This month I'd like to highlight two compelling and significant events happening in the coming weeks. Each addresses crucial community needs, each in a different way.

The first is Healing the Trauma of War, a remarkable and very timely training sponsored by Deep Streams Zen Institute, together with Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility, Division 39, the East Bay Chapter of California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, and a consortium of other Bay Area organizations.

The training offers psychotherapists and counselors interested in serving families and children of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan a chance to learn more about the needs of this large population and to form a Bay Area cohort of engaged clinicians. The event is part of Deep Streams' The Coming Home Project, which Joseph Bobrow shares more about in this month's PIECE OF MIND, below. See APPOINTMENT BOOK for event details and get involved with this important endeavor.

Another exciting event, the fall NCSPP Scientific Meeting, allows local clinicians to present their thinking and their work, and for participants to attend for a very low fee. In Drowning in the Sea of Love, presented by Maureen Franey, Ph.D., the visual gaze and musical audio effects used in the film Ladies in Lavender will be used to depict a transformative and healing journey, not unlike the experience of the psychoanalytic process. Dr. Franey will illustrate how the film succeeds in portraying key elements of a transference/countertransference love: remembering, repeating and working through, along with Winnicott's concept of the fear of breakdown, Bollas' "unthought known," and Grotstein's use of the concept of autochthony. This event is also listed in our collective APPOINTMENT BOOK below.

These events represent a sample of the rich diversity of responsive and innovative psychoanalytic events and programs we're all privileged to have access to. I hope to see you there.

Beth Steinberg, Ph.D.
President, NCSPP