Discussion of the Certification Process at APsaA
By Categories: Editorials, NYPSI Centenary 1911-2011

APsaA members are discussing the subject of certification. This editorial by Arlene Kramer Richards gives us one person’s personal experience of the process, along with suggestions for the future. The piece was originally published in États Generaux de la Psychanalyse (2000) and appears here with the requisite permissions. The IP Blog looks forward to many comments so that people can reflect, with open minds, on their positions – whatever they may be.

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DISCUSSION OF THE CERTIFICATION PROCESS AT THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION

By Arlene Kramer Richards

I became a certified member of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1998. My experience in becoming certified has caused me to think long and searchingly about the purposes and the consequences of this process. The personal pain induced by the process is the spur for my thinking, but the thinking has gone on long after the pain was assuaged by the concern and sympathetic listening of a few close friends and many colleagues. The process began when I decided to attend a meeting at which prospective candidates for certification were invited to discuss the process. The members of the committee who were present at the meeting assured the prospective candidates that the process would be collegial and that they wanted to use it to get to know the candidates and their way of working as analysts. This sounded good to me. They also gave details of how to write up cases for certification and, most importantly for me as someone who had trained long ago and outside the institutes of the American, said that they were willing to accept a selection of cases from senior people rather than demand that we write up all the cases we had ever had. That was reasonable. I wrote the cases as I would for scientific papers. I tried to spotlight the difficulties that arose in the analyses themselves and the thoughts that had occurred to me as I wrote them up now, many years later. Informed that they had been insufficient, I was encouraged to go to Toronto in May 1998 to present my work in person. This time, I was to bring process on current hours. I was shocked to find that the small subcommittee that interviewed me at that time did not believe that I had presented to them well enough to show that I understood the analytic process. After another write up and another interview, I was told that I had now shown that I did understand the analytic process. For a senior analyst who had done many analyses and supervisions and had been the co-chair of an IPA pre-congress on analytic supervision as well as having been a training analyst so long that some of my analysands were now training analysts, this did not feel good. Was the problem me or was it the process? Or was it both? Much of my thinking about this has been in the service of figuring this out. To begin at the beginning, there was the case write ups. Continue reading Discussion of the Certification Process at APsaA

E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial: Advent of the Absent Father
By Categories: Movies

liletalone.jpg  by Gershon Reiter From Fathers and Sons in Cinema © 2008 Gershon Reiter by permission of McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640. www. Excerpt from “Fathers and Sons in Cinema,” by Gershon Reiter, coming out this June.  The book addresses the father-son relationship in American cinema by re-examining ancient dragon-slaying myths, showing how they apply to movies, or to what the book calls filmmyths, that deal with fathers and sons. Continue reading E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial: Advent of the Absent Father

Update: Disaster Relief in China
By Categories: Uncategorized

Dear Colleagues

A very quick update: Things in Sichuan are still awful. People in Chengdu are sleeping out of doors in parks, university playing fields etc because of the aftershocks Some are returning to their homes, but colleagues who live in hi rises are sleeping at the houses of their colleagues in ground floor apartments. I have been speaking with them daily. They are very appreciative of our support.

Adults
I have had requests from many institutions for Disaster Training including: Chinese Academy Of Science Institute of Psychology, Institute Of Mental Health Peking University, Department Of Psychology Peking University, EAP, Shanghai Linzi Counseling Center, Chengdu CAPA group and many other groups and individuals. At this moment training is being scheduled for about 1200 mental health workers. The training (4-5 hour live sessions) will be provided by American Psychiatric Association International Center for Psychosocial Trauma, Disaster Psychiatry Outreach and several individual Disaster specialists. CAPA plans to provide mentoring and consultation for these disaster workers as they go into the field. They will need help for the next year as they deal with late effects of the disaster Volunteers?

The Shanghai Mental Health Center will pay airfare for two experienced disaster people come to Shanghai and the APA will supply them. The group in Chengdu has asked that someone come and Jeff Taxman, a CAPA person, has volunteered to go. He will go in any case but we are trying to raise funds to defray his costs. Please send contributions to
CAPA C/O Barbara Campbell 2621 Spring Grove Drive Brighton MI 48114

Children
I am working closely with the Mercy Corps, an American Foundation, already in China and with Gil Kliman and the Children’s Psychological Health Center. We have found a publisher for the children’s workbook. About 20 publishers have been vying for the opportunity to help and it will be available at cost—or less. Mercy Corps may order 50,000 copies. The Sichuan Red Cross will order another 50,000 and the Education Department of Chengdu will order “hundreds of thousands” of copies. Gil Kliman has rewritten the workbook. Dong Hong, an English professor at Sichuan University and also by Zhang Jingyan an Art professor are translating it and Zhang Jingyan’s students are making new illustrations. Professors at several Chengdu Universities and others will be trained to train teachers, parents and aid workers in the use of the workbook. A group of child psychiatrists from Beijing who will be working in Sichuan have asked for a mentor and ultimately we will need child people to consult with the teachers and aid workers via Skype or email.

I get about 20-40 emails an hour with various requests. If you have skills that you think would be useful, please email me.

Elise Snyder