of psychoanalytic teaching in a residency program, leaving graduates unprepared for Boards, and another that repressed memory scandals had damaged psychoanalysis irreparably. Maria Lymberis's arrival at that point was helpful in restoring a positive ambiance. She described the innovative program at UCLA/NPI Residency Training in which psychiatric residents are offered a psychotherapy training course as well as confidential individual psychotherapy for a maximum fee of twenty-five dollars a session, the money to be returned to the department of psychiatry. Many analysts, who are also members of the UCLA faculty, participate. In addition, LAPSI has an active residency outreach program to interest residents in further training in both analytic psychotherapy and analysis proper.
Our involvement with psychiatry, the fact that 91 percent of our members are psychiatrists, and that our APA brochure listed talks on schizophrenia, trauma, substance abuse, and ethics, as well as panic disorder, borderline personality disorder, and ethnic issues, all reinforced that connection. Equivalent meetings with postgraduate student groups in psychology and social work will be planned through our new Student Membership Committee.
Our booth opened shortly after the meeting with residents concluded. The presence not only of staff (Carolyn Gatto and Debra Eder) but of the orange-beribbonned analysts and candidates from Miami, organized by Juan Rodriguez, made the booth a standout. The variety of free publications, including TAP and the Roster, as well as fellowship applications and materials from our institutes, drew interested bystanders. The booth was active from ten to six every day, and many analyst presenters came by to strengthen our recruitment efforts.
The president's role at the meeting is to represent The American at the opening ceremony on Sunday and at the APA president's reception, which enabled me to touch base not only with analysts who are officers of the APA or who chair its committees—Jerry Weiner, Harold Eist, Daniel Borenstein, John Oldham, and Drew Clemens—but also with those presenting or giving courses at the rneeting. On Monday I attended the breakfast presentation of a proponent of psychologist-prescribing, then spent time at our booth, and introduced a panel presentation—“Intervention for Children Exposed to Violence and War”—that was organized by our Committee on Community and Psychoanalysis under Bruce Sklarew.
These panels are an annual project of The American. In 1994 the panel focused on trauma presenting in the consulting room. Moisy Shopper presented a paper on the psychological sequelae of medical interventions in childhood, Bob Galatzer-Levy described the recovery of a memory of fellatio in an analytic patient, and Paulina Kernberg, with the added power of a videotape of therapy, delineated the therapeutic path to health of a little boy traumatized by his father's self-declared transformation into his aunt.
This year Bruce Sklarew organized a stellar trio of committee members, but one of the speakers, Robert S. Pynoos, director of Trauma Psychiatry Services at UCLA, was absent due to the urgencies of the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing. Steven Marans, Harris Assistant Professor of Child Psychoanalysis at Yale, described the Child Study Center project on child development and community policing. The project encompasses both developmental and psychological education for the New Haven police and immediate clinical services for children caught up in the violence of family, gangs, and the streets. Moving examples of his dramatic availability and interventions with children—which, combined with police training and support, has led to improved performance and morale among the overburdened officers, as well as relief for the youths and their families—were very convincing. Bennett Simon then described his experiences working with his wife, Roberta Apfel, interviewing groups of both Israeli and Palestinian children longitudinally, to see how they coped with the acute stress of the Gulf War and the chronic stresses of the Intifada. The perspective of Holocaust survivors who declared a moratorium on self-reflection in early adulthood in order to prepare for their lives was an important contribution to understanding various components of resiliency. Books by both presenters will shortly be available from Yale University Press.
This experiment with a booth and officer participation, in addition to our usual panel, was expensive, in both time and money. At its peak, the panel drew an audience of approximately sixty. The booth seemed to attract a similar number, but was even more costly of manpower, as two of our senior employees were absent from the Central Office for four days. By contrast, our home page on the Internet (address: http//apsa.org) may be much more cost-effective. We can determine its drawing power once we use it to offer free TAP subscriptions to residents and residency training directors (as we did by
flyer in Miami) and then expand that offer to graduate students in the humanities, law, psychology, medicine, social work, and other disciplines. By the end of August, the home page had been addressed by over two thousand different “IPs” of whom 706 accessed About Psychoanalysis, 300 JOURLIT, and 200 the Fellowship newsletter. In November, when our new Budget Committee meets to construct the 1996 budget for presentation at the December meeting of Council, this is just the kind of information that will be evaluated as our choices are formulated. We know that personal contacts and mentoring are essential to recruiting candidates, but we are not yet experienced enough to know if our Internet will be a major resource for recruiting the lively minds who would best benefit from our personal attention.
When this column reaches you, I hope that I'll have seen you in San Francisco at IPAC, and that you will have enjoyed a refreshing summer.