Welcome

Happy spring! April is here, which means our annual Spring Meeting is just around the corner. Our 45th annual conference, Institutional Life: Reclaiming Life from Institutions, will be held at the New York Midtown Hilton from April 22–25.

I want to give a shout-out to our co-chairs, Brianna Suslovic and Helen deVinney, along with the Steering Committee—Mamta Dadlani, Geoffrey Hervey, Kristen Miller, and Laura Westmoreland—under the advisement of Avgi Saketopoulou. I also want to extend an enormous thank you to both Stephen Anen and Nicholas diCarlo, our outgoing and incoming program chairs. In particular, Stephen deserves a deep debt of gratitude for his eight years of steadfast leadership. He shepherded us through the cancellation of the 2020 Spring Meeting, the shift to a virtual conference in 2021, and the pivot from an in-person to an online format again in 2022. Thank you so much, Stephen, for the labor, steadiness, and wisdom you have brought to leading our conferences. You will be missed! Thankfully, we are in very good hands with Nicholas, whom Stephen has been mentoring into this new role.

There has been much discussion about our decision to hold the meeting at the Hilton, given their partnership with ICE to provide housing. While I do not want to revisit that topic (you can refer to my March 16 email), I do need to acknowledge an error in that message. I wrote: “We signed a contract with the Hilton in 2022 for both the 2023 and 2026 meetings…to avoid a $100K penalty for the unavoidable cancellation of the 2020 Spring Meeting…” I apologize for this misinformation.

Here is the correction: We were originally scheduled to meet at the Grand Hyatt in 2020 but canceled due to COVID-19. The 2021 Spring Meeting was then moved from Chicago back to New York City at the Grand Hyatt, before ultimately shifting to a fully virtual format. In March/April 2022, then-president Joseph Schaller signed a contract with the Hilton Midtown for the 2023 and 2026 Spring Meetings. This decision followed an extensive search for a new New York City venue, as the Grand Hyatt had begun major renovations that would have made hosting our conference there impractical. At the time, the Hilton was the only venue able to meet our space needs at a reasonable cost. Committing to two meetings allowed us to negotiate a more favorable rate, especially during the early and uncertain stages of the post-COVID conference landscape.

I also want to acknowledge how dramatically the professional and academic conference landscape has changed since 2020. As I’ve noted elsewhere, our meetings have shifted from being a more or less reliable source of income for SPPP to becoming significantly more costly, while attendance has declined. This decline reflects both older members feeling less able to travel and younger members facing financial and professional barriers to participation.

We are actively exploring ways to address these challenges. One step has been moving away from the previous three-year rotation model (New York City, another major psychoanalytic hub, and a smaller or more remote location). Instead, we will now hold virtual conferences every other year to reduce costs and expand access for international members and others who may have compelling reasons not to travel to the U.S. We are also considering transitioning away from hotel venues altogether, as rising costs are becoming unsustainable, and exploring university-based settings instead. We will keep you informed as decisions are made about the 2028 meeting; the 2027 conference will be virtual.

I know many of you are eager for details about receptions and social gatherings, and we will share that information soon. In the meantime, I encourage those of you considering attending—but who have not yet registered—to do so. From my own experience, our conferences offer a wonderful opportunity not only to learn, network, and earn CE credits, but also to connect with like-minded colleagues and build a professional home.

I am also looking forward to seeing many of you whom I am lucky to call friends, and to meeting those of you I have not yet had the chance to know. If you see me at the meeting, please come say hello!

Finally, for graduate students, early-career professionals, first-time SPPP attendees, and those who tend to be introverted: I know how intimidating these meetings can feel. If something does not feel welcoming or right, please come speak with me—or message me if that feels easier. And please don’t hesitate to raise your hand, ask questions, and engage in the dialogue. Even after 18 years of attending these meetings, I still find that as soon as I raise my hand to voice a comment or question, my heart rate spikes and feels so loud that the microphone will capture it. Your contributions do not need to be perfectly polished or exceptionally erudite to be meaningful—they just need to be shared. We truly do want to hear from you.

See you in NYC!

Dana Charatan, PsyD
SPPP President