New Education Division to Boost Public Interest in Psychoanalysis

Born out of the success of the 10,000 Minds Project, APsaA's Division of Education has had a robust first year. 10,000 Minds was APsaA's attempt to reach out to the younger generation of college students and their teachers. It produced two research studies, a specialized Web site (teachpsychoanalysis.org), a packet of projects for local societies, and significant attention in the national press.

In response to these exciting results, President Lynne Moritz and President-Elect Prudence Gourguechon formed a new nine committee Education Division. They saw outreach to educational structures as the best way to interest the general population in the power of psychoanalytic ideas and treatment.

Currently, the Education Division committees are: Liaisons to Schools, Psychoanalysis and Undergraduate Education (ad hoc), Graduate Education in Psychology, Graduate Education in Social Work, Medical Student Education, Resident Education, Psychoanalysis and the Academy (ad hoc), Student/Resident Associates, and Fellowship. These committees, taken together, have responsibility for education about psychoanalysis from pre-K through graduate school.

Here's what each committee focuses on:

• Liaisons to Schools is a meeting ground for elementary and high school educators and psychoanalysts, generating projects which provide education for students and educational assistance to teachers at that level.

• Psychoanalysis and Undergraduate Education considers the way undergraduates might be taught about psychoanalysis as it is relevant to various subjects, including psychology and how teachers of undergraduates can benefit from APsaA input.

• Graduate Education in Psychology has a similar mission for psychology master's and doctoral education.

• Graduate Education in Social Work has a parallel focus for master's and doctoral education in social work.

• Medical Student Education's mission involves determining how students pursuing their medical degrees can first be exposed to psychoanalytic ideas, and how the teaching of clinical medicine, including psychiatry, can incorporate psychoanalytic principles of careful listening and communicating with patients.

  They saw outreach to educational structures as the best way to interest the general population in the power of psychoanalytic ideas and treatment.

• Resident Education looks at the way all post-graduate training in medicine, including psychiatry, can offer psychoanalytic perspectives. Both Medical Student Education and Resident Education will attempt to provide vehicles assisting medical educators, which reflect psychoanalytic thinking.

• Psychoanalysis and the Academy's mission involves assessing the place of psychoanalysis across the widest possible range of graduate programs and developing helpful bridges to the range of academic disciplines.

• The Student/Resident Associates Committee organizes a program which reaches out to all students, from undergraduates to graduate students to psychiatry residents, and attempts to involve them in APsaA through attendance at our national meetings.

• The Fellowship Committee implements a well-established and effective program which brings together outstanding, competitively selected mental health trainees and individuals from other fields with interdisciplinary interests in psychoanalysis for a yearlong experience organized around attendance at our national meetings.

At the Winter 2009 APsaA Meeting in New York these committees, some recently formed, some recently invigorated with new members, will be coming together for a day-long exercise on Tuesday, January 13. In the morning, each committee will meet to discuss its part within the framework of the Education Division-wide mission. In the afternoon, at an open forum, all members of these committees will come together to discuss the formation of this new division and its collective mission. A distinguished educator will deliver a major address at this meeting, and every interested APsaA member is welcome to attend and encouraged to participate.

The committees in this division have already begun to work together and to reach out to APsaA committees outside the division. Current projects include efforts to increase the number of APsaA Associates, not only in the categories of Student/Resident Associates but also in the categories of Research, Psychotherapist, and Educator Associates. Other initiatives involve the use of Internet technology to provide information about psychoanalysis to the range of constituencies for which this new division is responsible.

An exciting example of such an Internet project is Reaching Out to the Younger Generation, funded by an IPA Developing Psychoanalytic Practice and Training (DPPT) grant. That initiative will bring together a group of APsaA members with expertise on sex and dreams, and a group of teachers, students, and parents. Their goal will be to develop a Web site

with a psychoanalytic perspective on sex and dreams for high school-age Internet users. The Web site will be designed by students and teachers with input from APsaA members. This effort is being led by Dan Frank, who is an APsaA Educator Associate and member of the Liaisons to Schools Committee and the principal of the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago.

A very important development is the establishment of an Education Department within APsaA. The department and the activities of the division which it supports have been made possible by a generous grant of $30,000 from The Ernst and Gertrude Ticho Charitable Foundation. Ernst and Gertrude Ticho, deceased psychoanalysts and APsaA members who were born and educated in Europe, were always interested in the intersections of psychoanalysis and other fields in education, science, social science, and the humanities.

It is hoped that many APsaA members will attend the division meeting on Tuesday, January 13, at the Waldorf, to help articulate its mission.