NAPsaC joins CIPS Hosting Clinical Conference Trauma, Destruction and Transformative Potential

The Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies (CIPS) is known for its clinical conference, which is held every two years. CIPS is the national organization for the independent IPA societies in the United States and includes the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR), Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies (LAISPS), Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NPSI), Psychoanalytic Center of California (PCC) and the Vermont Study Group as well as its direct members from other IPA groups. The conference is always uniquely focused on the small group experience in which candidates, analysts, and training analysts present to each other and discuss clinical material, a format that levels the playing field and establishes a sense of equality and respect for differences among the participants.

This CIPS Clinical Conference model was derived from our first conference held 1998 in Palm Springs, California, where groups of analysts came together from different theoretical cultures and gathered to present and discuss clinical material in a respectful collegial space and format.

This year, CIPS joined forces with the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation (NAPsaC) in co-sponsoring the conference. Invitations went out to all the NAPsaC member associations and societies, including the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, Contemporary Freudian Society and Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC).

The conference, chaired by CIPS president, Randi Wirth of IPTAR, was held May 16–18 in New York City at the Ritz Carlton Battery Park Hotel in lower Manhattan, near the newly opened 9/11 Memorial, and included for the first time a panel presentation of invited papers on the conference theme: Trauma, Destruction and Transformative Potential. The panel was well received, its speakers having been chosen for their different points of view and comprised APsaA president, Bob Pyles (Boston), Fred Busch (Boston), Michael Diamond (Los Angeles), and Maxine Anderson (Seattle). The NAPsaC alliance invited other regional members to participate, including IPA vice president, Alexandra Billinghurst (Sweden) of the European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF), as moderator of the panel, and Federación Psicoanalítica de América Latina (FEPAL) member Sergio Nick from Brazil, who was standing in for FEPAL president, Abel Feinstein.

The panel set the tone for small group discussion and shared clinical material, which allowed for an open, meaningful exchange among group members from different theoretical stances. This valuable exchange has become characteristic of the CIPS Conference format. In each case that was presented, the groups focused on the personal, individual meaning of trauma. The patients' diagnoses ranged from dissociated identity disorders to high-level character disorders.

All participants in the weekend were assigned to groups of five or six members. One member served as participant facilitator. The groups met three times over the next day and a half for approximately seven hours with the task of discussing clinical material presented by each of the group members. The case material presented represented very difficult clinical scenarios. Likewise, the discussion presented viewpoints from multiple analytic perspectives. First time participant, Doug Dennett of the Vermont Psychoanalytic Group, described his experience:

There was room for a diversity of ideas, and challenges to the presenting analyst's experience were minimal. I quickly realized that this was a safe place to present material. The experience was clinically relevant to our individual work with patients, especially to those who have suffered trauma. How to work with trauma without retraumatizing the patient emerged as a critical theme in our discussion. Complex transference and countertransference developments, enactments, therapeutic impasse and the uses of empathy were central themes in my group's discussion.

At the plenary on the final day, group members reported feeling respectfully listened to and appreciative of their groups and group leaders. These conditions helped most participants to continue to transform their patients' different kinds of deep trauma and shock into meaningful representations.

The conference was gracefully organized by CIPS President Wirth and the conference planning committee consisting of Terrence McBride (LAISPS), Andrea Kahn (PCC), Phyllis Sloate (IPTAR), Marilyn Rifkin (IPTAR), Leigh Tobias (PCC) and Maureen Murphy from NAPsaC (PINC). The weekend ended with a sense of camaraderie and hopefulness that nourished our clinical selves, and our private selves.