Publications

This congress was not supposed to occur. But it did—and with great success. Though fewer IPA members attended than we had hoped (846), local attendance swelled Congress participation to 2,028. Of these, more than 600 were Mexican university students who came from all over the country.

Unique features of this Congress were tied to the Local Arrangement Committee (LAC), which was headed by three chairs. Two of them—Rosalba Bueno (PSM and LAISP) and Raquel Berman (MAPPTR and IPTAR)—are longtime members of CIPS. This is noteworthy and not coincidental. They are founding members of the two Mexico City societies that integrated into IPA in the l990s. These events ended the hegemony of one psychoanalytic society (MPA) that had since 1957 maintained a monopoly on psychoanalytic training in Mexico City.

The three-headed LAC model prevailed in spite of recurrent opposition to it and efforts to dissolve it. We wanted to insure horizontality and equality for the new IPA societies in the local organization of the upcoming international IPA congress—the first in Mexico although psychoanalysis has existed for sixty years—as well as to affirm the plurality of IPA societies in contemporary Mexico. Rosalba Bueno and Raquel Berman felt a great affinity with Steve Ellman, who chaired the Scientific Program committee, because of the key role he played during our Societies’ early struggles to join the IPA (see Berman, R, 2010*).ico City.  More

I would like to share with CIPS members that the IPA Congress in Mexico was a spectacular success, with approximately 2000 attending, a greater number than at the previous Chicago Congress. The attendees were completely secure and safe, hosted by the Mexican IPA societies, and, in addition to the fascinating panels and post-panel sub-group discussions on the Unconscious, Dreams and Sexuality and the numerous sub-panels and individual paper presentations, the participants were able to explore and experience, the many cultural, artistic and archeological riches of this fabulous city, as well as consume, its richly diverse, delectable cuisine.  More

Enactment: Ubiquitous, Disquieting, and Illuminating

Chair: Nancy Goodman

Panelists:  Batya Monder, Enactment: An Expanding Concept; Raquel Berman, Enactment and the Cruel Maternal Super-Ego; Elizabeth Fritsch (reader of Batya's paper).


Discussant: Antonino Ferro



Our panel was made up of three members of the CIPS study group on the topic of “enactment.” Nancy Goodman introduced the panel by speaking briefly about the history of the group and what we have been uncovering about the enactment process. The two papers are richly based on clinical experience as well as understanding of the literature on enactments. Batya Mondar and Raquel Berman truly brought the audience into the feel of the consulting room when action is a mode of communication. Elizabeth Fritsch joined us by reading Batya's paper and adding to the discussion.  More

I have always found that a particular of going to the IPA congresses is the exposure to colleagues work from different countries. It is easy to maintain the fantasy that “our way” is in fact the way most individuals practice psychoanalysis. This fantasy was very pleasantly dispelled in Mexico City at the 47th IPA Congress. The focus of the congress on Sexuality, Dreams, and the Unconscious really honed in on basic psychoanalytic concepts. And the presenters at the Major Panels on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday highlighted the commonalities and differences in how we see these three crucial areas of psychoanalytic theory and their reverberations in technique. I think we can all be proud of the work CIPS member Steve Ellman did as chair of the committee that organized the conceptual theme of this congress.  More

For the sake of people in emotional pain who are wondering if they can be helped, it is important to counter the misleading opinions about individual psychotherapy presented in the interview with Dr. Alan Kazdin (Healthland, Sept. 13). We are wholeheartedly in agreement with Dr. Kazdin’s opinion that effective mental health treatment needs to be made more widely available. However, his comments about individual psychotherapy are wildly inaccurate and ignore current research. Ironically, as he speaks out to try to help suffering people, Dr. Kazdin’s remarks may damage people’s chances of receiving the most helpful treatment.

 More

CIPS board member, Marilyn Rifkin, LICSW, FIPA submitted the following review of a paper by Allan Frosch, PhD, FIPA recently published in Psychoanalytic Review (February 2011). Entitled, The Effect of Frequency and Duration on Psychoanalytic Outcome: A Moment in Time, this paper considers an issue central to all of us endeavoring to practice psychoanalytically in an age endlessly fascinated with ever faster transmission of data and “solution oriented” forms of mental health treatment.  More