Worthy grant proposals come in different guises. The American Psychoanalytic Foundation (APF) Committee wrapped up its fiscal year on August 31, awarding $25,500 in grants to support seven worthy, psychoanalytically oriented projects. One of these grants honors past accomplishments by supporting publication of a culinary biography that showcases larger-than-life personalities from the formative years of psychoanalysis. A second recognizes current economic and emotional challenges to vulnerable high school students living on Chicago's South Side as they wrestle with a transitioning educational community. A third will help a psychoanalytic institute expand its website, enabling it to archive and secure its educational materials in cyberspace so they are available to present and future generations. The common element? They each support and enrich psychoanalysis—in its history, educational mission, and implementation.
What constitutes a grant-worthy proposal? Three of these grants demonstrate the breadth and depth of the kinds of work APF values and wants to encourage.
Psychoanalysis is rich in personalities as well as theory. Members of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (BPSI) are currently compiling photographs, guest lists, menus, and recipes for a publication entitled Grete Bibring: A Culinary Biography. When completed, it will join another BPSI publication, Edward Bibring Photographs the Psychoanalysts of His Time, published in 2005. Edward Bibring, a Viennese trained psychoanalyst who traveled to London in 1938 as part of Freud's circle of colleagues, was also an avid photographer. He and his wife, Grete, a physician, later settled in Boston. The biography will describe Grete Bibring's contributions to psychiatry including her work on her husband's study on the psychological aspects of pregnancy. The grant will be used to cover some of the printing costs for this publication.
Teenage classroom communities and impaired students have posed many challenges for mental health professionals, even more so today as financially pressed public schools cut back on services, teachers, and physical facilities. In 2013, 49 public schools were closed in the city of Chicago. APF's grant to The Woodlawn Vulnerable Students Initiative, under the auspices of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, is designated to help meet some of these challenges in an impoverished and under-resourced neighborhood. The grant supports additional consultation help to implement a transition plan for two schools on Chicago's South Side that have merged into one. The plan is focused on the first three months of the school year as Fermi High School students from Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood cope with re-assignment to South Shore Fine Arts Academy. The consultant joins a child analyst from the Chicago Institute who has been working with individual students, parents, and educators in an ongoing project in this neighborhood.
Today, technology is an integral part of the toolbox for training future psychoanalysts, promoting scholarship, and presenting reliable information to individuals who are interested in psychoanalysis. APF supported the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and Society's (NYPSI) proposal to upgrade its website and upload its trove of video recordings, which include scientific lectures, named lectures, special panels, and a series entitled “Conversations with….” Expanding and enhancing this website will give NYPSI greater control over these materials, make them available to a wider audience, and address the problem of educational videos appearing on non-NYPSI websites.
Committee members are eager to receive proposals and happy to answer questions about potential projects. Information about submitting proposals can be found at the APF Committee website at .
Linda R. Benson, M.A., an independent writer who specializes in health and medical topics, lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She frequently attends psychoanalytic meetings with her husband, Ronald, and teaches writing and composition at Wayne State University.