August 7, 2006
President’s Letter
Dear Colleague,
Unbelievably, it is already August! Many of us are preparing for our August
vacations (if we haven’t already started them), but I wanted to let you know
that many of us involved with AAPI have been busy continuing to strengthen our
organization.
At our April meeting in Philadelphia, I proposed a restructuring of AAPI.
These proposals, based on my first six months’ experience as president, were
aimed at revitalizing and strengthening our organization. The provisions of
the proposal included requiring active involvement from member institutes (by
paying dues and making membership rolls available to AAPI); requiring active
involvement from the member representatives (by being on active committees),
and organizing committees that directly respond to the specific need of our
community (for example, a committee to share resources among our member
institutes, and another to help our member institutes sustain themselves in
our challenging time), among other ideas. The proposals were unanimously
accepted. The minutes from the April meeting are included in this newsletter.
As always, we welcome feedback and suggestions from our members. Please feel
free to email me or Myra Karse, our administrative director, at
info@aapionline.org.
Already we have seen greater involvement from our member institutes and
their representatives. Many representatives have volunteered for committee
memberships (and we encourage those reps who have not yet volunteered for
committees to do so). And many of you have responded to our request that you
sign a protest letter to the New York state administrator, who, due to
unfortunate legislation, directs the licensing of psychoanalysts in the state.
Among other misguided ideas, he is requiring of psychoanalytic institutes in
New York that the training analysts become employees of institutes, and that
candidates pay the institutes directly for their training analysis! If you
have not already emailed us to sign your name to this letter, please do so.
This request for individual members to sign is, I believe, an important aspect
of the usefulness of AAPI: not only can we inform our members across the
country about the legislative developments affecting psychoanalysis
(forewarned is forearmed), but also we can join together to respond more
effectively to these events. Just take a moment to email us, giving us
permission to write your name on the letter, which is on pages 8 and 9.
In the last year, we have tripled our individual membership to over 200
psychoanalysts who are willing to make a contribution above and beyond that of
their member institute. We are very grateful to these analysts for their
support of AAPI — there are many demands on analysts to join professional
organizations, and we deeply appreciate that so many analysts choose to
support us. We are trying to exceed last year’s individual membership. Please
take a few moments to make sure that your individual dues have been paid.
There is a membership application form at the end of this newsletter.
You will be receiving a brochure for our annual conference, held this year
in New York City on Saturday, October 7. Our topic is “Resistance to Change in
Psychoanalysis: Application of Infant Research Tools to Psychoanalysis.” Our
main speaker is Alexandra Harrison, Ph.D., and our discussants will be Estelle
Shane, Ph.D. and Malcolm Slavin, Ph.D. I encourage our members on the east
coast to try to attend this exciting conference. But for those who may not be
able to attend, we are working to make our conferences available online (in a
form yet to be determined).
Finally, we hope to regularize the publication of our newsletter. Since the
fall is a busy time for many of our member institutes, we hope to have
institute fall activities listed in our September 15 newsletter.
Sincerely,
Michael Clifford, M. Div., L.C.S.W., President
