In fact, Chicago is anybody's kind of town — if you like a beautiful lakefront city with exciting architecture and lots to do.
Though I was born and raised in Chicago, it still takes me by surprise each time I return to rediscover just how beautiful the city actually is. Within a couple miles of the Palmer House, the site of our meeting, you will find beautiful beaches, extraordinary architectural design, Grant Park, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry, the John Hancock Center, the Sears Tower, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony, and shopping that rivals Rodeo Drive and Madison Avenue. At night you will find first-rate restaurants, excellent theater and jazz clubs and the blues. Venture a bit further and you will discover the architecture of Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies van der Rohe. Of course you can't leave without sampling Chicago's famous pizza at Pizzeria Uno, Due, or Gino's.
Chicago's only rival in May will be the Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Each year the program, while keeping its clinical focus, ventures to expose psychoanalytic ideas to a broader base of mental health professionals and others interested in psychoanalysis. Our clinical panels will re-examine some of the cornerstones of psychoanalytic thinking from a contemporary perspective. On Friday the first panel, “What Drives the Dream? Revisiting an Old Question from a Research Perspective,” will feature Beatrice Smirnow, Ramon Greenberg, Morton Reiser, Mark Solms, Drew Westin, and Leon Hoffman. Saturday offers an all-day panel on “Contemporary Views of Bisexuality in Clinical Work.” Henry Smith, Jacqueline Amati Mehler, Nancy Chodorow, James Herzog, Otto Kernberg, Ralph Roughton, Elisabeth Young-Breuhl, and Gary Grossman will participate. Our final panel on Sunday will examine “The Relation Between Current Use of ‘Mindfulness’ Practices and Freud's Use of Free Association.” It will be chaired by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer. Alfred Margulies and Joan Wheelis will be panelists, Glen Gabbard the discussant, and Mary Margaret McClure the reporter.
The plenary presentation, “Are We Losing Our Mind?”, will be given by Fred Busch. As usual we are planning special programs for psychiatric residents and for psychology and social work students, as well as our two-day clinical workshops featuring Amati Mehler and Marvin Margolis.
Two symposia will look at important social issues of our time. The first examines “Gay and Lesbian Parenting: Psychological, Social, and Legal Considerations.” Susan Vaughan, Bertram Cohler, Martha Kirkpatrick, and Moisy Shopper will be our presenters. The second, featuring Bruce Sklarew, Steve Marans, and Robert Pynoos, will investigate “Trauma and Loss in Inner-City Children: Intrapsychic Issues and Intervention Models.” Our public forum will be a “Town Meeting on Youth and Violence.”
As usual, there will be a number of social events that will allow old friends a chance to meet up with each other again and new people an opportunity to meet. See you in Chicago.