Presidential Letter

September 18, 2000

Dear Colleague and IFPE member,

Now that we have completed the elections to the IFPE Board over the summer I would like to bring you up to date on activities since my last letter to you in February, including recent developments on some of our Board Committees and information about the conference that will convene in Chicago this November.

First, I want to thank you for re-electing me to another term as IFPE President. I have enjoyed serving this year and look forward to more exciting developments in the year ahead. I would also like to take this time to extend my congratulations to our two new members-at-large who were elected to the Board: Judith E. Vida from Los Angeles and Lucy Solloa Garcia from Mexico City. Both will add dynamism to the Federation and we are fortunate to have such accomplished and capable individuals join us on the IFPE Board. Regarding Board composition, I would like to add that I recently appointed Alejandra Plaza Espinosa, also from Mexico City, to fill the remaining year of a board vacancy that will expire the end of this year, bringing the current composition of members-at-large to six.

I also want to note that IFPE is seeking to increase the number of member-at-large board positions from the current six to eight; this will require the approval of a majority of the membership, so you will be receiving a ballot to this effect in the near future. If approved, we will be voting for four positions in next summer's elections: two that will be up for re-election and the two new positions. I urge all of you who want to become more involved in IFPE activities to consider either running for a board position or to express interest in either chairing or serving on a Board Committee. If you have any interest in any of the above please don't hesitate to contact Pat Kavanaugh, our Elections Chair, or myself. I have a number of issues I would like to bring you up to date on, so for the sake of convenience I will list them in the following categories:

Mid-Year Board Meeting - May, 2000

This past May the IFPE Board convened its annual mid-year brainstorming session in Miami, Florida and addressed a number of issues that are vitally important to IFPE's future. The first concerns the question of instituting international chapters in countries outside the United States.

1) International Chapters

After considerable discussion the Board decided NOT to institute International Chapters at this time. A number of our colleagues in Mexico expressed interest in inaugurating an IFPE Chapter in Mexico City and I visited Mexico this past February to explore the feasibility of such a move with them, also eliciting their recommendations as to how such an entity should be organized and what it's relationship with IFPE would be. Gerald Gargiulo, our International Chapters Committee Chair, and I studied this question at length and made a report to the Board Meeting in Miami.

The Board decided that such a move would only serve to divide IFPE's resources at a time when we are preoccupied with increasing our membership and consolidating our membership base. There were also concerns expressed about IFPE "becoming another IPA" and suffering the attendant politics that has fallen on that organization since its inception. As you know, IFPE has gone to great lengths since its founding ten years ago to avoid "politicizing" the organization and making it a magnet for politically ambitious individuals. Hence, we were obliged to inform our colleagues in Mexico that instituting a satellite of IFPE there would not be the most viable way of making them feel more included in IFPE.

Instead we encouraged them to become more active on the IFPE board and to work on the prospect of convening a future IFPE conference in Mexico. Lucy Solloa Garcia's recent election to the IFPE Board is a consequence of that recommendation; we couldn't be more delighted to welcome our Mexican colleague's presence on the Board. We also encourage our colleagues from other countries, such as Canada and Great Britain, to consider either running for Board vacancies or chairing one of our many committees that are appointed by the President.

2) Future IFPE Conferences in Mexico and Great Britain

Another important topic discussed was the proposal made by IFPE members in both Great Britain and Mexico to host a conference in London or Mexico City in 2002. After considerable debate it was decided that instead of mounting a major conference in Mexico or Great Britain at this time that IFPE's first priority should be to consolidate the recently instituted "domestic" rotation of conferences convened in New York (East Coast), Chicago (Midwest), and San Francisco/Los Angeles (West Coast). The fourth locality in our rotation - a "wild card" - is reserved for either a resort area or a location in another country. Since we have already scheduled the 2001 conference to meet in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, the Board felt it would be unwise to disrupt the current rotation cycle, which obliges us to host the 2002 conference in New York. Moreover, there are a number of logistical problems that mounting a,conference in Mexico or Great Britain will entail. For example, a conferencein Mexico will require Spanish/English simultaneous translation, aconsiderable expenditure for a conference that currently just breaks even. Aconference in London would be more expensive for those attending than for conferences typically hosted in the U. S.; e.g., London hotels are even more expensive than those in New York and air fare from the U. S. to London is considerable. Once there, London is one of the most expensive cities in the world. While we intend to find a solution to these obstacles, we concluded that hosting a conference in either Mexico or the U. K. in 2002 is premature. Hence we decided to host the 2002 conference in New York City and to decide at our board meeting in Chicago whether we will be ready to schedule the 2003 conference in Mexico City or London, or whether we should convene it in Los Angeles (West Coast) instead and table the decision for Mexico or Great Britain for a later date. I will keep you posted concerning futureconference site selections.

3) New York IFPE Conference - 2002

Harold H. Davis has agreed to serve as Conference Co-Chair for the IFPE conference to be held in New York City in the Fall of 2002. I will serve as interim Co-Chair until the person who is elected IFPE President in 2001 assumes office in January, 2002. Harold is currently seeking a venue for the New York conference and if any of you have any contacts or suggestions for a suitable hotel in Manhattan please contact either Harold or myself. The last IFPE conference that was convened in New York City (in 1998) was held at Fordham University. Many of the people attending that conference complained that the university venue did not provide the intimacy that we typically enjoy when the conference is convened at a hotel location. In fact, the experiment at Fordham was the first IFPE conference that was not convened at a hotel and we have subsequently decided that this was not a successful choice. Therefore, we will host the 2002 conference at a hotel site to be determined. As many of you no doubt know, it is becoming increasingly expensive to host our conferences at appropriate sites in major metropolitan areas. New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are the most expensive hotel cities in the U. S. and finding hotels that include comfortable rooms and the requisite conference facilities is becoming increasingly problematical, as most hotels want a minimum of $200 per night for their guests. Organizations that are larger than IFPE (e.g., IPA, APsyA, Div 39) enjoy lower hotel rates due to their respective size, so we have had to resort to ingenious strategies to find sites that you will find acceptable. Harold and I would welcome any help or suggestions in locating a site for the 2002 conference immediately, as it is already becoming difficult to find a hotel at this late date.

Ideally, we should be locking in our conference hotels three to four years in advance and we are doing everything we can to achieve this. At our Chicago Board Meeting we will select the site for the 2003 conference and immediately initiate the process of locating a suitable venue for the 2003 conference. With three years to find the right venue we hope to have more choices to choose from, but we must also face the fact that hotel rates will continue to climb and this cost will eventually be passed on to every one of us. Please be understanding about the difficulty in mounting these annual conferences and the logistics entailed.

4) IFPE Florida Conference - 2001

Our 2001 conference is scheduled to meet in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, the first weekend in November, at the luxurious Lago Mar Resort and Club. All of the hotel rooms that have been assigned to us are suites and we have succeeded in negotiating the unbelievable rate of only $130 per night, single/double occupancy. This will be an irresistible opportunity to go to Florida just when cold weather is setting in all over the East Coast and Midwest, and a terrific occasion to include children or other family members. The resort is on the beach and we will have the virtual run of this relatively small, family-owned Florida resort at a time of year when the weather will be perfect. Antonio Virsida, who lives in Ft. Lauderdale, and I will serve as Co-Chairs for the Conference so please address any questions you may have to either Tony or myself. The conference theme for the Florida conference will be: Psychoanalysis and Culture: A Culture of Conflict; the call-for-papers will go out in January. Given the geographical proximity, we hope our colleagues in South America will find this venue more convenient for them to consider attending. If any of you have friends or colleagues who you believe would be interested in knowing more about IFPE and the 2001 Florida Conference please let them know about it, or contact either Tony or myself and we will be happy to contact them.

Note that we will make every effort to organize more bilingual presentations at the Florida conference like the one we have planned for Chicago.

5) IFPE Chicago Conference - 2000

By now you should have received the conference registration notice for the IFPE Conference to be held in Chicago, November 3-5. Fortunately, we were able to negotiate a reasonable hotel rate with the Palmer House Hilton at $160 per night, single/double occupancy, a far cry from the $190-$200 rate they initially wanted. Although I am confident you can probably find a smaller hotel for less money, I urge you to stay at the conference hotel to insure that we meet the minimum of hotel registrations we are contracted for. Last year more than 30 conference attendees stayed at hotels other than the Sir Francis Drake and we failed to meet our minimum of 60 hotel guest rooms (this is about half the number of people who typically attend our conferences, the other half being locals who sleep at their homes). The Sir Francis Drake Hotel penalized us for not meeting our minimum and the same will happen in Chicago if we do not register a minimum 60 guests for the conference. Please keep this in mind when you make your travel plans. We received enthusiastic responses to the San Francisco Conference and we anticipate the Chicago Conference will be even more exciting. The conference theme for the Chicago meeting is Psychoanalysis and Psychosis and many outstanding contributions are included in the program. I ask you to make every effort to attend what promises to be a memorable conference experience.

I would now like to update you regarding IFPE Board Committees that have asked me to communicate messages to you concerning recent developments. Following are messages from the Committee Chairs of the: e-publications; Psychoanalysis and Culture; Psychoanalytic Institutes; and Mentorship Program Committees:

From John Stone, Chair of the e-publications Committee:

I would like to take this time to update you about our website at www.ifpe.org I know many of you have experienced frustration with our slow progress in getting our website up to speed and I wouldn't blame many of you for giving up on it altogether! We have suffered an undue amount of bad luck in finding someone who possesses the necessary expertise to help us with it.

We believe that we have now finally found the person we have been looking for. Information about the Chicago conference should be posted there by the time you receive this letter. Soon we should be able to include publications from papers presented at IFPE conferences, as well as other publications that IFPE members wish to have included on our website. If any of you would like to have any previously published papers posted on our website next to your name, please contact me and I will add it to our "archive" of member publications. Any unpublished papers that you would like to have included should be sent to me and we will be happy to consider adding it to the archive. Feel free to contact me at any time at: berkeleystone@msn.com

From Michael Vannoy Adams, Chair of the Psychoanalysis and Culture Committee:

I would like to take this time to let you know that I would like to meet with anyone who is interested in joining the Psychoanalysis and Culture Committee or simply wants to know more about it. Please contact me directly by mail, telephone, or email if you would like to attend this meeting, or you may look for announcements in the forthcoming Conference Program Brochure advising where and when we will meet. My hope is that members of IFPE with an interest in this topic, whether from a multicultural or an anthropological perspective, will be interested in submitting papers or panels for future conferences. Next year, the IFPE conference in Florida will be devoted to "Psychoanalysis and Culture," a rich opportunity to explore this compelling topic further. Anyone who is interested please feel free to write me at:

Michael Vannoy Adams
1 Washington Square Village 5A
New York, NY 10012

or telephone me at: 212-533-9395
or contact me via e-mail at: Adamsmv@aol.com

From Harold B. Davis, Chair of the Psychoanalytic Institutes Committee:

As the new institute chair I ask you for input on how IFPE can be of help to its organizational/institutional members (i.e., those organizations or institutes that are listed as such in the IFPE Membership Directory). Though IFPE is primarily an individual-based organization for those who are either not affiliated with institutes or feel disenfranchised with the institutes to which they belong, we embrace member organizations who are pledged to reforming the many inequities that have plagued psychoanalytic orthodoxy since its inception. Please join me in finding ways that IFPE can further your efforts to make your institute or organization a more viable and exciting place to be. If you have any ideas or suggestions about IFPE's role vis-a-vis member institutes or any manner of psychoanalytic organization please contact me via any of the following ways:

Harold B. Davis, Ph.D.
27 West 72 St. #905
New York, NY 10023

Tel: 212-496-0127
or e-mail: hdavis@aol.com

From Etta Saxe, Chair of the Mentorship Program Committee:

The IFPE Board decided at our last meeting to expand the Mentorship Program on two fronts in the coming year. I ask you to give thoughtful consideration to participating in these efforts by joining this committee. At the November Conference in Chicago I would like to invite colleagues and students to meet with me and other members of IFPE in order to share ways of making our Mentorship Program more viable. We hope this will be the first of many opportunities for our members to share areas of expertise with colleagues who can in turn utilize them as a living educational resource.

Even if you cannot attend this meeting, it would be helpful for me to know of your interest when we consider Mentorship activities at future conferences. I will make every effort to schedule our meeting in Chicago so that it does not conflict with the Conference Program. One possibility will be to meet informally on Friday immediately following the President's Address for an initial get-together, and then plan another meeting over the weekend if sufficient interest is indicated. Please contact me no later than OCTOBER 15th to alert me about your interest in attending this meeting so that I will have a rough idea as to how many people will be attending; I will personally confirm our meeting plans with those of you who contact me by October 15th. I can be reached either by letter/post card at: 1514 Ottawa Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48105; or by e-mail at: luckystone34@provide.net.

I would also like to inform you that many of our colleagues in Mexico have expressed a desire for mentoring interchange with members of IFPE, including the possibility of travel to Mexico. I have invited them to attend the informal discussion noted above in Chicago so that those amongst you who are interested in mentoring them can develop a mechanism for further interchange. Our Mexican colleagues are particularly interested in connecting with IFPE members who possess expertise in the following areas of interest:

• Countertransference
• Group Psychoanalysis
• Psychology of Masculinity
• Play Therapy and Symbolism
• Psychoanalytic Technique in Working With Couples
• Drug Abuse and Psychoanalysis
• The Psychoanalysis of Aging
• Sublimation
• Psychoanalysis of Femininity and Professional Development
• Mother-Daughter Object Relationship
• Mother-Son Object Relationship
• Fraternal Bonding and Psychoanalysis
• Identity and Psychoanalysis
• Art and Psychoanalysis
• Incest
• Learning Disabilities and Psychoanalysis
• Narcissism

A Final Note From the President:

In closing I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank you for your involvement with IFPE and to express my hope that you will continue your membership with us. I know it is not always possible to attend every conference, so if you are unable to join us in Chicago I hope you will plan to attend another conference in the near future. Most importantly, I ask that you keep your membership status active. Our only sources of revenue derive from our annual conferences and membership dues. As our conferences just about break even, revenues from our membership dues virtually keep IFPE afloat. If you have not already renewed your membership please take the time to do so. You now have the option of charging your membership dues via credit card, by filling out the relevant information on the conference announcement that was recently mailed to you, or by contacting our administrator, Lisa Pagliaro, and giving her the information over the telephone. (You may reach Lisa at: 203-735-1911 or e-mail at lpagliaro@erols.com.)

Finally, we were recently awarded non-profit status by the Internal Revenue Service, so if you or anyone you know is interested in making a contribution to IFPE, donations are now tax-deductible. Even the smallest contribution would be appreciated.

For those of you who can make it, I look forward to seeing you in Chicago. In any case, I hope you will always feel free to contact me at any time to share any concerns, complaints, or suggestions you may have about IFPE.

You may contact me by mail at:
2196 Union Street
San Francisco, CA 94123

by telephone at: 415-346-0409
by fax at: 510-524-4646
or via e-mail at: michaelguy@aol.com

Best wishes,

Michael Guy Thompson, Ph.D.
President