Psychoanalytic Psychodynamic Research Society (PPRS) 3rd Annual Meeting

In June 2009, because of the vision and leadership of Stuart Hauser, the Psychoanalytic Psychodynamic Research Society (PPRS) was formed in association with the American Psychoanalytic Association. It is an organization with its own structure and governance and independent membership, but with deep ties to APsaA. As stated on its Web site (www.pprsonline.org), its mission is to “provide a community for all those interested in empirical psychodynamic/psychoanalytic research in scholarship related to psychoanalytic theory and practice as well as relevant scholarship from neighboring fields.” It is committed to a “professionally and geographically diverse” membership, to supporting the training and development of young researchers, and to a transparent and democratic process for performing all organizational functions.

Why a New Organization?

Though existing psychoanalytic organizations, such as APsaA, the International Psychoanalytical Association, and Division 39 of the American Psychological Association, have long possessed their own committees and substructures devoted to research, each of which has done important work, for a complex set of reasons none of these organizations has yet succeeded in making empirical research a primary goal. Furthermore, empirical researchers from the U.S. and abroad need an organization of their own that does not exclude from membership (or relegate to less than full membership) those psychoanalytic/psychodynamic researchers who are not themselves fully trained psychoanalysts or even clinicians. The founders of PPRS are individuals who have worked in the often conflicting worlds of clinical psychoanalysis, academic psychiatry, and academic psychology and believe in the importance of having a “place to call home” for psychoanalytic researchers. Rather than dilute or subtract from the research presence in existing psychoanalytic organizations, we believe that having such a home will invigorate the psychoanalytic research community and enhance its presence within other organizations.

What Does the Organization Offer Members and Non-Members?

PPRS is in its third year of organizing a set of empirical research presentations for its annual meeting held in association and partial overlap with the program of the APsaA National Meeting in January. Working with the APsaA Program Committee (APsaA past-president Lynne Moritz serves as this liaison), PPRS solicits presentations from researchers, selects the best in a fair and open process modeled after other scientific organizations, and coordinates and publicizes these presentations each year. PPRS-sponsored events are free for all PPRS members. Those events that are co-sponsored by APsaA are also open to APsaA members without PPRS membership. Second, PPRS has a Web site open to the public () with general information about its history and structure and the program for recent and upcoming meetings. Only members, however, have access to (a) uploaded audio and slides from each of the PPRS presentations from 2011 (and soon to be from 2012), (b) a copy of the scientific poster session abstracts, and (c) an up-to-date list of contact information for PPRS members. Finally, PPRS members are automatically added to a research listserv that is restricted to members. Of note, this is not the same as the Psychodynamic Research Listserv that Mark Hilsenroth and I run, which is open only to active psychoanalytic researchers (though many of them are members of PPRS as well).