San Antonio Society for Psychoanalytic Studies

Division of Psychoanalysis Spring Meeting

Yearly Activity Summary

April 6, 2017

SASPS continues to play a central role in the education and support for the importance of psychoanalytic theory, and psychoanalytically informed practice in our academic and professional community. Our active membership is a professionally diverse group of approximately 62 registered members. A significantly larger number of mental health professionals regularly attend our meetings and presentations. We are primarily Psychologists, but are well represented with Psychiatrists, Social Workers, and LPCs. A few are certified Psychoanalysts and Jungian Analysts. We have 12 Division members at present.  We now have 16 Graduate Student Members in psychology and psychiatry, a significant increase from past years. We continue to expand our working group by appointing new members to committees in order to spread the workload and get more members involved in sustaining the organization. We have an active and diverse board, representing Psychology, Psychiatry, Social Work, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Psychoanalysis, who come from academic, hospital and private practice settings.

We continue to benefit from our close alliance with the Mind Science Foundation which has co sponsored several of our chapter activities and provided publicity and administrative support over the years.  We also have alliances with other community organizations, which help support our Continuing Education offerings this year, including The University of the Incarnate Word, and Trinity University, and the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. Our society maintains a sound financial foundation, in part though our affiliation with, and support from local universities and community agencies.

We have benefited from an organizational consultant who provides ongoing consultation regarding clarification of goals, diversifying leadership responsibilities, delegation of event planning, defining needs for administrative support, and upgrading our website.

Our website is up to date, user friendly, and serves a number of our functions for member information, workshop registration, and communication. This has a significant positive impact on the efficiency of our event planning.

The current leadership of our Executive Committee includes:

Tom Stone Ph.D :  President

Jacob Pickard, Ph.D : Past President

Russel Thompson, Ph.D. President Elect

    Education Committee Chair

Cynthia Dias De Leon, Ph.D.:  Secretary

Paul Ingmundson, Ph.D.  :  Treasurer

Kim Fox, Communications Committee Chair

Ashley Powell, Ph.D. Membership committee Chair

Bob Kalter, M.D.  Member at Large

Sara Gill, Ph.D., Member at Large

Carlos Velez, M.D. Member at Large

Manu Gupta, Student Representative

Shane Riggs, Student Representative

Natasha Benatti, PsyD, Student Representative

Wayne J. Ehrisman, Ph.D. ABPP:  Local Chapter Representative

The Education Committee planned several professional and community educational offerings this past year. Our activities include:

• (1)      Our monthly Psychoanalytic Study Group, led by local members, continues to meet in our homes, and reviews mostly contemporary psychoanalytic literature.  The group continues to draw approximately 15-25 members from a diverse group of mental health professionals and students, representing psychology, psychiatry, social work, psychoanalysis, and others interested in psychoanalytic ideas and their application to clinical theory and practice. Current topics have continued to focus on Relational, Self Psychology, Gender, Diversity, and historical Psychoanalytic Perspectives. We continue to send out our Newsletter electronically to a large number of our current and past members and attendees, which sustains interest and attendance.
• (2)      For our Spring workshop on May 16, 2016 we sponsored a workshop by Jerry Gans MD on the topics of “Recognizing Shame and Acknowledging Courage in Group Psychotherapy” and “Money Matters in Psychotherapy”, conducted in a group  process format which was innovative and productive.

• (3)      For our annual Paredes Lecture on October 7th, focused on community outreach, We presented a workshop on “Restorative Justice: Bursting the School to Prison Pipeline” with presentations by Juvenile Court Judge Laura Parker, Phillip Carney, Coordinator of Restorative Discipline NEISD, who developed a model program used in a local school district, and Anne Thomas, Ph.D., Deputy  Chief of Clinical Services for the Bexar County Juvenile Probation Department.  This brought in attendees within the educational, juvenile justice, and mental health communities for an informative exchange of ideas about new innovations in the management of juvenile offenders.

• (4)      For our Fall Workshop on November 11, we invited Neil Altman, PhD to present a presentation on “Race, Class and Culture in Psychoanalysis” followed by a Consultation with Dr Altman the next day.  A useful and informative discussion of the conscious and unconscious influences of these influences on the practice of psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy.

• (5)      On May 19 of this year,  SASPS and the Mind Science Foundation will cosponsor a workshop entitled “From Self to Selfies: reflection on the Impact of Technological Change on the Psychology of the Self” presented by SASPS members  Cynthia Diaz de Leon, PhD., Joshua Essery, PsyD, ABPP, Paul Ingmundson, Ph.D, and Thomas Stone, Ph.D

• (6)      On September 15, 2017 we plan to invite Ricardo Ainslie, Ph.D to present and discuss his documentary “The Mark of War” and intimate portrait of men who served in the Vietnam war.

• (7)      On November 4, 2017 Melanie Suchet will present on Therapeutic Impasse and Race

• (8)      We are in the planning for reviving our Film Society later this summer, with a film presentation of “The Danish Girl” to facilitate awareness and discussion of transgender issues.

In other ongoing activities, several of our members continue to teach in both the Psychology and Psychiatry Residency Program at UTHSCSA, and function as co-leaders in seminars, and providing psychodynamic psychotherapy supervision.

Our Psychodynamic Track in the Clinical Psychology Training Program continues to provide an internship such that  Psychology Residents are afforded many more opportunities for a specific focus on psychodynamic approaches to a broad range of clinical problems, within a Generalist model of training. We have involved several psychodynamic psychologists from our group who have Clinical Appointments at UTHSCSA to supervise our Residents.  The Track system has provided considerable improvement in the recruitment of interns,

In summary, our organization continues to grow, with increasing membership, more diverse offerings, and more student involvement, and more administrative efficiency. There’s increasing interest in Division activities, including attendance at  Spring Meetings.

Wayne J Ehrisman, Ph.D. ABPP

Local Chapter Representative

San Antonio Society of Psychoanalytic Studies