President Elect's Remarks

by Elise Geltman, LCSW
 
NCSPP is one of the largest Division 39 chapters and is often looked to as a model for developing opportunities to represent and engage in psychoanalytic thought and practice. This year, NCSPP Membership Committee chair Amber Trotter represented NCSPP at the Division 39 Spring Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. In writing the report on NCSPP's recent activities and status that Trotter shared at the meeting, I gained new appreciation for our collaborative efforts. Below are excerpts from this report:
 
NCSPP strives to be an organization where budding psychoanalytic thinkers are welcomed, mid-career clinicians are fed, and advanced clinicians are valued and relied on for leadership. We aim to build and sustain community and connection among members and local institutions. In the Bay Area, we have seen a rapid increase and diversification in offerings for studying psychoanalytic psychotherapy. In this fertile climate, NCSPP focuses on collaborative, creative programming as well as refinement and expression of our members' identities, interests, and desires.  
 
NCSPP comprises ten committees, with roughly sixty active volunteers at any given time. Collectively, we create, organize, plan, and participate in an impressive range of activities:
  • Our Pre-Licensed Committee engages early-career clinicians by hosting meet-ups, reading groups, and stimulating salons, and by continuing to participate in outreach efforts.   
  • Our newly formed Community-Based Mental Health (CBMH) Committee, which secured reduced membership and tuition rates for people who work in CBMH settings, offers involvement opportunities to CBMH providers, such as information-gathering brown bag lunches. 
  • Our Membership Committee continues to work hard to expand and regain membership. This year, it conducted an organization-wide survey to find out more about members' experiences. 
  • Our Community Events Committee helps us stay limber, quick, and playful by hosting gatherings like "pop-up" events, which have been very successful, fun, and fresh. 
  • Our Programming Committee arranges major events, such as the Annual Lecture, Scientific Meeting, and Annual Couples Event, which bring esteemed thinkers to the Bay Area. 
  • Our Education Committee organizes courses and workshops providing short-term, high-quality psychoanalytic study. This year the committee arranged nine courses and workshops on a variety of topics in San Francisco as well as in the North, East, and South Bays. 
  • Our Intensive Study Groups Committee offers longer-term immersion opportunities through year-long, theme-focused study groups in the East Bay and San Francisco. This year's theme is "What Works," and next year's will address psychotherapy in technoculture. Look for full information to be released soon.   
  • Our two publications, Impulse and fort da, keep our conversations going. Impulse, which reaches more than 1,800 subscribers, is a monthly newsletter providing current, quick-witted, and creative links between psychoanalysis and the larger world. fort da is our longstanding, esteemed psychoanalytic journal that publishes work on theory, practice, research, and applied psychoanalysis. It is published in both print and online form bi-annually, reaching readers all over the globe.
  • Lastly, we collaborate with others. This year multiple committees partnered with local groups and institutes to provide the 8th Annual Couples Event, the Mark Solms lecture, and the 3rd Annual Reflective Spaces/Materials Places conference.
All of this would not be possible without the passion and commitment of volunteers and members. Thank you to all who make NCSPP what it is.
 
We celebrate our community with two annual awards, the Community Service Award and the Student Paper Award, the winners of which are announced at the annual holiday gathering.