For many decades, and especially during the community psychiatry movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s, psychoanalysts were often involved in community applications of psychoanalytic ideas to the management, work, and daily functioning of mental health centers and schools. In the three decades or so since, psychoanalysis has been much less involved with such issues, although individual analysts continue intense and committed involvement. The burgeoning violence of the ‘90s and beyond, including school homicides, terrorism, and other world and national events such as September 11, have once more reinforced the value of community psychoanalysis as a process to help communities address these pressing problems.
Those of us who work with these problems utilize our theoretical framework, skills, and experience to assist communities in crisis. Such expertise includes: knowledge of the dynamics of small and large groups; managing overwhelming affect and irrational psychological forces; working with non-conscious phenomena and understanding how such phenomena impact communication; and knowing the importance of the timing of interventions. With these ideas in mind, more than six years ago, we formed a COPE Study Group on a Curriculum for Psychoanalytic Applications to Community and Social Problems. We felt it was an opportune time to give community psychoanalysis a more prominent role in the psychoanalytic curriculum.
The burgeoning violence of the '90s and beyond, including school homicides, terrorism, and other world and national events such as September 11, have once more reinforced the value of community psychoanalysis as a process to help communities address these pressing problems.
The original goals of our study group were to:
Make Information Accessible by collecting a bibliography of papers written by psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically-informed clinicians.
We have initiated a bibliography with 1000 abstracts under the leadership of Sallye Wilkinson.
Plan for a Full Institute Course by gathering models for teaching such a course.
Twemlow and Henri Parens published a recent article, “Might Freud's Legacy Lie Beyond the Couch?” in Psychoanalytic Psychology outlining a curriculum covering 20 sessions that argues for community psychoanalysis as a partner co-equal to clinical psychoanalysis.
Educate Curriculum and Education Committees by communicating these ideas to them.
Twemlow has met with the Committee of Chairs of Curriculum Committees, at the invitation of the chair, Mary Scharold, where these concepts were reviewed and many useful ideas generated.
Educate the Larger Psychoanalytic Community by communicating these ideas to psychoanalysts in the community who do such work but do not conceptualize their work as psychoanalytic.
Initially, we developed publicity using TAP and listserv conversations.
The International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies has been created as a resource for candidates and analysts to publish papers in the field of community psychoanalysis, and a new direction for the work of the Psychoanalysis in the Community Committee. In addition, we have an association, the International Association for Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, and a Web site, , which currently sponsors a listserv of analysts discussing these issues. All of this was derived from the combined work of the COPE study group and the Psychoanalysis in the Community Committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
Stuart W. Twemlow, M.D., is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine, and medical director, HOPE Unit, the Menninger Clinic in Houston. He is also editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies and president of the International Association for Applied Psychoanalytic Studies.
Jeffrey Taxman, M.D., is in private practice of psychiatry and psychoanalysis in Milwaukee and a faculty member at the Milwaukee Psychoanalytic Institute.
Eslee Samberg, M.D., is editor of the COPE column.
Over the next 12–24 months we plan to:
Develop a teaching model that will allow candidates to get experience in interventions in communities and with social problems, as part of an experiential learning component to supplement the reading discussion group format, typical of institute courses.
Complete an annotated volume of community psychoanalytic publications, organized so that it may be used as a reference for any practitioner or as a core reference for a curriculum on community psychoanalysis. It is planned to be accessible as a bound text, and electronically as a CD or on a Web-based platform. The extensive work in community psychiatry, although not always a strictly psychoanalytic model, will be included to provide a broader interdisciplinary survey of the literature and to give the candidates ideas about how they may actually engage in a field study as part of their training. Longer-term goals also include creating a resource text for the curriculum.
Members of the committee have already published two books, Analysts in the Trenches: Schools, Streets and War Zones, edited by Bruce Sklarew, Twemlow, and Wilkinson, and The Future of Prejudice: Psychoanalytic Understanding toward Its Prevention, edited by Parens, Afaf Mafhouz, Twemlow, and David Scharff.
Develop and implement a “train the trainer” program to help plan, communicate, educate, and facilitate the use of the curriculum. Wilkinson has pioneered this effort with the San Francisco Institute. The committee will serve as a clearinghouse for a speakers' bureau and create a group of analysts who can train faculty in developing a curriculum and recruiting teachers.