Too few of the programs of The American address the importance of applying psychoanalytic understanding to critical community issues. Some critics claim that psychoanalytic practice directs its attention to the relatively less significant illnesses of relatively more significant people, while community psychiatry addresses its attention to the relatively significant illnesses of marginal or relatively insignificant people. The Committee on Psychoanalysis, Community, and Society, with the concurrence of the Committee on Racial and Ethnic Diversity and the Committee on Social Issues, urges the Association to move issues within the scope of community psychiatry to a more central position.
Psychoanalysis has vital opportunities to display its relevance to pressing community concerns, among which are sexual abuse, violence, scapegoating of classes and groups, prejudice, teenage pregnancy, traumatic and other losses, and the effects of variations in family structure. The American does not capitalize on the significant roles many psychoanalysts play in developing extensive, hands-on major interventions as well as in influencing public policy. Six members of the Committee on Psychoanalysis, Community, and Society have presented their work in TAP. We have read of Steven Maran's model program on community policing in New Haven, Joy Osofsky's work with deprived mothers and infants and the police in New Orleans, Alan Felix's interventions with the homeless in New York, Gil Kliman's prevention of multiple foster-care placements in San Francisco, Bill Granatir's school consultation, and my School-Based Mourning Project in Washington, D.C. Robert Pynoos is considered the international expert on the effect of loss and trauma on children and has a UNICEF office in Bosnia.
In addition to highlighting our relevance to vital issues of public concern, community work offers a natural environment and an opportunity for the understanding of ego development, resiliency, and psychopathology, which can enrich psychoanalytic clinical, metapsychological, and developmental theory and practice. The morale and self-esteem of members as well as their analytic vigor surely would be enhanced by greater exposure to these applications of psychoanalytic work, which offer alternative psychoanalytic careers.
Recognition of our members' extensive community activities would counter our negative public images. Therefore, we recommend that the Program Committee and JAPA focus greater attention on psychoanalytic applications to significant societal concerns.
Bruce Sklarew
Chair, Committee on Psychoanalysis, Community, and Society