President's Message by Henry Evans, MD

As the fall season begins so we begin another year of activities in our Society. After months of hard work, our Program Committee, chaired by Virginia Barry, and including Charles Jaffe, Lallene Rector, Jim Fisch, Colin Pereira-Webber and Steve Flagel, has created an interesting and varied set of presentations. Susan Fisher's thought-provoking reappraisal of autism and the equally probing discussion by Martha McClintock have gotten our Scientific Meetings off to a rousing start. In October, Helena Besserman Vianna, a Brazilian analyst, will present disturbing material involving ethical impasses in psychoanalytic societies. Her paper will be formally discussed by Bernard Rubin. Together, I am sure they will stir significant discussion and reflection amongst us. The balance of the year's programs promises to be equally rewarding.

Unfortunately, we also begin the year in great sadness. We have all been mourning the deaths of Harold Balikov and Tom Pappadis. Over the years each of them has contributed greatly to our Society as well as devoting themselves, respectively, to the causes of child and adolescent analysis and psychotherapy in Chicago and to the development and enrichment of the Institute. Both of them are sorely missed. They are being commemorated in eulogies at our Scientific Meetings - Barrie Childress for Harold Balikov in September and Kenneth Newman for Tom Pappadis in October.

As I have noted in a previous column, the Executive Committee has been active in planning new ways in which the interests of our members can be served. By now you have received a memo announcing the creation of the Society Prize. This award for an original paper, either clinically or theoretically oriented, will be available on an annual basis, rotating yearly between Candidate and other members. The full details can be found in the memo. Our other program, the Society Matinees, is now entering its second year. In June, Martha Schneider gave a highly informative overview of contemporary photography at her gallery, to the pleasure of all who attended. Our first program for this year, an afternoon of music organized by Herb Cibul, has had to be postponed due to unforseeable delays associated with a household move. We will inform you about the replacement date. I also invite you to contact me or Phil Lebovitz with your own ideas for how to spend a few casual, enjoyable hours with other Society members around common interests. We want to arrange programs that will appeal to as many different members of our Society and any significant others as possible. Are you interested in discussing a book, play or movie? How about something active, indoors or out? Or a potluck dinner using a particular ethnic cuisine? A Super Bowl party? A picnic when spring comes around? A wine tasting led by some of our Society members who have an interest in wine? We will be delighted to hear from you, whether about any of these possibilities or with suggestions of your own!

In other initiatives, you will soon be receiving a proposal and guidelines for the establishment of an Analyst Assistance Committee as a new standing committee of the Society. This proposal has been twice discussed at Business Meetings and has been carefully developed using feedback from those discussions and from discussions within the Executive Committee and with legal council. We ask that you carefully review the material and return your ballot in a timely fashion.

In keeping with a recommendation from the American, we are also planning to identify a member who will act as a local liaison regarding health care legislation. In this era of unprecedented challenges to the provision of mental health care, the Executive Committee unanimously supports this initiative as a necessary means for keeping our members up to date on legislative issues and dangers.

Finally, in concert with Jerry Winer as Director of the Institute, we are also actively discussing a program through which Society members can establish a kind of "analytic will." Such a program would address the too frequent uncertainty, over the past years, of how to deal with current patients, records, issues of billing and payment, etcetera when one of our members dies. This might be corrected by establishing guidelines and asking each member to designate another member as keeper of a sealed, updated set of information. Although it is a difficult issue to address it seems a necessary part of looking out for the best interests of our patients.

The Adult Psychotherapy Program, Revisited by Richard Herron, MD

Many psychotherapists experience the need to continue training in psychotherapy after completing their advanced degree programs. The Adult Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program is a two year program offering a series of integrated seminars and case supervision by members of the faculty. Seminars are held weekly on Tuesday afternoons from 1:00 to 4:00.

The program is open to mental health professionals from psychiatry, psychology, social work, counseling and psychiatric nursing. All participants must be licensed and certified to practice in Illinois.

Jim Fisch provided much of the leadership to revitalize the program which had not been sufficiently subscribed for the past two years.

The present class consists of nine members; do make them welcome to the community.

The Institute Connection by Jerry Winer MD, Director

 Dear Colleagues,

What a sad way to begin writing these columns...sooner than expected because of the premature death of one of the kindest men I have known, Tom Pappadis. Someone recently asked me "Did you ever see Tom angry with anyone?" I quickly realized that I never had, despite seeing him provoked in various ways including his final illness. Even then his concern was focused on his patients, on the Institute, on what he could do for others and for psychoanalysis. Tom could find something good about each of us and help to develop it to the mutual benefit of the individual and the Institute. He often brought up the unconscious as the key element of the focus of a psychoanalytic clinician as if we needed reminding about its special place in our thinking. And we did. In the midst of our sophisticated understanding of our professional relationships with each other we have often forgotten that unconscious fantasies play their ineluctable part. Tom had planned to set down some of what he had learned as director and share those insights in print. We have lost those reflections, as well as a gifted clinician, a consensus leader, a skilled teacher, and a friend of all those who made psychoanalysis a central part of their lives. A memorial fund has been established at the Institute to sponsor future scholarly presentations.

Despite the sense of loss, the Institute is off to an exciting and busy Fall. The Core Program welcomes four matriculating students: David Garfield, M.D., Phillis Sheppard, Ph.D., Joshua Kellman, M.D., and Suzanne Rosenfeld, M.D. The Adult Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program will have 9 students beginning classes in October. The CAPT Program anticipates 5 or 6 first year students. The Continuing Education Program is offering "Self Psychology in Clinical Practice," a two session course to be taught by Jill Gardner, Ph.D.

A Psychotherapy Conference will be held in the Spring of 1999. The Committee, chaired by Saul Siegel, is hard at work putting together the program for the sixteenth biennial conference.

Some of you may not be familiar with our current staff, all of whom have been very helpful to me during the transition. Pat Rueckheim has been serving as Director of Educational and Clinical Services for three years. Mary Pirau, who has been with us for 11 years, became our Business Manager when Joan Turk left last year. Chris Susman, our Office Manager, has been right-hand woman to the last 2 directors, and has kept a daunting array of details in clear focus for me. Martha Hardway, our receptionist, knows just where to direct each call and visitor. Helen Davis, our secretary for the Clinics and Core Program, keeps the flow of business moving along expeditiously. Bill Kelly, sees to the day-to-day details of the Library, as well as working for the CAPT program. Nancy Harvey is our experienced and able part-time librarian. My thanks to all of these dedicated staff members.

PR Remarks by Mark Smaller, Ph.D.

The work of the PR Committee continues with the invaluable contributions of Dottie Jeffries of Jeffries Marketing. Reporters from newspaper, T.V. and radio continue to contact us on a regular basis for stories. Recent activities have included Charles Jaffe on WBEZ, Mark Smaller on John Calloway's Chicago Tonight on WTTW, and the Jenny Jones Show; letters to the Editor by Smaller, Bob Galazter-Levy, Neal Spira and Gordon Maguire have appeared in the New York Times, Tribune and Wall Street Journal.

Other activities include: Christine Kiefer, who recently joined the Committee and is pursuing contact with the Mental Health Association of Evanston, and with Adam Brent and the opening of his new bookstore on Michigan Ave.

Below is the Press release from the Library of Congress Announcing the Freud Exhibit which opens October 15th. Dottie Jeffries, representing our Institute and Society as well as the American Psychoanalytic Association, has been hard at work nationally and locally to make important PR use of this historic event. I hope you all can see the exhibit.

I want to thank members of my Committee for their contributions: Paula Fuqua, Bob Fajardo, Christine Kiefer, Len Adams and Dottie Jeffries. Please get in touch with me if you're interested in joining the PR Committee.

"Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture"

A major exhibition, tracing the influence of Freud and psychoanalysis on 20th-century culture, will open at the Library of Congress on October 15 in the Northwest Curtain of the Jefferson Building and close January 16. The exhibition will travel through May of 2000 to the Jewish Museum in New York, the Sigmund Freud-Museum in the Austrian National Library in Vienna and, finally, to the Getty Center in LA.

Organized by the Library of Congress in cooperation with the Sigmund Freud-Museum in Vienna and the Freud Museum in London.

Spreading the Psychoanalytic Word:Fellowship Committee by Prudence Leib, MD

The fellowship committee would like to compile a reading list on psychoanalysis to distribute to our fellows and applicants. What I have in mind is a list separated by category and/or topic: classic articles in analysis, the essential Freud, child analysis, object relations, ego psychology, self psychology, transference, supervision, etc, etc. Also, I'd like to be able to give them a list of "cutting edge" articles to show them where psychoanalytic theory is struggling today. Hoping not to reinvent the wheel, I'd be most appreciative if anyone could send me a copy of any topical reading list you have developed for a course (a list covering a single topic would be fine--I'll put them together). The audience here is non-analysts, psychiatry residents and early career psychiatrists, social workers and psychologists. So as not to overburden e-mail do send the lists by surface mail to: 1000 Skokie Blvd., Suite 265, Wilmette, IL 60091. Or e-mail to me Prudyleib@aol.com if you wish.

HELEN MEYERS, M.D.,the First Traveling WOMAN PSYCHOANALYTIC SCHOLAR by Brenda Solomon, M.D.

NOVEMBER 13 & 14

A program for a traveling woman psychoanalytic scholar, sponsored by the American Psychoanalytic Association's COPE (Council on Psychoanalytic Education) Workshop on Issues in the Psychoanalytic Training of Women, will be launched this fall in Chicago. Helen Meyers has been selected as the first scholar. The Candidates Association of the Chicago Institute initiated the request to host this lecture. The program offers psychoanalytic institutes and societies across the country more contact with and exposure to outstanding female analysts.

In Chicago, Dr. Meyers will give a paper Saturday afternoon, November 14, at the Chicago Institute, at 1:30 pm. On Friday evening, Novemeber 13, all candidates are invited to an informal cocktail reception at Brenda and David Solomon's apartment. On Saturday, candidates will present clinical case material to Dr. Meyers.

Dr. Meyers is a training and supervising analyst at the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center. She is renowned internationally as a leader in psychoanalytic education and as a psychoanalytic thinker and writer. Instrumental in establishing the House of Delegates of the International Psychoanalytical Association and herself one of the nine North American delegates, she was recently elected as the representative delegate to the Executive Council of the IPA. For 15 years, Dr. Meyers has led the Regional Council of Greater New York, which sponsors joint meetings between the New York and Philadelphia psychoanalytic societies and institutes. A leader in the American Psychoanalytic Association, Dr. Meyers has served on the Board of Professional Standards, the Executive Council, the Committee on Certification, The Program Committee, and the Committee on New Training Facilities and as a councilor-at-large.

At Columbia, she has served in virtually every major leadership position. As curriculum chair, she revolutionized the curriculum by integrating different frames of reference with a developmental perspective. This idea became a model for curricula throughout the country.

Dr. Meyers has served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychotherapy and the JAPA. She is widely known for her writing on gender, perversions, masochism, adolescence, aggression, psychic reality and psychoanalytic education. As a plenary speaker at the 1997 International Congress in Barcelona, she gave a talk on sexuality in the clinical situation.

Long interested in issues relating to women, Dr. Meyers runs an international women's study group on pregnancy. She and Barbara Deutsch were founding chairs of the COPE Workshop on Issues in the Psychoanalytic Training of Women. Thus, it is fitting that she has been chosen as COPE's first traveling scholar. (extracted from TAP, vol 32:2, p.9.).

From the Projection Booth: The Film Version of the Analyst Fifty Years Ago and Now by Phil S. Lebovitz

During a coversation about the presentation of the therapist in recent films with a playwright friend, she pointed out that a Hitchcock classic, Spellbound, centered on psychoanalysis and that the film would be intriguing to consider for its contrast with current films. Our discussion began with Good Will Hunting and Ordinary People; so I will elaborate on my viewing of Good Will Hunting and Spellbound.

An easy conclusion to reach is that the two films are based on strikingly different assumptions about therapists, what they do, and how they do it. Whether these differences capture the changes in psychoanalyic technique over the past fifty years in a way that is valid and is not simply "pop psychology" is what I wondered. Films that reach audiences, as these have, have far reaching effects on the public's image of us.

Woody Allen's films might seem like more apt vehicles to use in a discussion of this kind because they include a therapist in almost every one. However, his audience is so narrow - as we recently were made aware, his films (except for Hanna and Her Sisters) never reach a breakeven point in box office gross-that his view of the analyst has a limited impact.

Spellbound appeared in 1945, prior to the years of the flowering of psychoanalysis in America. The director, Hitchcock, treated the audience as naive about psychoanalysis; he introduced the film with a quote from Shakespeare about the trouble lying not in the stars but within ourselves. He then followed that with a several paragraph long description of the psychoanalytic theory of treatment; the essence of that statement captured Freud's earlier model of making the unconscious conscious. This becomes the guiding principle around which the plot of the film is developed.

The plot involves a beautiful but repressed woman analyst, played by Ingrid Bergman, who meets the new analyst director of the hospital, played by Gregory Peck, on his first day; they fall in love at first sight. He, however, is a victim of amnesia and remembers nothing of his true identity; he reacts violently to the sight of parallel black lines on a white background and is implicated in a murder. She appoints herself the doctor who will solve the mystery of his identity and solve the crime. She will do it by analyzing his dreams, by having him re-experience the traumatic event, by recovering the traumatic childhood memory, and by establishing the links between each of these items. She will also, as the perfect psychoanalyst sleuth using psychological evidence, identify the real murderer.

Her devotion and perseverance derive from her love for him and, somewhat flippantly, she refers to professional boundaries. Yet, when in trouble, she goes directly to her former analyst (a pipe-smoking conducts herself as a scientist proving an hypothesis. The relationship of the doctor to the patient is incidental; they can even be lovers on the side with no impact on the process.

Fifty-three years later, Good Will Hunting appears on the screen and is the product of two young rising stars who also play major roles in the film. The audience's familiarity with psychotherapy is assumed, as is an awareness of how a good therapist should look and behave.

The plot in this film involves a journey of self-discovery, an enhancement of self-esteem, and a solidification of structure that supports a capacity for intimacy. The young man proves to be a math genius, and independent thinker and a therapist for his therapist as well.

The relationship between the therapist, played affectionately by Robin Williams, and the math whiz/patient played by Matt Damon, represents a striking change from the one presented in Spellbound. The therapist is casually dressed - though bearded in stereotypical fashion - and often self-revealing; he displays his affect and lays bare aspects of his personal life. The notion in this film is that not only is the therapist/patient relationship the curative force but also that each participant profoundly affects the other; the patient restores the therapist to health as he makes his own progress.

The focus of the idealization of the psychoanalyst has changed. In 1945, the film depicts the psychoanalyst as a scientific detective of the highiest order; the relationship is necessary, though of less importance. In 1998, the film presents the therapist as a flawed, compassionate human being who is idealized for his ability to interact with the patient in order to effect personal development.

Issues for us to confront are plentiful. Is the image consonant with our models of good psychoanalytic technique? Do we want to encourage this kind of image? How can we have an effect on the image the film makers select?

Even thought these films become stereotypic in their presentation, they manage to capture some of the changes in psychoanalytic technique that have occurred over the past 50 years. The most prominent shift has been the one toward a more interactive process.

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