This June, we have decided to sample another part of the country that may be less familiar to some of our members: Texas. Austin’s own JoAnn Ponder and Marianna Adler have been instrumental in helping APsaA arrange speakers and social events for this meeting. The Austin-San Antonio Psychoanalytic Society, the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston and the Dallas Psychoanalytic Center are co-hosting our opening night party on Thursday, June 8. And thanks to sponsorship by the Mary Sigourney Award Trust, we will celebrate all things country with a popular Austin band and a lesson in Texas two step dancing.
In addition to fun, we have planned a meeting that will focus upon some of the key controversies and conflicts stimulated by recent national news events and ongoing social and cultural issues in programs featured throughout the conference.
On Friday morning, we will open our scientific meeting with “Race and Borders: American Identity—A Town Hall Discussion” that examines the crisis in contemporary American identity. Dorothy E. Holmes, Ricardo Ainslie and Francisco J. González will offer short commentaries designed to stimulate ideas and frame questions for audience discussion.
The University Forum, chaired by Gabriel Ruiz, will focus upon the “Mexico-Texas Borderland: How It’s Been, How It Should Be.” Panelists Raúl A. Ramos, Nicole Guidotti-Hernández and C.J. Alvarez—knowledgeable historians of the Mexican-American border—will invite psychoanalytic inquiry by examining how these borders function at both concrete and symbolic levels. This program could stimulate ideas for thinking and intervening across the globe.
On Friday evening, Adele Tutter, M.D., Ph.D., will present the Ticho Award-winning lecture, “The Erotics of Knowing,” which explores the historical split in the psychoanalytic discourse between erotic transference and analytic love. APsaA President Harriet Wolfe will chair this noteworthy event.
On Saturday, APsaA’s Public Advocacy Department, co-chaired by Brenda Bauer and Herb Gross, will sponsor a program, “A Psychoanalytic Perspective on the Gun in American Culture.” Bauer will introduce the panel, which will be moderated by JoAnn Ponder and include Patrick Blanchfield, Harold Kudler and Jeffrey Taxman, all recognized experts on this sobering and critical topic.
Our Clinical Plenary Address will examine the “Compatibility of Religious Orthodoxy and Psychopathology,” in a rich presentation by Frank Lachmann. This event, chaired by Nancy Kulish, will feature Sandra Hershberg and Mitchell Wilson, as formal discussants. Ample time will be allowed for discussion with the audience.
This June’s Meet-the-Author (MTA) features Daphne Merkin, who has written a critically acclaimed memoir, This Close to Happy. Henry Friedman, chair of the MTA Committee, will lead an audience discussion with the author as she
shares her insights into the pain and despair of depression, along with her testimony of the importance of medication and psychoanalytic treatment.
The meeting will close on Sunday with a panel that examines “New Developments and Challenges for the Analyst as Group Therapist: Enactments, Actments and Unobtrusiveness.” This event will be chaired by Bonnie Buchele, a former president of the American Group Psychotherapy Association and a distinguished psychoanalyst who trained at the Menninger Clinic and is now based in Kansas City, Missouri. Albert Brok and Robert Grossmark will present papers that are informed by emerging relational theories and their integration with neuroscientific findings concerning the influence of human interaction and its role in therapeutic action.
In addition to these panels and other offerings, we once again will feature several Two-Day Clinical Workshops, as follows: Sharon Blum will chair a workshop with featured discussant, Jay Greenberg; Donald Moss will chair a workshop with featured discussant Alice Jones; and I will chair a workshop on “Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis” with Robert Galatzer-Levy as featured discussant and Adriana Crane as the presenter. Ann Dart will chair a program on “Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy” with fellow Oregonians Larisa Jeffreys as the presenter and Cynthia Ellis Gray as the featured discussant.
As always, the meeting will include an array of 22 thought-provoking Discussion Groups, some of which are new and some of which have been meeting for many years. In Austin, the topics will include: “Altered States of Awareness,” with Fonya Lord Helm and Maurine Kelber Kelly as chairs; “Infant Mental Life and the Dream in Psychoanalysis,” with Bernard Ball, Loren Weiner and Judith Parker; “A Comparison of Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy,” led by Ralph Beaumont, with presenters Lisa Madsen and Cynthia Playfair, and Glen Gabbard as discussant. Arnold D. Tobin and Eva F. Lichtenberg will examine racism through an examination of Athol Fugard’s Master Harold…and the Boys. A Discussion Group that focuses upon “The History of Psychoanalysis,” chaired by Peter L. Rudnytsky, will feature an examination of the work of Rollo May; Mia Biran will chair a Discussion Group on “Confidentiality,” and Louis Roussel will chair a group on “Transgenerational Trauma” that is illuminated through the lens of a multigenerational, multisibling treatment. Roussel will present case material from his own work. Unfortunately, we do not have the space here to list all 22 groups, but you will find the others, along with these, in the preliminary brochure.
At each meeting there are special programs tailored to fit the interests and needs of psychiatry residents, and students and trainees in clinical psychology and social work. These programs have proven to be popular features of our meeting. Our members have been generous in teaching and in discussing case presentations in this forum. I invite you to take a closer look at these programs.
I’m looking forward to seeing you in Austin in the Lone Star State!