Pluralism...a buzz word these days, sometimes embraced and sometimes overtly rejected by clinicians. Psychoanalytic pluralism...as I write this, I wonder what our constituency thinks of this concept? I have been thinking a lot about pluralism lately and how the process of change actually occurs in our patients. In my fort daPresident's Report to be published this spring, I make a plea for the continuation of the already theoretically pluralistic psychoanalytic educational programming in the Bay Area.

My thinking has been substantially informed by my training at PINC, but I have lately been wondering and noticing just what it is about comparative approaches to our work that is so helpful and freeing to us as clinicians. So many theories: Drive, American Object Relations, British Object Relations, Self, British Middle School, Contemporary Kleinian, Bionian, Lacanian, Attachment, American Relational, Intersubjectivity, Post Modern, Gender, Feminist and Queer are just a few. As I list these, I am reminded of how much diversity we have in the Bay Area, both in our membership and in the populations we serve. With such an array of psychic experiences in our daily world here in the Bay Area, how could one theory encompass all the phenomena we face in our work? In looking for change in our patients, perhaps a broad perspective gives room for surprise and more freedom to choose a vantage point of listening in different ways at different moments of transferential and countertransferential experience.

NCSPP's educational offerings this year try to address the issues all of us work with daily, and I hope that when you check our website you find something that speaks to you and is applicable to your clinical practice. A number of our upcoming programs promise to inspire, teach, and transcend the tried and true.

Warm regards,
Drew Tillotson, Psy.D.
NCSPP President