From the President December 2020

As we make a transition from 2020 to 2021, I’d like to thank the members of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee for their hard work during this challenging year. This will be my final column as president, and I want to welcome the next president Joe Schaller. I’m confident in Joe’s ability to lead the division forward. Joe has been very experienced in division work for over 20 years. I greatly appreciate his consultation and the consultation of past president Dennis Debiak. They have been great partners to work with during these very trying times. 

Obviously the COVID-19 crisis created enormous challenges for the SPPP as it did for all its members. This was the first time SPPP ever had to cancel the spring meeting. In addition to all the lost educational experiences and personal contact, we were concerned about the potential significant financial ramifications to the division in having to cancel meetings that involve substantial financial commitments. Fortunately, the negotiations with the conference hotel proved successful and minimized the potential fallout to the division. I especially want to thank our Conference Coordinator, Heather Kennedy, for her tremendous work as an advocate for the division and our Treasurer, Jill Bellinson, for helping the Board evaluate our situation. We are in good standing to approach the spring meeting for 2021.

The 2021 Spring conference will be virtual. There has been a lot of hard work and coordination behind the scenes to make this possible and to make it a strong platform for the division. Steven Anen, our Program Chair, and our Conference Co-Chairs Lara Sheehi, Leilani Salvo Crane, and Nadine Obeid have put in a tremendous amount of work in converting a live conference to a virtual one that will be meaningful, productive, and enable participants to receive CE credit. They were able to preserve most of the presentations for Reckoning/Foresight. Although there are the significant losses of physical space for us to meet as a division, they were able to maintain programming that sets to take up themes of underrepresented areas of inquiry, including displacement, anti-racism and decolonization. Our CE Committee Chair, Soffia Palsdottir, spearheaded the division’s procurement of home-study approval for CE from APA. Conference registrants will be able to access programming during and after the conference for CE credit or simply out of professional educational interest. Of course, we encourage everyone to attend live events as much as possible, but also to recognize that there will be opportunity to view recorded events and receive CE credit. SPPP is acquiring enough capacity in our video platform to also be able to hold other events during the year. As we roll out the virtual spring meeting for 2021, we will also be making plans to hold other events on our virtual platform as well. This represents a new era for the division that should include greater outreach to the membership and foster the capacity for more ongoing interactions.

Over the summer, I let the membership know about discussions that have been taking place within SPPP leadership about how to ensure that we become an organization that embodies the values of racial justice, recognizes the past and present harms done within our organization and organized psychoanalysis, and reforms the structures of our organization to promote these values in an ongoing and tangible way. As part of the process, we had initial discussions with an organizational consultant who came highly recommended by the Multicultural Concerns Committee. These initial discussions proved very helpful to our Executive Committee and Board of Directors. Unfortunately, the consultant’s schedule will not permit her involvement in this process in a timely way for SPPP. The Board of Directors remains committed to this process. As such, Joe Schaller will be appointing a task force to move this process forward, including the process of securing outside consultation. We have felt clear that is important to bring outside consultation to this process and not simply rely on internal mechanisms to address these concerns.

I want to update members on progress with respect to our efforts at engaging Lyra Health on its misleading white paper that listed psychoanalysis as an iatrogenic treatment. After SPPP wrote two letters and received two replies from the Lyra CEO, Lyra has removed psychoanalysis from its list of iatrogenic treatments. I’d like to thank Dana Sinopoli, Chair of the Professional Issues Committee, for her work on this process, and committee members for their input. The extensive input from Stephen Soldz was especially helpful. We consider this to be a major victory for psychoanalysis. We hope that it serves as evidence that forcefully engaging false and misleading information about psychoanalysis in public spheres is a vital and potentially effective undertaking. We cannot simply complain among ourselves about misrepresentation. We should be proactive in countering false and misleading information about our field.

The task force for the LGBTQ+ apology letter has completed its process, and the Board has voted unanimously to approve the letter. We believe the division will see this as a valuable component of our efforts to ensure the division as a space of inclusion and efforts to re-examine the history of psychoanalysis. I’d like to think the task force co-chairs Usha Tummala-Narra and Matt LeRoy for their work and process in developing this letter. There are a few details to iron out, and then we will be distributing the letter on our website and in InSight.

I’d like to conclude by providing members with some information on various activities going on within the division and across divisions. In addition to obtaining home-study approval for CE, the Continuing Education committee has obtained approval for renewal of CE sponsorship for LCSWs and LMSWs in the State of New York. We are also applying for organizational recognition in New York to be an approved provider of CE for New York psychologists. The Membership Committee has joined a pilot program in conjunction with Section V in which participants read and discuss pre-circulated articles for CE credit. JoAnn Ponder has spearheaded this effort. The Candidate Outreach Committee under the leadership of co-chairs Noemi Ford and Michael Klein have held Zoom meetings for candidates, created a listserv, a website, and started a senior analyst/candidate mentorship program. They’ve also launched an essay contest via emails and the website. Our Federal Advocacy Coordinator, Marilyn Metzl, has noted several issues being addressed by APA advocacy, including advising Congress on mental health issues associated with climate change, speaking out against Medicare as proposed cuts in reimbursement, raising awareness about pediatric mental health, and supporting Medicare coverage of services for eating disorders. The Graduate Student Committee under the leadership of Anna Marie Baldauf and Alicia MacDougall continues to build a network of graduate students who have an interest in psychoanalytic psychology as well as provide support and resources for graduate students. The Graduate Student Committee has also worked diligently to help promote the Scholars Program. The committee maintains an active listserv, a campus rep program and has sent representatives to the American born Academy for Psychoanalysis to address issues of diversity and access to the ABPP in psychoanalysis and the need for ABPP specialty in psychodynamic psychology.

The Divisions for Social Justice (DSJ) has been re-invigorated and now expanded by two divisions (Divisions 41-law & 49-group psychology have now joined). Representatives from 22 of APA’s 56 divisions are current members of DSJ. SPPP is now also well represented in its leadership.  SPPP Council Representative Lu Steinberg is the Chair of DSJ, Kenji Miyamoto (SPPP co-chair of summer APA programming) was recently elected secretary of DSJ and Shara Sand and Oksana Yakushko (also co-chair of summer APA programming) are actively participating. For this past summer’s 2020 DSJ programming, Division 39 worked closely with Divisions 27, 29, 34 & 52, and focused on Climate Justice. The topics that were just submitted for 2021 APA convention are Deconstructing and Reconstructing Psychology; How Do We Understand Structural Racism & Decolonizing Psychology; and Critiquing our Past to Understand our Present and Plan for our Future. Division 39 is one of the 4 contributing divisions to this programming, taking an active role in both developing the panels and chairing one of them. In addition, DSJ is looking to take on more advocacy and policy work.

Another interdivisional endeavor that SPPP has been an active part of is the COVID-19 Task force consisting of 13 APA divisions. The idea for the task force was introduced by co-chair of the SPPP Psychoanalysis and Healthcare Committee Maureen O’Reilly-Landry and, with Judie Alpert’s help, was introduced to Division 56’s (Division of Trauma Psychology). Divisions 39, 56 and 52 are considered the Founding Divisions. The task force is chaired by Charles Figley. Division 39 members have taken active roles in chairing working groups. Maureen O’Reilly-Landry chairs the Hospital group.  Division 39 members participate in the many working groups, including drop-in groups engaging mental health professionals around the world who are working in differing venues, addressing health inequities, the shared trauma of isolation, adjusting to remote work, etc. In addition, the working groups have developed webinars and a psychology today blog. The SPPP members contributing to these efforts include Liz Goren, Mary-Joan Gerson, Janet Plotkin Bornstein, Almas Merchant & June Lee Kwon.

It's been an honor and a privilege to serve as president of SPPP these last two years, and I look forward to serving as past president and chair of the Nominations and Elections Committee. Although 2020 has been a year of struggle for us, I believe we can anticipate great things for SPPP in 2021 under the leadership of Joe Schaller. I hope everyone has happy and safe holidays!

**Please note that Dr. Dauphin is now our Immediate Past President.

From the President March 2020

I wanted to update you on our efforts to address the false and misleading white paper distributed by Lyra Health, which labelled psychoanalysis as iatrogenic. You can see our letter to Lyra here: OPEN LETTER.

I distributed our letter to Lyra in the most recent edition of Insight, which should have arrived in members’ emails on March 1. To review:

Dana Sinopoli and I began a process with the Professional Issues Committee to draft a letter to Lyra. When we got to a "good place" with that letter, Dana and I had two conference calls with APA, which included Jared Skillings, Deanne Ottaviano, Lynn Bufka and Alan Nessman. They suggested how we could put Lyra on notice that it had now been informed that it published false and damaging information with respect to psychoanalysis. They agreed that Lyra's labeling psychoanalysis as iatrogenic was completely wrong and holds them open to potential litigation in the way they've done it. We are appreciative of APA’s efforts in this matter.

Jared thanked the division for bringing this to their attention. They appreciated our advocacy and leadership, as Lyra’s communications could affect other divisions and patient populations. The APA group looked through this white paper (November 2019), which labeled psychoanalysis as iatrogenic, and another one Lyra published in March 2019 and had concerns with respect to other divisions (especially Division 30-Hypnosis). So APA has contacted Division 30 and will write its own letter. APA will take a more educative approach with Lyra but was comfortable with our hard-nosed letter. We have shared our letter with Division 30 in order to be of assistance with their efforts. Dana Sinopoli has done an extensive amount of work for this and deserves our appreciation and gratitude. I want to acknowledge other contributors, especially Ghislaine Boulanger, Dana Charatan, Stephen Soldz, and Allan Scholom, all of whom made substantive suggestions. This was a real team effort.

Lyra Health CEO, David Ebersman, responded to our letter. Much to our chagrin, but nonetheless expected, he did not address our central concern that its white paper had labelled psychoanalysis as iatrogenic and, in doing so, implied that practitioners of psychoanalysis are essentially committing malpractice. He wrote that, “Our white paper represents our view in the marketplace of ideas.” While conceding that “…there are psychodynamic treatments with demonstrated efficacy”, he indicated that they would, “…update the white paper to be more specific about the types of psychoanalysis, such as Freudian psychosexual theory, we are uncomfortable supporting in our program.” You can access their response here: OPEN LETTER.

While we are pleased with the somewhat conciliatory tone of Lyra’s response and that it recognizes the demonstrated efficacy of some psychodynamic treatments, its response falls far short of addressing our concerns. They have not yet retracted the false claim of psychoanalysis as iatrogenic nor did he even mention this in his response. None of the research that they cite in their white paper even makes this claim. Furthermore, it is possible to not support a particular therapy modality within a specific business model, but that is quite different from spreading false information and labelling the false information as an accurate appraisal of the research.

We will be replying to Lyra’s response and will be discussing this issue at our upcoming Executive Committee meeting, notwithstanding that the cancellation of our spring conference has altered the timing of some meetings. We have also informed APA of Lyra’s response and look forward to working with them on this issue. We will keep members updated as this develops further.

Barry Dauphin, PhD, ABPP