Two colleagues were recognized by their peers and awarded Distinguished Service Awards by the American Psychoanalytic Association at the Meeting of Members in New Orleans last May.
Robert Cummings and Sheila Hafter Gray were recognized for their contributions to the association's practice bulletins, a work product of the Peer Review Committee, which both Cummings and Gray served as member and later chair.
The practice bulletins provide our members with guidelines for interacting with “official” parties outside the analytic relationship. They have provided ethical and clinical support for the appropriate practice of psychoanalysis in these times of potential intrusion into the analytic work.
Although each practice bulletin is a substantial and singular contribution, the jewel in the crown may be “Charting Psychoanalysis.” This brilliant document challenged, on clinical grounds, the assumption that it was appropriate or necessary to maintain clinical records of individual sessions. It supported the integrity of the analyst-patient relationship and the principles of confidentiality and privacy. As much as anything, it has shored up the morale of our members who have felt besieged by new standards and regulations that can subvert one's ability to conduct an analysis.
Cummings represented the same set of values throughout his leadership of the so-called Southern California Initiative in the early 1990s, an initiative that sharpened and elevated the organizational debate about privacy and confidentiality. All further initiatives by our organization in this arena have been influenced by that contribution.
Both Cummings and Gray were cited for their exceptional integrity and commitment to psychoanalysis.
Louis Sander and Drew Westen were awarded honorary membership in the association at the APsaA's May 2001 Meeting of Members.
Sander is a pioneer in the investigation of the infant and care giving environment as a living system. For the past half-century, he has made major contributions to understanding the bridge between the data of behavioral regulation in infancy and data of psychological regulation in later development. Sanders research and seminal thinking made major contributions to the developmental models that now inform the metapsychology of the mind, our understanding of personality development, and the workings of psychoanalytic treatment.
Among his vast research efforts are studies of the effect of maternal maturity and immaturity on child development, begun in 1954; adaptation and perception in early infancy; regulation of the newborn state; and a twenty-five-year longitudinal view of early personality development.
Prominent researchers and clinicians including T. Berry Brazelton, Peter Fonagy, and the Change Process Study Group of Boston acknowledge Sander's work as an inspiration for their own efforts.
Westen is widely praised for the originality of his thinking in personality psychology. Peter Fonagy has described Westen as “undoubtedly among the top ten academic clinical psychologists in the world today.”
Westen's article in the Psychological Bulletin on the scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud has been described by colleagues as a spectacular feat of scholarship, intelligence, and imagination. He demonstrates an extraordinary capacity to define research problems in innovative ways.
In addition to being one of the major theoreticians in personality, he is a remarkable communicator of psychological ideas. His success as a teacher is legendary. Harvard students say that his lectures are videotaped and sold on a campus black market. His general psychology text has been adopted by the introductory psychology courses of major universities.
Westen is an associate professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts.
The first Psychoanalytic Community Service Clinic of the Year Award was presented to the Clinical Service of the William Alanson White
Photo by Mervin Stewart
Photo by Mervin Stewart
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. Honorable mention went to the clinical center of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR).
The White Clinical Service has provided fifty years of low-fee service to the community. The clinic has helped develop the analytic and psychotherapy practices of the institutes candidates, using funds generated to support psychoanalytic education. It has provided clinical experience and supervision to psychiatric residents and psychology graduate students.
The Psychoanalytic Community Service Clinic Award is sponsored by the APsaA's Committee on Community Clinics. Applications, nominations, and supporting materials must be received at the APsaA Central Office (c/o Chair, Committee on Community Clinics) by October 1 of the fall preceding the award year. A psychoanalytic community service clinic meets all or most of the following criteria:
Affiliated with a psychoanalytic society or institute.
Provides a broad range of services.
Provides services to the community on an ongoing basis.
Offers a sliding fee scale.
Provides a means through which psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic ideas actively interface with the community.
Provides training in psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalytic concepts.
Provides supervised cases for psychoanalytic candidates.
Provides a venue for clinical research.
Photo by Mervin Stewart
Photo by Mervin Stewart