New York at Christmas time is an experience that bears repeating year after year. What an opportunity to be able to connect with old friends, dine out, attend the theater, visit the new exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney, or even just watch the ice skaters near the Christmas tree in front of Rockefeller Center.
People come to the meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association (this year held December 15 through 19) for many different reasons. For some, New York during the holiday season is the draw. For many, the intellectual excitement of our program is reason enough to attend. As usual, our discussion groups remain for many attendees the most meaningful part of our meetings. Participants have an opportunity to share actively in the discussion of the most important issues facing psychoanalysis today, from clinical to social to political. Many of the discussion groups meet at least once a year.
We have introduced a public forum on a topic that has relevance to the population at large. At this meeting our forum topic is “Sports and Development: Helping Children Field Their Dreams.” There will also be two symposia with broad appeal: “Where Have All the Children Gone?: An Interdisciplinary Approach to School Violence” and “Globalization and Social Capital: A Psychoanalytic/Economic Perspective on Socioeconomic Change.” The In-Depth: Art, Culture and Politics program will have a symposium on “Dreams and Art.”
Photo by William Jeffrey
Our plenary presentation by Allen B. Wheelis will be “On Love and Shame.” Allan Tasman, president of the American Psychiatric Association, will give the presidential lecture on “Toward the Future: Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalysis in Psychiatry.” Daniel Menaker, the author of the novel The Treatment, will be part of our meet-the-author series.
As usual, our panels are confronting important topics of psychoanalysis today. The first panel will look at “The Clinical Usefulness of the Concept of Primary Femininity.” Nancy Kulish will be the chair. Presenters will be
Rosemary H. Balsam, Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, and Judith A. Yanof. Ruth S. Fischer and Ronda R. Shaw will be discussants. Panel II will be an all-day panel looking at “Current Perspectives on the Goals of Psychoanalysis.” It will be chaired by Glen O. Gabbard. The panelists will include Arnold M. Cooper, Alain Gibeault, Owen Renik, and Doris Silverman. Alan Z. Skolnikoff will give a presentation in the afternoon, with a discussion by Sydney E. Pulver. Robert S. Wallerstein is the discussant of the morning session. Panel III is entitled “Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanism of Defense.” It will be chaired by Ralph P. Engle, and the panelists will be Dale Boesky, Marianne Goldberger, and Evelyne Albrecht Schwaber. It will be discussed by Daniel H. Jacobs.
There will be two two-day clinical workshops in process and technique. They will feature Alain Gibeault from Paris and Peter Fonagy from London. In keeping with our broad outreach efforts, we have created four special programs for psychiatric residents, and students of psychology and social work. The topics include holding the frame, dynamic psychotherapy with adolescents, rescue fantasies in psychotherapy, and psychotherapy with psychotically disturbed patients. The Ad Hoc Committee on Psychotherapist Associates will also hold a discussion group called “The Interrelation of Memory, Fantasy, and Reality in Psychotherapy.”
Finally, the American Psychoanalytic Foundation extends an invitation to attend its Fourth Annual Benefit, featuring the Jim Hall Trio, on Thursday, December 16, at 9:00 p.m. at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. For ticket information please contact the American Psychoanalytic Foundation.
If any of you know first-time attendees, please let them know that they can contact the Ad Hoc Committee on Outreach for the Scientific and Educational programs. It's our job to be welcoming and to help newcomers feel at home.