In January at the Winter 2007 Meeting of APsaA, the group of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) institutes met to discuss the formation of a series of clinical study groups across North America. The North American Psychoanalytic Confederation (NAPsaC), which is the group comprised of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, and the two groups made up of all the independent International Psychoanalytical Association institutes and societies, decided to jointly sponsor a project along the lines of the European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF).
To this end, I was asked to chair a committee to develop the “working groups” in North America. The committee is now formed and will be meeting on Sunday morning in Denver. Part of the meeting will be open to provide information to interested analysts.
The projects of the EPF, headed by David Tuckett, Peter Fonagy, Jorge Canestri, and others, involve analysts in all the European psychoanalytic groups of the International, working together on issues such as clinical formulation, the implicit theories of the analyst, supervision, progressions of candidates, and many other topics. These groups, having existed for almost 10 years, have produced papers, soon to be released books, and numerous reports at the international and regional analytic meetings.
The plan now is to begin the formation of similar groups in North America. We hope to have, as a pilot project, one group in the West, one in the East, and one in the Midwest formed and beginning to meet this fall. If these are successful, we would hope to have groups develop across the regions of North America in a few years. The working groups will meet at first twice yearly in their own locations and also have a meeting before the APsaA meetings in the winter and spring. Analysts from all the North American Psychoanalytic IPA groups are eligible to participate in these working groups.
For further information about the groups and references and to learn more about the working groups projects, please contact me at CLadg@aol.com.
Abbot A. Bronstein, Ph.D., is chair of the NAPsaC Working Groups Committee.