Happy New Year!!!
Spring Meeting 2016
We invite participants in the Spring Meeting to join us in creating, however briefly, a community coming together to learn from each other and to contribute to an enlivening experience as we explore together the many ways that psychoanalytic thought and practice offers the opportunity for renewal and connection. We have reorganized the traditional format so that we start each day with a coffee hour that will help us to better come together as a community. Our keynote speakers will begin our day from Friday to Sunday, allowing time for discussion and meeting with old and new friends. We plan to have several breaks throughout the day to allow time for lunch, browsing booksellers, an educational fair, yoga and just “hanging out.” In addition to our usual late afternoon receptions, we will have a series of evening events beginning with a performance by a local artist on Thursday, and two Movie Nights scheduled for Friday and Saturday. Keep in mind that the performance will be a fundraiser for a local Atlanta social justice initiative.
Conference Co-Chairs
William A. MacGillivray,
PhD, ABPP
Stefanie L. Speanburg,
PhD, LCSW
Steering Committee
Joyce M. Cartor, PhD
Susan Chance, PhD
Nancy D. Chase, PhD, LCSW
Karen M. Schwartz, PhD
Ad Hoc Committee
Jared DeFife, PhD
Yudit Jung, PhD, LCSW
Kareen Malone, PhD
Morgan Custer
Warmly,
Kristi Pikiewicz
Division News
President’s Message
By Marilyn Charles, PhD
Dear Members,
As we come to the end of 2015, we are afforded the opportunity of taking stock of where we are in relation to where we would like to be. As we know, crisis and opportunity are tightly woven with one another, making it important for each of us to come forward and seize whatever opportunities we find in our various communities to make a difference in the lives and well-being of those around us. The recent events that have arisen in relation to the Hoffman Report remind us that, as psychologists, we have a mandate to be mindful of and attentive to the wellbeing of others. I hope that you will take the opportunity afforded by this new year to strengthen your efforts at constructive engagement in your personal and professional lives, both within and outside of the Division, to build a better future for us all.
For those of you with aspirations for public service who have had trouble finding a direction, there are many committees within the Division where you might find colleagues with similar interests. You can find links on the website.
I wish you a new year that brings peace and goodwill to all,
Marilyn
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. – T. S. Eliot
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The Early Career Committee of Division 39
Our January Early Career Committee column features two more brief posts on impressions of the 2015 Spring Meeting by recipients of scholarship awards. Our first writer, Greg Stevens, is a licensed psychologist with the Kennesaw State University Counseling and Psychological Services. Greg is passionate about making psychoanalytic knowledge more accessible to the unfamiliar, to people who misunderstand, and to nonbelievers.
Attending the Spring Meeting has made me a pioneer at the frontier of psychoanalysis. By pioneer, I do not mean an innovator of psychoanalysis. Rather, I mean a settler at the edge of psychoanalytic culture.
Throughout my eight years of interest in psychoanalysis, I have lived in the southern United States where psychoanalytic culture has been a minority at best and marginalized at worst. Consequently, my involvement in Division 39 has been vital to my development as a psychoanalytic clinician. Through this involvement and through my attendance at the Spring Meetings, I have developed a network of psychoanalytic colleagues and friends that spans our nation. This year, my network continued growing at the Spring Meeting as I deepened relationships and developed new ones in my professional home—the Division. Although I deeply value my experience at the Spring Meeting, I will share how this experience made me a pioneer upon returning to the southern frontier.
At the University counseling center where I worked, I was the only psychoanalytically oriented clinician. This past spring, I supervised a master’s counseling student during her first practicum experience. As her first representative of psychoanalytic culture, I shared with her my experience at the Spring Meeting. She was excited to learn that psychoanalysis is alive and well. Unbeknown to me, her academic supervisor had told her that she could practice from any orientation except for psychoanalytic. Thus, sharing my experience bolstered her confidence to continue pursuing her own interests in psychoanalysis.
I was able to extend the frontier of psychoanalytic culture by encouraging a budding psychoanalytic clinician. Without the Spring Meeting, this might have been impossible.
Our second writer, Cassie Kaufmann, is completing her postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University Counseling and Psychological Services and works at Madison Park Psychological Services in New York City. She received her doctorate from Adelphi University.
Throughout my training, I’ve looked forward to Division 39 conferences as reinvigorating reminders of why the hoops we nascent psychologists must jump through—the statistics classes and memorizing I/O theorists for the licensing exam—are all worth it. I took a lot away from this year’s conference, especially excitement about the wisdom expressed formally and informally by psychoanalytic thinkers, both fresh and seasoned.
What struck me most in the days and weeks that followed the meeting was a difference in the quality of my listening during therapy sessions. Rather than listening for information, I found my attention broadening and deepening, as I began to hear the people I sat with on multiple levels. As my questions became less knowing, less pointed, deeper emotions and memories emerged. The sessions felt more intimate and honest.
It seemed as though the hours spent in San Francisco attending talks, speaking with friends and strangers, and lounging in the hotel’s Victorian greenhouse dining room, led me to do a slightly different job when I got back home. The conference has had the effect of punctuating the year, of parenthetically stimulating thought while slowing me down. I was reminded again to follow curiosity, and not to think I know too much.
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For further Information about the Early Career Committee and its’ projects, please contact Co-Chairs Stephen Lugar at steve.lugar@gmail.com or helen DeVinney at hdevinney@gmail.com.
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2016 Johanna K. Tabin Book Proposal Prize
Request for Submissions
This prize aims to encourage Division 39 members who have not published a psychoanalytic book to submit a book proposal Division 39 and APA Press are delighted to announce once again the Johanna K. Tabin Book Proposal Prize for a first book by a psychoanalytic author. The winner receives a $1,000 cash prize, certificate of recognition, and guarantee of publication by the APA Press. The aim of this prize is to encourage psychoanalytic writing by Division 39 members who have yet to publish a psychoanalytic book. We look for good writing, originality, as well as clinical and scholarly relevance. While some previously published material may be included, the proposed book should consist primarily of new work and promise to be an original and coherent monograph. Edited collections of previously published papers are not acceptable, nor are edited volumes of contributions by more than one author. Simultaneous submissions to other publishers will disqualify the entry.
The proposal should consist of:
1. A cover letter to include the author’s identifying and contact information
2. A full CV
3. A statement of sufficient length to describe the mission, scope, and potential contribution of the project to psychoanalysis
4. A table of contents; and
5. One, and only one, sample chapter.
Submissions are accepted in hard copy only and must be in quintuplicate. Blind review evaluations are conducted by the Book Proposal Committee, the editor of APA Books, and an Honorary Judge.
All submissions for the 2016 award must be submitted by March 1, 2016, to:
Book Prize
Division of Psychoanalysis
2615 Amesbury Road
Winston Salem NC 27103
Questions should be addressed to: Bill MacGillivray,