Division News
President’s Message
By Marilyn Vharles, PhD and Usha Tummala-Narra, PhD
Over the past year, we have witnessed a series of events involving violence against racial and ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans. As mental health professionals, we know that these events reflect systemic injustice connected with a longstanding history of racism and xenophobia in the United States and elsewhere. As psychoanalytic practitioners, researchers, and educators, we uphold the values of truth and justice. We find violence and injustice directed against vulnerable communities, such as Muslim Americans, undocumented immigrants, and African American and Black men, women, and children, among many others, to be unacceptable. We are committed to a society in which all lives matter fully and equally. The continuing suffering we witness invites us to consider ways in which we might bring our training and experience to bear to help to illuminate the underlying issues and perhaps to also provide relief to the suffering. Psychoanalytic conceptualizations, such as splitting and projective identification, help us to make sense of ways in which fear can run rampant and fuel this type of hatred, oppression, and violence.
We encourage all mental health professionals to engage in reflection, dialogue, and change in their practice, research, education, and activism with the purpose of promoting understanding, fairness, and justice for all people, including those who are most vulnerable to systemic injustice. We also call upon all Division members to consider ways in which you might advocate for greater respect for difference and work towards healing in the various committees in which you are embedded. At times, we marginalize ourselves by speaking in jargon that is difficult to understand, or only amongst ourselves. Becoming more adept at joining these conversations where they are happening, at local and wider levels becomes increasingly imperative in this globalized era. We welcome your ideas regarding how to most effectively work together on facing and ameliorating these important issues.
Marilyn Charles and Usha Tummala-Narra
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The Early Career Committee of Division 39
This months’ InSight column is written by Tanya Cotler, a licensed Clinical Psychologist who currently resides in Toronto Ontario where she works in private practice offering assessment, psychotherapy and consulting services to children, adolescents and adults. Dr. Cotler also works part time at the Willow Centre, consults to Boomerang Health a branch of Sick Kids Hospital, and teaches mindfulness to support staff at Jewish Family and Child, United Jewish Appeal.
Becoming
“I’m huge!” she proclaimed as she cautiously lowered herself onto the couch in front of me, “but I sort of like being big. Everyone knows I’m pregnant now. It feels good. I just wish I could slow down time; I just started enjoying all the attention and soon she’s going to come.” I felt an urge to get up, offer her a pillow and help make her comfortable. I sat with this urge to do as Paresha settled in to be with me.
I began working with Paresha, an Iranian woman in her mid 30’s, early in her first trimester. She presented with a desire to connect to the pregnancy and to the baby growing inside her. She needed to mourn two previous miscarriages, her lost childhood, and her forced independence, in response to what she described as a cruel and isolating paternalistic culture. MORE>
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Crash-My-Couch/Share-A-Room Program
Traveling to San Francisco for the 2015 Spring Meeting and looking to cut down on accommodation costs? The Division 39 Graduate Student Committee is pleased to announce that this year’s Crash-My-Couch/Share-A-Room Program is now underway! If you are interested in staying with a local Division 39 member or sharing a hotel room with another attendee, we will help you make arrangements. Please email crashmycouch@gmail.com indicating your housing preference (couch crashing or room sharing), as well as your gender, additional preferences, and inquiries.
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Division/Review is now on PEP
As Chair of the Publications Committee—
I’m delighted to announce that Division/Review is now on PEP web and is highlighted in the “What’s New” section of their home page. All eleven issues are available and searchable.
http://www.pep-web.org
Congratulations to Editor David Lichtenstein and to all the contributors! This is a serious achievement—a new voice in the psychoanalytic literature—and one we can all be proud of!
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Please join our effort to update and steward Wikipedia’s Psychoanalysis pages!
Wikipedia is one of the most widely used references in the world and is transforming the way we gather information. It provides instant answers in the simplest form and is frequently the first resource consulted when faced with confusing concepts or terms. Yet, psychoanalytic articles on Wikipedia currently lack credible sources and have significant gaps in content. Historically, as psychoanalytic professionals, we do a great job helping individuals, but we don’t do as good of a job helping inform the public. As a profession, psychoanalysis has a corpus of knowledge about the human experience, and as professionals, we have an opportunity to improve the quality of psychoanalytic information available to the public.
The Division 39 Wiki Project is a collaborative effort to disseminate psychoanalytic information in more accessible and relevant ways. As more professionals contribute to this project, the information becomes more accurate and usable by the public.
Please join us in assembling a group of psychoanalytic professionals dedicated to improving the quality of psychoanalytic information on Wikipedia. Graduate students and faculty are especially encouraged to join us. We are seeking the following:
1.) Article Editors – Individuals wanting to edit and/or learn how to edit Wikipedia articles.
2.) Content Consultants – Individuals wanting to review edited articles and provide content-based feedback on an as-needed basis.
For more information about the project, please email Ari Pizer ( ari.pizer@gmail.com). We look forward to hearing from you!
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The Division 39 Fund
The Division 39 Fund announces the recipients of its first grant: Anne Dailey, Professor of Law, and Ann Johnson Prum, cinematographer. The grant helps support the production of a one hour documentary film, “The Talking Cure: Psychoanalysis in the Twenty-First Century”. Applicants for this grant had to demonstrate how their project advances education, research, and service in the field of psychoanalysis. The intent of the film is to increase public awareness of psychoanalytic principles and treatments and the application of these principles and treatments to contemporary social issues.
According to Ms. Dailey, “Culturally, psychoanalysis may help us to deal with pressing social problems beyond the reach of scientific psychology; the surge in the use of psychotropic medication for children, the suicide rate among veterans, the prevalence of gun violence by the mentally ill, the effects of foster care, and the intergenerational effects of domestic abuse. And morally, psychoanalytic ideas encourage us to consider the value of a self-reflective life in today’s consumer-driven world.” She further asks, “ How can we bridge the gap between scientific approaches to the study and treatment of mental illness, and the kind of long-term treatment and model of mind offered by psychoanalytic psychology?”
Professor Dailey focuses in part on the 2004 creation of the Soldier’s Project, a non-profit organization providing free and unlimited psychoanalytically informed therapy to Iran/ Afghanistan war veterans and their families. The growing interest in psychoanalytic ideas for the treatment of war trauma reflects an understanding of the limits of present scientific psychiatry to treat complex psychological struggles that involve deep personal and moral injuries. MORE>
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Division 39 Discount Subscription Program
As you know, for a number of years, we have been able to offer our members discounts for subscribing to psychoanalytic journals. It is the time of year when many of us are renewing our subscriptions and this note is a reminder to consider renewing or beginning a subscription by taking advantage of these savings. For now, as you will see, you may need to contact customer services to request the discount, although several journals offer direct links to the discount. Please follow the directions that are different for each journal. MORE>
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Ethics Committee Announcement
To the Membership:
We are writing to remind the community that the Ethics Committee is available to the Division 39 membership for informal, confidential consultations on matters of ethical concern. We are not an adjudicatory body: our aim is to help you think these through and clarify your understanding of the problem at hand.
For more information, please contact
Joyce Slochower, Chair: joyce.slochower@gmail.com 212-362-4437
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Archives
We are pleased to announce the creation of The Task Force on the Archives of Division 39. As the division has become important in the evolution of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychology, it follows that the time had come to a) collect materials which reflect its history, b) encourage scholarship among the membership when the collection is assembled, and c) establish a means to promote awareness in future generations of the important contributions to psychoanalytic thought by the Division. More>
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From the Awards Committee
Submit your nominations for division award nominees
The Awards Committee of Division 39 is soliciting recommendations from our membership for award nominees for 2015. This 2014 awardees are Elliott Jurist for Scholarship; Marsha McCary for Leadership, and Dolores Morris, for Diversity. The list of prior awards is on the Division 39 website. MORE>
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Division Members
By: Karen Maroda, Ph.D, ABPP
Are Psychoanalysts Conflict Avoidant?
Three of the top four most cited papers on Pep-Web, the psychoanalytic data base, were written by British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, who has been dead for 43 years. They are his classic papers on transitional objects (for those not familiar with analytic jargon, think “Teddy Bear”); his paper on attachment and, as a counterpoint, his paper on hating the patient. The other paper rounding out the top four is the Boston Change Process Group’s paper on “Something more than interpretation.” Collectively they describe the delicate beauty of the attachment process and need for the “good enough mother/analyst”, the person who is able to provide what the biological mother could not. I think it is safe to say that analysts in general, including myself, strive to provide a compensatory environment that offers the acceptance, stability, warmth and safety not fully experienced by the patient in his or her early years. MORE>
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Division Members
Merle Molofsky, M.F.A., published Streets 1970, New York: International Psychoanalytic Books. Gerald J. Gargiulo wrote the Introduction. It can be ordered online at www.ipbooks,net. I wrote the novel when I was 28 years old, before I had begun my personal analysis or my psychoanalytic education, in fulfillment of my thesis requirement for an MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia University School of the Arts. My thesis advisor was Anthony Burgess. I also studied with Hortense Calisher. I wrote two one-act plays, “Grail Green” and “Three Street Koans”, that were adapted from two chapters in the novel for a course in playwrighting taught by Jack Gelber, and he was so enthusiastic about the plays that he produced them, under the umbrella title “Kool-Aid”, at the Forum Theater, Lincoln Center, in 1971. Brent Potter, Ph.D., author of Elements of Destruction (Karnac), says, “Molofsky gives the reader a provocative dose of Americana that is equal parts poetic, visionary, gritty, mythical. Fans of her “Embodied by Word-Music”, “Ladder of Words”, and “Mad Crazy Love” will find the same engaging, amusing, and intellectually challenging style that she consistently delivers.”
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Division Members
Jon Mills recently delivered a lecture in the Department of Hermeneutics & Cultural Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, February 10, 2015. On the Essences of Evil
Author Connection
Recent Publications by Division 39 Members
Margaret Crastnopol, Ph.D. published Micro-trauma: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Cumulative Psychic Injury, New York & London: Routledge, (2015).
MILLS, Jon (2015). Psychotherapist-Patient Privilege, Recordkeeping, and Maintaining Psychotherapy Case Notes in Professional Practice: The Need for Ethical and Policy Reform. Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy / Revue canadienne de counseling et de psychothérapie, [S.l.], v. 49, n. 1, 96-113. ISSN 1923-6182. Available at: http://cjc-rcc.ucalgary.ca/cjc/index.php/rcc/article/view/2734
What are you writing? Future issues will highlight the varieties of publishing activities our members are engaged in. All links to books and articles will be considered. To be included, please e-mail the editor by the 21st of the month. All publications submitted for Author Connection need to comply with the InSight submission guidelines
Therapy groups for mental health professionals and trainees.
Ongoing since 1984. Weekly, T or Th mornings, San Francisco.
Led by Art Raisman, Ph.D. (PSY 7795), Ass’t Clin Prof, Psychiatry, UCSF. 415-453-4271.
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Advertise with us! Conference information, consultation groups? Let InSight help spread the word. E-mail Kristi Pikiewicz at kpikiewicz@gmail.com for more information.