The American Psychoanalytic Association's Distinguished Service Award was presented to members of the Task Force on Expanded Membership Criteria Committee (TFEMC) at the June meeting in Washington D.C. The committee was chaired by Harriet Wolfe, and co-chaired by Laura Jensen, Paul Mosher, and Gail Reed. Members included Paul DeWald, Susan Furman, Ethan Grumbach, Michael Harty, Ruth Karush, Jacqueline McGregor, J. David Miller, Joanne Naegele, Kerry Kelly Novick, David Sachs, and Myrna Weiss.
This committee explored the opportunities and risks associated with accepting analysts trained outside APsaA and IPA accredited institutes as full members of APsaA. The TFEMC authored a final report in January 2006 that recommended use of a combined equivalency and sponsorship model to expand membership criteria. The report was unusual in that it spelled out the areas of agreement and also the areas of difference among members of the TFEMC. It offered two explicit, well-developed applications of the suggested model for the Membership Requirements and Review Committee (MRRC) to consider with the idea that a compromise between these positions was possible and would promote a thoughtful, forward-looking approach to augmenting the Association membership.
The American Psychoanalytic Association also presented the members of the Task Force on Reorganization (TFoR) with Distinguished Service Awards in recognition of their efforts to design an effective and legal governance for the Association. The task force, by design, included APsaA members and candidates, academics and practitioners, from different places in their career paths, from different regions, and with diverse points of view regarding the organization and its governance. During this two-year process (2004-2006), task force members spent countless hours together working to integrate the many different perspectives, seeking participation and input from as many sources as possible, and continuously searching for creative solutions.
Awards were conferred upon: Robert Galatzer-Levy (chair), Stephanie Smith (vice-chair), Thomas Bartlett, Nancy Blieden, Daniel Brener, Erik Gann, Volney Gay, Robert Glick, Laura Jensen, Marvin Margolis, Charles Morgan, Paul Mosher, Calvern Narcisi, Robert Pyles, Donald Rosenblitt, and Harriet Wolfe.
The Committee on Scientific Activities awarded the third Science Paper Prize to Ephi Betan, Amy Kegley Heim, Carolyn Zittel Conklin, and Drew Westen for their paper “Countertransference phenomena and personality pathology in clinical practice: An empirical investigation,” published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, 162 (5): 890-898, 2005.
The first Ticho Memorial Lecture, titled “The Second Person,” was given by Bonnie Litowitz. This was the first sponsored lectureship in APsaA's history. The lectureship was created to recognize and honor promising early- to mid-career analysts. The Tichos, who practiced in Washington, D.C., were devoted to mentoring younger colleagues.
“The impossibility of forgiveness: Shame fantasies as instigators in Euripides' Medea” by Melvin Lansky was this year's winning JAPA paper: This is the third paper in a series of four that Lansky has written on the topic of forgiveness. Lansky explains that the capacity for forgiveness relies on the difficult working through of shame fantasies that underlie fixations of grudges, resentment, blame, and vengefulness. Using Euripides' Medea, Lansky illustrates the intrapsychic evolution in Medea's predicament of unforgiveness from desolate shame to a self-satisfied, murderously revengeful omnipotence.