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I'm pleased and proud to be serving my first term as President of the
International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. Having
been a member of the organization from its beginning as a small study
group, meeting in Arnold Goldberg's living room, with Heinz Kohut
himself leading our discussions, to our present membership organization
functioning through the operations of a democratically elected
International Council, I have been greatly privileged to witness and
take part in the expansion of this impressive organization. Our current
task must be to strengthen IAPSP as a democratic membership organization
and to expand, and even improve, our educational offerings.
As therapists, and particularly as therapists influenced by self psychology,
we find ourselves in professionally interesting times. If
our field is flourishing, despite incredible obstacles such as a bad
economy and a bad press, I think it is because it has opened up so
enormously. There is increasing evidence that we are unable to isolate
a single theory, or even a single set of theories, that can be viewed as
encompassing the truth, or as providing the way to
practice analysis. The current diversity in psychoanalytic thinking
and in ways of being with patients that results from this uncertainty is
of critical importance to us all. Faced with, or should I say,
blessed with, an increasing heterogeneity in our clinical
populations, we are required to avail ourselves of the wide variety of
resources on the psychoanalytic scene to insure our ability to match
patient needs. There are many ideas, good ideas, available to us, and
the contemporary zeitgeist of theoretical freedom of choice enables us
to receive and use concepts from a wide range of alternatives, without
being constrained to purity of framework.
The International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology
certainly reflects this trend of valuing theoretical pluralism and of
individual expansiveness. We began with the one self psychology created
by Heinz Kohut and his early cohorts; we now have the advantage of many
self psychologies, including, for example, intersubjective systems,
motivational systems, and specificity theory. And from the beginning,
adherents of self psychology have been attracted to findings found in
related disciplines, such as a systems sensibility, attachment theory,
neurobiology, brain science, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, as
well as being drawn to related clinical approaches including,
especially, relational theory. Our annual conferences over the years
have offered this diversity of thought, all the time retaining our basis
in Self Psychology as the theory that comes closest to our ideas and
ideals, and that provides the best vision of what human beings need,
what makes them become ill, and how they can be helped to get better.
I look forward to working with all of you to make IAPSP the strongest
and best membership organization it can be.
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