The Mid-Career Analyst Discussion Group met for the first time at the 92nd Annual Meeting this past June in Boston. The group, which plans to convene annually at the Spring meeting, welcomes graduates at any stage of their careers who have questions about their role and involvement in APsaA.
Please come to our meeting to raise any of your concerns about the mid- career phase of being an analyst, to add new topics to our agenda, ask questions, or just get acquainted.
Three topic areas of particular interest emerged from our discussion group:
Committee work
Writing and presenting papers or works in progress
Presenting unconventional cases that don't fit into defined theories
Committee work: Everyone at the meeting shared information and questions about the workings of various committees, who can and cannot join, and the appointment process. Lists were circulated so we could become more familiar with names and functions of various committees and explore expressing an interest in joining one or more of them.
Writing and presenting works in progress: We discussed procedures for presenting and discussing papers at APsaA meetings. We also talked about making this Mid-Career Analyst meeting a setting where analysts could present papers that are deliberately still unfinished or in a rough stage. This would not only motivate people but also encourage them to share and develop ideas as well as exchange views on how psychoanalytic papers can become more experimental and innovatively written.
Presenting unconventional cases: Several analysts raised the dilemma of where and how to talk about cases that question our usual conventions and techniques and push the limits of our assumptions about our roles as analysts. We all agreed that we needed a place where we could talk about cases of this kind in an open, non-judgmental setting. We called for discussions that go beyond the limits of theory and technique. In addition, we expressed the need for an atmosphere that was exploratory rather than competitive, plus an approach to cases that involved more acknowledgement of confusion, and acceptance of feelings about our mistakes as well as pride in clinical work that is both unconventional and controversial.
If anyone would like to present a paper or a case, contact me at 415-824-8432.
Zenobia Grusky, Ph.D., who chairs the Council Membership Committee, is a graduate of and faculty member at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. She is on the clinical and teaching faculty at UCSF and California Pacific Medical Center and has a psychoanalytic practice in San Francisco.