2013 APsaA National Meeting Highlights: January 15-20

It's time for that yearly reunion for psychoanalysts—the APsaA National Meeting to be held once again in everyone's hometown (for the week), New York City. Each year, nearly 2000 people attend the National Meeting, which dependably provides numerous opportunities for learning about cutting-edge trends in our field and earning continuing education credits, in addition to opportunities to deepen our knowledge about clinical theory and practice. Participants can share work experiences and further hone clinical skills at the many large panels, symposia, and the more intimate clinical workshops and discussion groups, as well as reconnect with old friends and make new ones.

Clinical Workshops

The Two-Day Clinical Workshops are one of the meeting's most popular and well-subscribed features. Given that, in the past, some participants had to be turned away from registration for these events due to their popularity, the Program Committee has added several new sections. This year there will be six clinical workshops. We are especially pleased to have featured discussants, Jorge Canestri from Rome and Alessandra Lemma from London, who will comment on presenters' work.

Two-Day Clinical Workshop #1: Workshop Series in Analytic Process and Technique

Two-Day Clinical Workshop #2: Workshop Series in Analytic Process and Technique

Two-Day Clinical Workshop #3: Workshop Series in Analytic Process and Technique

Two-Day Clinical Workshop #4: Psychotherapy Technique and Process

Two-Day Clinical Workshop #5: Workshop Series in Analytic Process and Technique

Child and Adolescent Two-Day Clinical Workshop: Workshop Series in Analytic Process and Technique

Large Panels

The large panels that examine current controversies and offer a variety of thought-provoking clinical perspectives have been an enduring feature of the APsaA meetings. This January, we are proud to feature five large panels:

Panel I: Silence, Now

Chair Melinda Gellman will explore ideas about silence in the context of evolving and diverse theories that shape contemporary psychoanalytic practice. Panelists will offer position papers and clinical vignettes that reflect upon silence in the patient and silence in the analyst. We welcome Ronald Britton from London and Virginia Ungar from Buenos Aires, who are joining the other presenters on this panel.

Panel II: Safety for the Analysand, Safety for the Analyst, Safety for the Dyad

This panel, proposed by the chair, Joseph Lichtenberg, will attempt to delineate the role of safety in psychoanalysis, particularly whether safety as an affect may function as the counterpart to anxiety in each session. The panelists will engage in a spontaneous discussion with the chair, one another, and with the audience.

Panel III: Learning from Ourselves

“Learning from Ourselves,” originally proposed by the chair, will explore a relatively neglected area in psychoanalysis: the follow-up of completed analyses. The three presenters, who are experienced analysts, will report on their post-analytic experiences with patients who have returned for either consultation or further treatment. Warren Poland and Lori Pellegrino will discuss the clinical material, highlighting the ways in which analysts may learn about the impact of treatment.

Panel IV: Mourning, Identity, Creativity

Examining the lifelong process of mourning as an inaugurator of personal growth and creativity, this panel will bring together panelists who have been leading contributors to this topic. Jeanine Vivona will formally comment on the exchange, with opportunities for further exploration with the audience.

Panel V: Child and Adolescent Panel: Transference in Child and Adult Analysis: Current Views

This year, the Child/Adolescent Panel will focus upon current views of “Transference in Child and Adult Analysis.” (N.B.: an earlier online announcement of conference highlights had inadvertently omitted this panel, and had erroneously substituted information about the C/A workshop instead.) This panel with presentations by leading child analysts will pose the question: Is the development of transference and a transference neurosis still a part of current thinking about psychoanalysis? The presenters' papers, along with Ruth Karush's discussion, will consider whether and how the development of transference in children may be contrasted with adult patients, and will also explore the usefulness of interpretation of the transference in patients of all ages.

Symposia, Meet-the-Author, Plenaries

We will be privileged to hear a talk by Otto Kernberg, “The Twilight of the Training Analyst System,” chaired by APsaA's president, Robert Pyles. In his presentation, Kernberg will contrast authoritarian versus functional educational institutions and also will delineate a means of constructing objective, reliable, and transparent instruments for the evaluation of psychoanalytic competence.

This year, the featured author in our Meet-the-Author section will be Philip Bromberg, who will talk about his latest book, The Shadow of the Tsunami. In this session, Bromberg will present his view of therapeutic action, applying a framework for expanding the analytic relationship as a dialectic between dissociation and the increasing ability to safely experience internal conflict without dread of affective dysregulation. By being attentive to the dissociated impact of his own enacted participation, the analyst helps decrease the patient's trust of traumatizing “otherness” and its dissociated dread of attachment rupture, Bromberg argues. Melinda Gellman will chair this program and I will provide a commentary.

The January University Forum, chaired by Stanley Coen, will examine Shakespeare's Othello, with perspectives by Shakespearean scholars, Robert Brustein and Michael Wood, with a discussion by Paul Schwaber, a literary scholar and analyst.

One of the many symposia offered at the January meeting, will be “Embodiment and Subjectivity,” chaired by Andrea Celenza, who will present with John Foehl. Jessica Benjamin will be discussant. This symposium will examine the role of the body in phenomenological experiencing, i.e., embodiment. The presenters will explore the complentarity of clinically useful dialectics, such as self/other, inside/outside, and female/male in order to achieve mutual reciprocity and subjectivity.

In a plenary address, Warren Procci, immediate past-president, will discuss the strengths and challenges for psychoanalysis as the field enters its second century. He will examine the role of APsaA as a determining factor for the future of the field. He sees psychoanalysis as represented in its institutes, societies, centers, and especially within APsaA, our major professional organization, to be in a serious decline. An inability of the major competing components of our organization to work towards meaningful compromise is, in the speaker's view, a major factor. Some thoughts concerning what must be done, and quickly, will be offered.

Rosemary Balsam will give a plenary address that will examine the role of the body in development, particularly the impact of procreativity and the major accomplishment of the female body: childbirth. The title of Balsam's paper, “(Re)-Membering the Female Body in Psychoanalysis,” reflects her hope that we will recognize how absent is the female body in our current analyses and theories. She will discuss the importance of procreative awareness in gender studies and in gathering analytic data, to inform new individual gender theories that included sexed bodies.

We are pleased to feature Mark Solms at this meeting, who will discuss his latest work in neuro-psychoanalysis in a symposium and also will present an additional, innovative presentation, “Psychoanalysis by Surprise.” In the latter presentation, Solms will describe his experience in returning to his home in South Africa, and will reflect upon how applied psychoanalysis may have an impact on even the hardest and most damaged of psychosocial contexts, particularly in its injunction to confront unwelcome truths.

Glen Gabbard and noted writer Daphne Merkin will engage in a dialogue about the problems that analysts often encounter when they attempt to educate the public about their profession, using examples from film and literature, in a special symposium, “Jargon and its Discontents.” They will highlight the role that jargon plays in the development of an analytic identity and how this may then create difficulties of translation in addressing popular media.

Discussion Groups

And then, there will be 111 discussion groups from which to choose, including six new ones:

“The Critics of Psychoanalysis,” a series of discussions in which Jonathan Lear and Alfred Margulies will examine a significant critic of psychoanalysis at each meeting. They will lead a discussion of the work of Jean-Paul Sartre. At future discussion groups, Lear and Margulies will include Foucault, Heidegger, Kristeva, Levi-Strauss, and Wittgenstein.

“Mind and Literature: the Talking Cure in Chekhov's Short Story Trilogy,” led by Silvia Bell and Jean McGarry.

Susan Finkelstein and Nasir Ilahi will inaugurate the discussion group, “Schizoid Modes in Narcissistic and Borderline States.”

“Philosophy and Psychoanalysis,” co-chaired by Donna Orange and John Foehl. The presenter will be Roger Frie. Michael Krass will be chairing “Children and Adults with Asperger's Syndrome.” which will focus upon analytic work in this area.

Montana Katz and Giuseppe Civitarese will co-chair a group devoted to the study of field theory.

Additional Information

The National Meeting includes much more than these highlights and we urge you to examine the entire meeting brochure, which is available online through the APsaA website. If this will be your first time at an APsaA meeting, we strongly recommend that you visit the following webpage:

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