The Third Annual Poster Session showed once again that analysts are interested in research and that researchers are interested and—in some cases—delighted to have conversations with analysts. Once again, there was a good-sized crowd with the energetic buzz of analysts and researchers immersed in lively conversations. Once again, there were visitors lingering well past our allotted time. This time, however, some visitors objected that the 90-minute session was too short to take in, much less absorb, the richness of the presentations. Music to our ears! Such complaints are evidence that legendary stereotypes about analysts' lack of interest in research no longer hold true.
The presentation of two first-time poster awards generated additional excitement—the APsaA Poster Award and the Robert J. Stoller Travel Award. An annual APsaA Poster Award has been established for an especially noteworthy poster presentation, judged on the basis of substantive significance and innovation as well as the quality of the presentation. Since a final decision on the award included an assessment of how well the poster actually delivered its message, reviewers selected a winner from a group of finalists at the time of the poster session. The 2004 APsaA Poster Award was given to Susan A. Bers, first author of “The Sense of Self in Anorexia-Nervosa Patients: A Psychoanalytically Informed Method for Studying Self-Representations.”
The Robert J. Stoller Foundation sponsored a one-time travel award this year to get acquainted with the poster session. This award provided a travel grant to a new or early career investigator who is the first author on a poster presentation and was determined on the basis of new or original contr ibutions germane to psychoanalysis. It was designed to fund travel and thereby to further shared goals of the Stoller Foundation and the Poster Subcommittee: enhancing links between psychoanalysis and the academic community. We are particularly appreciative that Mel Mandel and Maimon Leavitt of the Stoller Foundation were able to witness the first presentation of what we hope will be an ongoing commitment.
Our hope was to draw contributions with conceptual and/or empirical relevance to psychoanalytic theory, technique, aspects of practice, and effectiveness of psychoanalysis.
This year the Robert J. Stoller Travel Award was presented to Andrew J. Gerber for his presentation, “Structural and Symptomatic Change in Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy of Young Adults:A Quantitative Study of Process and Outcome,” which, with the help of a British research team, was conducted at the Anna Freud Centre in London.
The presentation of these two awards provided additional motivation for investigators to participate in the juried poster event, and created an exciting focal point during the poster session.
The APsaA Poster Session has rapidly evolved from invited displays, in the first year, to an open submission process, in years two and three, with standard review procedures. These review procedures, devoted to safeguarding unbiased judgment and optimizing quality of selections, resulted in a group of 20 accepted presentations. According to our review process, two reviewers are sent poster submission materials with identifying code numbers and authors' names removed. In the case of well-known research programs, there may still be clues about the identity of the authors. In most cases, however, this allows reviewers to concentrate on the clarity of formulation or conceptualization, the adequacy of the methods, innovation, and appropriateness of the interpretations. This year, reviewers noted that the quality of the poster session, taken as a whole, had improved. This is particularly gratifying because this year virtually all the presenters had responded to the open call for poster submissions.
The Poster Session, which had its inaugural year at the Winter Meeting in 2001, developed out of simultaneous proposals from the Committee on Scientific Activities, chaired by Robert Galatzer-Levy and then by Beth Seelig, and from the Task Force on Psychoanalytic Science, chaired by Allan Compton. A subcommittee, chaired by Stuart Hauser with Linda Mayes and me, developed the format that could create a setting where a broad spectrum of research germane to psychoanalysis might be informally presented in a user-friendly way.
Our hope was to draw contributions with conceptual and/or empirical relevance to psychoanalytic theory, technique, aspects of practice, and effectiveness of psychoanalysis. We hoped to draw submissions from a variety of disciplines, including research from neighboring fields, such as clinical, developmental, and social psychology, family psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, literary criticism, as well as historical studies, history of ideas, and art history.
One goal was to provide a comfortable and stimulating opportunity for analysts to meet diverse researchers, to learn about their
Linda Goodman, Ph.D., is a faculty member at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, where she is president of the Society. She is an associate clinical professor in the UCLA Psychology Department and a psychoanalyst in private practice.
work, and to enable stimulating exchanges immediately at the session, and over the long-run through possible new clinical-research and clinical-scholarship collaborations. We hope, in time, to build a research-friendly and informed audience within APsaA. Another goal was to provide a bridging place for researchers to make connections with analysts and to stimulate further analytically related research interests, ones that could lead to unexpected cross-fertilization of ideas that might drive new interdisciplinary research projects.
At the end of the poster session a participating analyst expressed his enthusiasm, “This is the most exciting thing happening at the meeting!” On the basis of such expressions and the lively exchanges taking place, the subcommittee has growing confidence the poster session is good for everyone—analysts, researchers, and trainees—from psychoanalysis, psychiatry, psychology, medicine, and other related disciplines. Those interested in the 2005 Poster Session are invited to contact me (lgoodman@ucla.edu). The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2004.