Scientific Program Update

The Program Committee, which meets twice a year at the January and June meetings, carefully considers what changes need to be made in the program to be more responsive to the needs and wishes of our members. In this article, I will briefly pass on some of the latest considerations of the committee. As I enter my sixth and final year as program chair, I want to say I am grateful to the Program Committee and to members of our organization for their creative suggestions. During this year, Henry F. Smith will serve as co-chair and after the June meeting in Denver, will succeed me as chair.

A number of our members have expressed interest in having outside speakers invited to give plenary addresses. At the January meeting, we had the eminent neurologist and author, Antonio Damasio, from the University of Southern California. At a future meeting in 2008, we will have the honor of hosting the award-winning poet and past national poet laureate, Robert Pinsky, as a plenary speaker. We also have slated a special symposium for the January 2007 meeting in which filmmaker Oren Rudavsky will talk about the making of his award-winning, soon-to-be-released film, “The Treatment.” Based on the novel of the same name by Daniel Menaker, the film depicts an unorthodox but compelling analytic treatment with the distinguished British actor Ian Holm in the role of the analyst. Film clips will be shown, and Menaker will participate in the discussion along with Rudavsky. In addition to these special events, a recent expansion of our budget has allowed us to fund more international colleagues as well as academics from within the United States.

Over the last year, small work groups have been assembled to deal with specific concerns about the program that have been raised by attendees at the meeting. We have had the embarrassing situation of scheduling precirculated paper sessions that have involved a good deal of work by the author and the discussant, only to have only three or four people show up for the session. This small turnout is an unpleasant experience for both the presenters and the attendees. Hence, after careful consideration, we decided to discontinue the precirculated paper format while continuing the scientific paper sessions where shorter papers are presented by the authors.

As I enter my sixth and final year as program chair, I want to say I am grateful to the Program Committee and to members of our organization for their creative suggestions.

Proliferating Discussion Groups

Another problem we have been encountering at recent meetings is that the discussion groups continue to proliferate and will soon exceed the availability of meeting rooms in the hotels that we use. The discussion groups are truly the heart of our scientific meetings, and we have tried to accommodate the interests of our members who wish to meet together to chat about a topic of mutual interest. My policy as chair, and that of my predecessor Owen Renik, has been to add discussion groups whenever a member expresses an interest in establishing one, as long as another group on the same topic is not already on the program. We are now finding it difficult to locate hotels that have the requisite number of meeting rooms. Part of the difficulty is that we continue to add discussion groups but we do not eliminate preexisting ones.

The Program Committee discussed this problem at length because we do not want to interfere with longstanding groups that have provided stimulating experiences for attendees. We have several ideas in mind about how we might approach the problem. We will ask discussion group co-chairs to volunteer to end their groups if they feel they have run their course. Alternatively, they may wish to continue meeting informally at dinner or in other settings, rather than being a formal part of the program. In addition, we will carefully study the numbers of participants in each discussion group at the January meeting to see which ones may not be drawing large enough groups to continue placing them on the program. We would also welcome any ideas from our members about the best way to go about cutting back on these groups.

A third work group focused on the two-day clinical workshops. We have been concerned that the limited enrollment in these workshops generates considerable disappointment among those who are unable to attend. We have discussed several alternatives to the current lottery system. As it turns out, the National Office has now computerized the registration process for all aspects of the program and will send an e-mail notice to all members when registration is available. With this change, we will now accept registrations for the two-day workshops in the order in which they are received. We have also expanded our two-day workshops. There are now five two-day clinical workshops (three for adult psychoanalysis, one for child psychoanalysis, and one for adult psychotherapy). While enrollment will still be limited for each workshop, we hope these changes will address some of the concerns.

As always, we want your feedback on our programs. We depend on your suggestions to help us improve the quality, scope, and formats of the programs we offer. Please contact me at with your suggestions.