March 15, 2002
Dear AAPI Member:
Spring is almost upon us, and I know we are all hoping for a
spirit of renewal and growth as we proceed through this year. There has been
much hard work going on behind the scenes at AAPI during these winter months,
and I am looking forward to seeing its fruition as 2002 unfolds.
At our last Executive Board meeting in October 2001, the
officers and representatives of AAPI made several important decisions. We
established a By-Laws Committee headed by Dr. Dorienne Sorter to review our
current by-laws and propose revisions that would more accurately reflect the
structure of AAPI and our dual purposes of representing our affiliated
institutes and individual members in professional matters and of providing
opportunities for scientific exchange. We also renewed our commitment to pursue
AAPI's application to become a member of the Psychoanalytic Consortium.
Since then, the Conference Committee, composed of myself, Jim
Fosshage, Ken Frank and Sandra Kiersky, has been hard at work organizing a very
special Second Annual Conference to be held in New York City on September 28,
2002. Following the format of the First Annual Conference, we will be featuring
a clinical presentation by a distinguished psychoanalyst, Dr. Joseph Newirth,
Director of the Postdoctoral Programs in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy,
Adelphi University.
The title of the conference is: "Perspectives on a
Relational/Neo-Kleinian Clinical Presentation: Transference/Countertransference
Issues." We will have five panelists from different psychoanalytic
orientations who will comment on Dr. Newirth's presentation from their own
theoretical perspectives. They are Drs. Darlene Ehrenberg, James Gooch, Irwin
Hoffman, Theodore Jacobs, and Estelle Shane. You can see that we are in for
another excellent and stimulating discussion of clinical material from a variety
of psychoanalytic perspectives. Of course, as AAPI members you will be entitled
to a reduced rate for the conference. More information about the conference will
soon be available on our website. Please mark the date in your calendars.
We also have been exploring membership for AAPI in the
Psychoanalytic Consortium. The Consortium only recently published the membership
criteria that we would need to follow in seeking membership in the Consortium.
We will be distributing those criteria and discussing them with the AAPI
officers and institute and individual representatives at our next Executive
Board Meeting on April 13, 2002. Your representatives will then be able to
communicate with you about the issues we will need to address as we pursue
membership in the Consortium.
We expect that you have already accessed our institute directory
on our website, www.aapionline.org. In
addition, our individual membership directory in now available on our website.
Please check your listing to make sure that it is accurate. We currently have
over 285 individual members and 21 affiliated institutes, and we are still
growing.
Another benefit of membership in AAPI for individual members is
the opportunity to purchase psychoanalytic literature through Mental Health
Resources at a 10% discount off the list price. Mental Health Resources can be
contacted online at mhr@ulster.net, by fax
at 845-247-9439, or by phone at 845-246-5071. Just identify yourself as an AAPI
member to qualify for the discount.
And in the near future we hope to found an AAPI Journal in
Comparative Psychoanalysis.
We will be sending you further updates about AAPI activities
after the Executive Board Meeting on April 13. In the meantime, please feel free
to correspond with me (mbcresci@aol.com)
or any of our officers and representatives at their respective addresses.
Thank you for your continued support,
Mary Beth M. Cresci, Ph.D., ABPP
President
