You will recall from an earlier article (TAP 42/1, 2008), that the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation (NAPsaC) is made up of the IPA psychoanalytic organizations in North America. These include the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies of the United States (CIPS), which itself encompasses five psychoanalytic societies—the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies, the Psychoanalytic Center of California, the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society, and the San Francisco Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies—plus three otherwise unaffiliated societies of IPA, including the Japan Psychoanalytic Society, the New York Freudian Society (NYFS), and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. The primary unifying goal of NAPsaC is to bring all the IPA groups in the North American region together to form a working group for the benefit of psychoanalysis and membership.
The governance of NAPsaC is shared by the leadership of each of the above organizations, and the chairship is rotated. The first chair, Arthur Leonoff, from the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, led the fledgling group in its initial stages. I served as the second chair, coming from CIPS (and NYFS). Following the next NAPsaC meeting to be held in New York in January, the chairship will go to APsaA's own Prudence Gourguechon and her chosen co-chair, Robert Pyles. NAPsaC is a young organization, with ambitious plans to work on your behalf, strengthening North America's psychoanalytic identity and bringing IPA resources closer to members.
The Working Parties model was first adopted in the European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF), which is the European version of NAPsaC. They created settings for dialogue among analysts to study the psychoanalytic process from different vantage points. Groups would meet intensely, in a retreat model, for a day or two at a time. A presenter brings process material and a moderator guides each group. The basic material is clinical, but the group's attention was explicitly not supervisory; the focus is on the creation of a work group centered on the theme under consideration, such as Comparative Clinical Methods; Implicit Theories of the Analyst; the Specificity of Psychoanalysis; Beginning Psychoanalytic Treatment; and Terminating Psychoanalytic Treatment, among others. The project in Europe has been very successful.
The NAPsaC entrance into the field of Working Parties rests on the experience culled from the European efforts and will be broadened to include analysts from the Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies of Latin America (FEPAL). The committee appointed by NAPsaC to run a two-year pilot project is chaired by Abbot Bronstein, with committee members including Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Hanly, Peter Ruderman, Beth Seelig, Nancy Wolf, and me. The first NAPsaC Working Parties were run over two days in June of 2008. There were two groups, each including analysts from North America, with a moderator from Europe (Sweden) and a presenter from Latin America (Mexico and Uruguay) joining each group, making a total of 36 analysts participating. The experience reported by the participants was even more enthusiastically positive than anticipated. Many of these initial participants will be joining the next Working Parties Groups to be held in New York on January 10 and 11, 2009, where six groups will be offered. These will include four Comparative Clinical Methods groups, one Implicit Theory group, and one Specificity of Psychoanalysis group. If you are interested in participating in one of these groups contact Abbot Bronstein ().
IPA Meeting
The IPA meeting will be held in Chicago in July 2009. APsaA will forgo hosting its Annual Meeting in June 2009 and encourages all members to attend the IPA meeting.
Highlights of the IPA meeting in Chicago will be covered in the next issue of TAP.
The final part of the pilot project sequence will occur at the IPA Congress being staged in Chicago in July 2009. At the Chicago IPA Congress, there will be an even greater number of NAPsaC Working Parties available for participation with strong representation from EPF and FEPAL analysts. We hope you will participate!
NAPsaC and IPA have successfully collaborated to launch a North American “Find-An-Analyst” Web site (). This Web site will enable prospective patients in North America to find an IPA analyst near them. A publicity campaign for the new Web site is planned in conjunction with a professional publicist. A grant proposal to fund the campaign has been submitted by NAPsaC and is currently under consideration by IPA.
All North American members of IPA are invited to have their names, office addresses, and telephone numbers included in the database. (Home addresses and e-mail addresses will not be made public.) To register for the new service simply log onto the site at and click on the “GET LISTED” link on the lower right hand side of the page. That's it. This new service is intended for your benefit and could be a strong promotional tool for you. The Web site is already getting “hits.” For questions about the Find-An-Analyst Web site, or interest in participating in the development of the publicity plan for the site, please contact Fredric Perlman, chair of the Web Site Project, at .
Harriet I. Basseches, chair of NAPsaC
Abbot Bronstein, chair of NAPsaC Working Parties Committee
Fredric Perlman, chair of NAPsaC Web Site Project