International Psychoanalysis

I had never heard of It’s a Wonderful Life until one winter night in the early eighties. I was feeling out of sorts. I don’t remember the particular details but I know that I was feeling down, unfulfilled, frustrated, disappointed, perhaps lonely, unconfident, worried and otherwise unhappy. Those who have never felt that way need not read on.

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Click Here to Read: Part V of Arnold Richards’s interview with Charles Fisher: “The Middle Decades–1940 to 1969: Practice, Teaching, and Research.”

DISCUSSION GROUP 71 will meet at our usual time slot 4:45-7:15 PM on Thursday,
January 18, at the APsaA Meetings at the Waldorf Astori in New York City.  All attendees at the Winter Meeting are cordially invited to attend up to the space limits of our assigned room.

As momentum continues to build for the wide-spread conversion of medical records to electronic form, increasingly complicated and confusing issues arise as to if and how we can translate our traditional methods of maintaining the privacy of patient information into what may well become mandatory arrangements in the coming new world of health care.  If we hope to maintain the status of psychoanalysis as part of the health care system, we must face these challenges head on.

Continuing with our overall theme of exploring and discussing broad issues of psychoanalytic confidentiality in an interdisciplinary context, the Jaffee-Redmond The Discussion Group’s January meeting will again focus on the transition to the new world of electronic record-keeping and the challenges to privacy that we will be facing as a result.

We are most fortunate in having as our Guest Discussant for this meeting ROBERT PLOVNICK, M.S., M.D., Director, Dept. of Quality Improvement and Psychiatric Services, American Psychiatric Association.  Rob is both a psychiatrist and an “informatics” expert and is especially sensitive to the special privacy needs of psychiatric patients.  He has represented the APA in a wide variety of national forums where the actual structures of the electronic medical records systems of the future are NOW being negotiated. 

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DG #11. Conversations with Doctors:  From Balint Groups to Narrative Medicine
Wednesday, January 16 at the APsaA Meetings at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City at 2:00-4:30 PM

Co-chair and Facilitator:  Fred L. Griffin, M.D.  (Birmingham)
Co-chair and Presenter:  Randall H. Paulsen, M.D. (Boston)
Presenter:  Nina Calabresi, M.D. (Boston)

     Narrative medicine is an emergent field in which clinicians creatively write about their subjective experiences with patients and reflect upon what they learn about themselves and about clinical process.  The act of writing generates a reflective space, and seeing oneself with a patient on the written page may create a very powerful self-analytic process that increases the capacities for self-awareness and self-reflection.  Time-honored Balint Group work results in similar achievements by way of case presentations that are discussed by groups of physicians. 

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Click Here to Read: Gertraud Schlesinger-Kipps’ Welcome and Introduction to the IPA Berlin Conference in July 2007.