Our immediate plans include the following seven things:
- Expanding IPA in the Community to IPA in the Community and the World; integrating the overlapping efforts of the committees in that section of the IPA with the help of IPA member Mira Erlich whom we will propose to the Board as overall chair. She was co-founder of Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities (PCCA), a group that received the Sigourney Award in 2019;
- Building on the recent work of the InterCommittee Project on Prejudices and Racism established by Virginia Ungar to ensure continued, required attention to diversity. The Project was conceived as a response to the increased violence in society during the pandemic which acutely highlights ongoing systemic racism, childism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of extreme othering born of vulnerability. IPA in the Community and the World will consult to the Board regarding a strategy for next best steps for the IPA.
- Building bridges to professional and citizen groups that have psychoanalytically informed methodologies to engage citizens/professionals in approaching societal problems; an example is the International Dialogue Initiative (IDI), which has developed a psychoanalytic case conference model for consulting to individuals who want to intervene in areas of large group conflict;
- Instituting a new IPA committee called Psychoanalytic Assistance in Crisis and Emergencies Committee (PACE). This committee will provide analysts with practical tools for helping citizens address natural and manmade disasters;
- Creating learning modules for psychoanalysts interested in consulting about conflictual issues in settings like the courts, prisons, schools, hospitals, governmental bodies, corporations, non-profits, and creative arts.
- Using our 2023 Congress to develop psychoanalytic theory further regarding the impact of the societal context on individual and group minds and on somatic-social-psychological experience. As you will hear, the Cartagena Congress theme will be Mind in the Line of Fire.
- Surveying IPA members to learn how they are already active through local, national and international psychoanalytic outreach and consultation and make known to members the many model projects that exist.
Such efforts can help our troubled world. They can also help the public recognize the clinical, cultural and societal value of psychoanalytic thinking.
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