With this issue of TAP, I begin my final six months as president. Much has happened within APsaA since my term as president began in Chicago, June 2014. Much remains to be accomplished between now and our June 2016 meeting back in Chicago.
During my first Executive Committee meeting as president in Chicago a year and a half ago, we immediately put an end to an appeal process from the lawsuit. From that morning on, through weekly meetings, two retreats, and conference calls in between, the Executive Committee began a process of talking, listening and healing, and finally, creating a cohesive working group. In November 2014, we locked ourselves in an isolated hotel in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. No buffaloes, no groves. Rather, two days of discussion with each other and our consultant, Jeffrey Kerr. We hashed out differences, injuries, hurts, anger and various convictions about psychoanalysis and our Association. By the evening over dinner and wine, we spoke personally and began to better know and regain respect for each other.
By February, during our second retreat, we began to constructively formulate a list of changes that resulted in our Six Recommendations for Change with plans to present at our June 2015 meeting in San Francisco. The unanimous support by both the Executive Council and the Board on Professional Standards may have been one of the most satisfying moments in my professional career. It affirmed the huge effort of our Executive Committee—Harriet Wolfe, Bill Meyerson, Ralph Fishkin, Lee Ascherman, Betsy Brett, Peter Kotcher—consistently helped and facilitated by Dean Stein and Tina Faison. We then moved on to creating Work Groups to propose ways of implementing the six recommendations to be presented in January, now a short time away. The effort has been enormous, but I believe it will result in significant reform in governance, education, benefit to members, adding new affiliated psychoanalytic groups and help APsaA continue to push psychoanalysis forward.
Although the Executive Committee was occupied with creating these recommendations for change, APsaA has not been idle. We added 81 new members as a result of the William Alanson White Institute and Society (WAW) affiliating with APsaA. For the first time in three years, our membership was growing again, rather than being in decline. We continue to be enriched, not only by WAW new members, but the innovative perspectives they provide our field and organization. Over the past year other psychoanalytic organizations have reached out to inquire about affiliation and we are responding.
We continued to connect with the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). In January 2015, we had frank conversations with the IPA leadership about dues, an aging membership, and our recovery from the lawsuit. By the time Harriet Wolfe, APsaA president-elect, and I arrived in Stockholm for the European Psychoanalytic Federation meetings, in March 2015, we could report a healthy and flourishing APsaA. The first edition of the Ejournal, Psychoanalysis Today, has been launched through the editorial and financial efforts of the three regions, APsaA and the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation (NAPsaC), the European Psychoanalytic Federation, and the Latin American Psychoanalytic Federation—and an important step taken in connecting psychoanalysts around the world regarding contemporary perspectives in our field.
During the closing ceremonies of the IPA Congress in Boston last July, I spoke about how essential the IPA and APsaA are to each other, and that together we would successfully address the challenges to psychoanalysis outside and within. Many of our members contributed to the success of the IPA Congress both in attendance and scientific contributions. The IPA meeting in North America could not have come at a better time.
The day after the IPA Congress, Harriet Wolfe chaired the inaugural APsaA Research Summit. Over the past year we had struggled to transform APsaA's Science Department and the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research into a better functioning and more responsive research arm of APsaA. Through Harriet's tireless efforts, the Summit proved successful (see her report on page 6 in this issue).
Our commitment to and success regarding social issues were highlighted this past year in a number of ways. Position statements were formulated on human trafficking, campus sexual violence, working with returning veterans, race-based violence and racial profiling, and LGBT people in the military. When the Supreme Court voted in favor of the constitutional right to same-sex marriage, our name was on the list of supporters on that amicus brief, as it was in Illinois when the governor signed a bill prohibiting conversion therapy for children and adolescents.
Public information efforts are made more successful by our involvement in the world around us. Wylie Tene, who began in his position as APsaA's director of public affairs, last January, continues to do an excellent job keeping us connected to media outlets and social networks, and, through regular News and Announcements on our lists, informing the membership about activities of APsaA and individual members.
Mark D. Smaller, Ph.D., is president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
We helped organize and presented our first webinar on human trafficking that was literally beamed throughout the world and heard and responded to by an international audience. We can now create new webinars to educate and keep psychoanalytic ideas fully accessible on the Internet. Our scientific meetings, in Chicago, New York and this past June in San Francisco, continuing the new June meeting format, have been of the highest quality. The response by members and those attendees outside APsaA has been very positive. Clinical workshops, plenaries, discussion groups, and presentations applying psychoanalytic ideas to social issues, business, music, literature and the arts continue to draw many to our meetings. As reported in my last column [See “Two Moments Worth Remembering,” TAP 49/3, page 3], efforts at diversity must continue, nationally and locally. The presentation of “Black Psychoanalysts Speak” during the June meeting was well received by a packed ballroom at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. My presidential symposia have all been committed to issues of diversity and race. We have kept this issue on the minds of our members and are working toward operationalizing that consciousness into action to attract more candidates, patients and faculty of color. A strategic plan, nationally and locally, regarding diversity will be presented in the next few months.
Through the efforts of former president Prudy Gourguechon, we have reconnected with the American Psychiatric Association and through their Psychotherapy Caucus Harriet Wolfe and I were invited to put together a panel on dreams for the APA Annual Meeting in Toronto. One of the first responses from the audience following our panel presentation was that it was terrific to once again have a psychoanalytic presentation during the APA meetings.
We continue to build even stronger relationships with Division 39 of the American Psychological Association, the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (AAPCSW), the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry (AAPDP), and the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies (CIPS). Our place on the Psychoanalytic Consortium facilitates these ties, as does participation of many APsaA members presenting at respective conferences.
We continue to work closely with NAPsaC, and are in discussion about sharing joint scientific sessions in the future at our June meetings. These collaborative efforts strengthen psychoanalysis for all groups.
During the fall, I was able to spend time on Capitol Hill with our lobbyists Jim Pyles and Peggy Tighe, and Herb Gross, chair of our Committee on Government Relations and Insurance. As I wrote to members following that visit, we are a small organization but with big ambitions to maintain a voice in Washington regarding all issues pertaining to mental health, health care privacy, community violence, veterans and their families, and issues of practice in the context of health care reform.
As I have shared before, I have often been preoccupied with our internal challenges being productively addressed but not interfering with keeping our eyes and our efforts on issues of practice, education, research, and our effect on the world around us. In reflecting upon the past year, I believe we have been able to address internal issues and external demands. The hard work of members chairing and working on committees cannot be recognized and appreciated enough by the APsaA leadership and the membership. APsaA moves forward because of the voluntary energy and passion of those involved in our committees.
The hard work of the work groups to propose ways to implement the six recommendations and in a relatively short period of time should inspire all members. The efforts of the Work Groups have allowed the Executive Committee and me to keep our efforts focused on the whole organization and how it can and must be even more responsive to our members.
The next few months will demand even greater attention to real change, and the Executive Committee, the Executive Council, and the Board on Professional Standards will need thoughtful input and support from the membership to make those changes happen. With that, we can arrive in Chicago in June 2016, with great possibilities for the future of APsaA and psychoanalysis.