In the spring of 1997, Marvin Margolis asked me to chair a new ad hoc committee of the Executive Council called the Committee on New Psychoanalytic Centers (CNPC). Its mission was to locate areas with growing interest in psychoanalysis that were not formally connected to a society or institute of The American. The committee's task was to identify such areas, evaluate their needs, and help facilitate their growth.
We immediately discovered that it is hard to generalize about new centers. Each area is different, with its own history and personalities. In some places there are American-trained analysts or candidates; in others there are not. Some analysts are geographically isolated and have formed groups of mental health professionals around them. Some of the areas are well organized, such as the new Southwest Society in Arizona. Others are much smaller and less organized.
We have received a small amount of money from The American, and even more support from the American Psychoanalytic Foundation. We would have had much less impact without foundation support. Our efforts are really just starting. I hope to bring these experiences to the Executive Council soon, to contribute to the ongoing discussion of The American's new outreach efforts.
Here is a summary of our efforts so far.
Birmingham, Ala. The two co-chairs of CNPC, Richard Ruzumna and Alan Sugarman, began meeting with Lee Asherman, a senior candidate from the New Orleans Institute, and a large group of Birmingham mental health professionals in the fall 1997. Their association has blossomed into a major project.
Arizona and New Mexico. Katherine Fraser from San Francisco and I attended the second statewide meeting of the Southwest Psychoanalytic Society in Tucson, Ariz., March 6–7, 1998. This society was admitted to the Executive Council at the San Diego meeting in 1997. We met with the society's board of directors and with candidates from the free-standing psychoanalytic institute in Arizona. CNPC will sponsor a visiting professorship in Arizona in early 1999.
Lexington and Louisville, Ky. CNPC coordinated Otto Kernberg's visiting professorship in September 1998 to Lexington, Ky., and Cincinnati, Ohio. The Lexington part of the program is organized by Debra Katz, a candidate in the Cincinnati Institute and Director of Psychiatry Residency in Lexington. Kernberg gave a community-wide lecture memorializing the untimely death of a psychiatric resident who was also a winner of an APsaA Fellowship.
In Cincinnati, Kernberg spoke to analysts from the Cincinnati Society and Institute and from five nearby sites: Indianapolis, Louisville, Lexington, Dayton, and Columbus. The Cincinnati Society and Institute and its current dean, Jack Lindy, have been working for several years to increase ties with mental health professionals in these areas. In conjunction with their efforts, CNPC has been working with Lindy and with Alan Tasman in Louisville to facilitate teaching psychotherapy by analysts from Cincinnati to residents in the psychiatry department of the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
Upstate New York. Don Meyers has been trying to locate analysts in Syracuse, Rochester, or Buffalo, with mixed results. These areas, once rich with interest in psychoanalysis, have become more disorganized in recent years. Meyers's efforts are continuing in conjunction with the Committee on Societies.
In addition to these area-specific endeavors, CNPC has organized a discussion group at the December meeting of The American on “The Geographically Isolated Analyst.” I will co-chair the discussion with Joel Rosen from Stockbridge, Mass.
The American Psychoanalytic Foundation has agreed to finance several videoconferencing projects using an inexpensive videophone system called ViaTV. The most extensive project will be a major effort at teaching psychodynamic psychotherapy to residents at the University of Kentucky, using this technology. The program will be organized by Katz in Lexington and Lindy in Cincinnati. The American Psychoanalytic Foundation, the Psychiatry Department at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and the Cincinnati Institute are also funding this project. The Cincinnati Institute will also try using ViaTV to teach psychiatry residents in Louisville.
The new training facility in Portland will be using videoconferencing for seminars between San Francisco faculty members and candidates in Portland. The Denver Institute will try it out with a candidate now living in Minneapolis. The results of these experiments will be reported in future issues of TAP. If successful, the technology could easily be used at many other sites.
CNPC members are starting to investigate several other locations for future efforts. They include Oklahoma City; Providence, Rhode Island; Las Vegas; Montana and Wyoming; and Honolulu. If anyone knows of other places that might be helped by CNPC, please contact me.
Finally, as a sign of my commitment to CNPC's mission, I have decided to join a new psychoanalytic center myself! In August I relocated from Los Angeles to Portland, to participate in the Oregon Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, a new training facility there under the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. Now I can learn first-hand about starting a new psychoanalytic center.
CNPC has been very active in its first year of operation, and its efforts will help psychoanalysis grow and develop. As the committee gains experience, it should be able to contribute to the ongoing discussion within The American about its new outreach efforts, designed to expand the domain of psychoanalysis in America.
Lee Shershow, M.D., is a training and supervising analyst for the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, where he served as Director of Education in 1994–97. In August 1998 he relocated to Portland, Ore., to join the New Training Facility there. Besides chairing the CNPC, he will finish a six-year term in 1999 on the APsaA Board's Committee on Institutes.