September APA Division 39 InSight

Division News President’s Message
By Marilyn Charles, PhD
Dear Members,

This has been a notable year for Division 39, as the Hoffman Report revealed the importance of issues for which Division members have been fighting for over a decade. The Town Hall Meeting conducted by Nadine Kaslow and Susan McDaniel afforded an opportunity for public recognition of fatal flaws within the structure of APA that must be addressed. To paraphrase Nadine Kaslow, the Hoffman Report is a vivid reminder of the importance of listening to dissent and to minority opinions carefully and respectfully.

The recognition of the possibility of such flawed and destructive activity within APA affords us an important moment through which to address other ways in which APA moves against real diversity within the organization. Notable for us in Division 39 are the ways in which educational and practice guidelines are moving towards simplistic and constricted standards rather than developing inclusive standards that are more likely to address the varied needs of different groups. Division 39 is now part of a Task Force working to keep those standards open and we are also actively working with the Education Directorate to advocate for real diversity within the standards and guidelines.

This moment in history also reminds us that we can be in possession of data that is potentially valuable data that may not be useful if we cannot effectively communicate its value. I encourage all of you in your various roles to think towards this issue of adding value to the culture, to consider ways in which you can better model and advocate for the values you hold dear. One way to get your ideas out and into the public sphere is through social media. For those of you (like me) for whom this is foreign territory, Kristi Pikiewicz has devised various ways of putting information out there, and is always looking for material to post.

Marilyn

Please note:
If you are interested in writing a blog post for Psychology Today please email Kristi Pikiewicz. We are looking for 500-800 words written for a general audience. Posts that do well are useful and engaging.

Don’t forget to check out our Division 39 social media sites for daily news. If you come across something that should be on our Facebook page or Twitter feed please email Kristi Pikiewicz.

_______________________________________
The Early Career Committee of Division 39

This month’s writer is James McCollum, a psychological assistant and researcher in San Francisco, California. He is a member of Division 39’s Early Career Committee.

The Way of Disbelief

In psychoanalysis, the analyst is often in a position of not knowing, because of the irreducible chasm between his or her subjective experience and that of the patients, because of the lack of experience or knowledge of the patient’s life, and, most importantly, because to be an analytically-informed therapist is to constantly occupy a position of disbelief.

This core tenant of disbelief has been with psychoanalysis since the beginning. When Freud worked with his patients, some of whom expressed feelings of intimacy, attraction, or aggression towards him, he denied their subjective experience, suggesting instead that although their feelings seemed tied to him, their source truly lay in their experience of prior relationships. That always struck me as an example of great humility. Many of us in the healing professions, doctors, psychologists, therapists, social workers, want to help, and there is an allure to being the one with the power to help. Freud did not accept the conscious aspects of those feelings, instead urging us to examine the deeper springs in the unconscious from which these feelings sprung. If a patient found him seductive, he examined how he existed in the constellation of power, sexuality, trauma, and taboo in the patient’s mind. If a patient found him overbearing and aggressive, he examined the patient’s prior experiences of overbearing parents, of punishments, and victimization.

As a psychoanalytic neophyte, I have heard that one goal of psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious conscious, to take the latent and make it manifest, to foster the patient’s insight into the workings of his own mind. Although this is phrased in the positive, there is a negative aspect to this aphorism. To help bring unconscious material into consciousness, one must sometimes deny, disbelieve, discount, or otherwise crack the veneer of conscious experience in a manner similar to how Freud went past his patients’ experiences of him as a therapist and into how he symbolized aspects of their prior relationships.

Famed media critic Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” McLuhan argued that media and communication technologies do not simply deliver content to us, but change us in the process. We do not simply hear the message, but we adapt to the medium as well. Although the theme for this issue of InSight is hot and bothered, McLuhan would have classified psychoanalysis as a “cool” medium. In his theories, cool technologies require participation from the audience, while hot technologies, such as movies, fully engage the senses and create passive reception.

As a communication medium, psychoanalysis requires much from both the analyst and patient. There is much written about how the experience of the medium of psychoanalysis is expected to change the individual patient; it is expected to create therapeutic change, or at least transform hysterical misery into common unhappiness, as Freud once said. However, McLuhan thought communication technologies would also change us as a society. He believed that repeated use of a technology would shape us, collectively, in its image.

The newest communication technology in the United States is social media. Unlike traditional technologies such as television, movies, radio, and newspapers, social media is personalized. Individuals are free to enclose themselves in a bubble of their friends and those whom they agree with. Although the Internet has made access to knowledge and new ways of thinking more readily available than ever, the organization based upon social networks has allowed individuals the power to restrict their own access either out of a necessity to filter an overwhelming wave of content or out of a desire to avoid the unpleasantness of disagreement.

In a time where we are simultaneously given tools of empowerment and disempowerment, when content has become cheap, and anyone with a computer can become their own media company, I think we can use disbelief. As we encounter the superficial, advertisements, click-bait articles, and so forth, we are molded and shaped to become more receptive to them in the future. The philosophical stance of psychoanalysis is to deny the reality of the messages we receive and to ask questions about the media itself, such as, “What is really going on here?” It is a fundamentally radical worldview.

Psychoanalysis, as a philosophical position, is comfortable in the margins. As a counter-cultural force, it can criticize the status quo. As I enter the world of psychoanalysis, its current stature is less than when it reached its zenith in the ‘50s and ‘60s. It feels fresh and revolutionary to me, a countervailing wind against what I see as other conservative voices within psychotherapy. It’s difficult at times for me to even imagine what it must have been like to train in a time when psychoanalysis had ascended to dominate the world of psychology and psychotherapy. However, reading and learning about that time, I see constant reinvention and revision. Even in its heyday, psychoanalysis destroyed and rebuilt itself. As a communications technology, psychoanalysis leads us to an unstable place. Its codified principles seem to often be anti-principles, discouraging an algorithmic approach to psychotherapy. Its not surprising to me that psychoanalysis could not dominate the world of psychotherapy forever. It is too hard to exist in antithesis, and too difficult to endure the change that a life lived from a purely psychoanalytic philosophy would bring us.

************************************************************************************

Fur further Information about the Early Career Professional Committee and its’ projects, please contact Co-Chairs Stephen Lugar at steve.lugar@gmail.com or helen DeVinney at devinney@gwmail.gwu.edu

——————————————————————————–

INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARS

The Division 39 Committee on International Relations in Psychoanalytic Psychology has this year been the sponsor of five Scholars who are internationally based as a part of the Scholars Project. Here below is the first of five essays – which will appear monthly – written by the Scholars.

Psychoanalysis in Turkey, Turkey in Psychoanalysis
Ecem Coban, M.A. Istanbul, Turkey

On my flight back home from Division 39 Spring meeting held in San Francisco, I was confused by the concern I sensed during the conference time especially among the early career professionals, regarding the dying of psychoanalysis. On one hand I could relate to their experience, however it was in contradiction with what I perceive that the interest in psychoanalysis has been growing – and in fact, psychoanalysis was just born in my home country, Turkey.

Well, then, a question arose in my mind: how come psychoanalysis got to be institutionalized in Turkey almost a century after its birth? Surely, interest in psychoanalysis has been existing since the beginning of the 20th century; but rather limited and at individual level. Two associations functioning today and now recognized by IPA as “Provisional Society” were found at the turn of the 21st century. Unsurprisingly, I was not the only one who questioned this delay. MORE>

——————————————————————————–
Ecem Çoban is a clinical psychologist working with adults in private practice in İstanbul, Turkey. She also holds a lecturer position in a psychology department of a university. Her interests include death awareness and intersubjectivity. eccoban@yahoo.com

___________________________________________
Papers are invited for the 2016 Stephen A. Mitchell Award.

Established by Psychoanalytic Psychology and the Board of the Division of Psychoanalysis, the award honors our esteemed late colleague along with a graduate student whose paper is deemed exemplary by a panel of judges. The award includes a $500 cash prize, plus $500 to cover expenses to attend and present at the Division Spring Meeting, as well as publication in Psychoanalytic Psychology.
The deadline for submissions for the 2016 Mitchell Award is SEPTEMBER 15, 2015. All current graduate students and graduates who have received their degree within the last THREE years are eligible to apply for the award. The winner will be announced sometime in January 2016.

An electronic version of the paper, along with a cover letter, should be submitted to the editor, Elliot Jurist, to:
psychoanalyticpsychology@gmail.com (please include “Mitchell Award 2016” in subject line).

Papers should not exceed 25 pages in length (including endnotes and references) and can be on any psychoanalytic topic, widely construed
_______________________________________
Section V, The Section for Applied Clinical Psychoanalysis

The section for Applied Clinical Psychoanalysis would like to thank all of the authors who submitted to the 2015 Schillinger Memorial Essay Contest. We were impressed by the large number of thoughtful contributions we received. And we are pleased to congratulate Dr. Billie Pivnick who submitted the winning essay:

Spaces to Stand In: Applying Clinical Psychoanalysis to the Relational Design of the National September 11th Memorial Museum

The contest topic addressed issues of psychoanalytic identity while navigating non-psychoanalytic communities. Dr. Pivnick’s description of her experiences consulting with 9-11 museum designers depicts a particularly unique stance – holding a psychoanalytic perspective as distinct from various psychological viewpoints. She provides space to wrestle with the challenges of addressing how to hold this space for others impacted who were impacted by these tragic events.

________________________________
Interested in psychoanalysis and social justice?

Read the online newsletter of Psychoanalysts for Social Responsibility! In this edition, Neil Altman discusses APA and torture, Allan Scholom analyzes the Affordable Care Act, Nancy Hollander provides an update on social activism within the section, and Matthew LeRoy and Batsirai Bvunzawabya explore embodying social justice in a training seminar. Link: psychoanalyticactivist.com
________________________________
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!
____________________________________
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!

________________________________________________

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>
__________________________________________
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>

__________________________________________
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
____________________________________