Selected Facts, Fall 2015

Welcome to the Fall 2015 edition of Selected Facts: Newsletter of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. To our new and returning readers, we hope you find this issue interesting and useful in keeping up to date on what has been happening at Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. As regular features, we have letters from the President, Director of Training, and Candidate President, along with committee reports from the NPSI Society and Institute.

In addition to a reflection on the recent IPA Congress in Boston by Maxine Anderson in our International News section, this issue features an exciting preview of EBOR 2016, NPSI's signature conference that contributes to our awareness of what is evolving in psychoanalytic theory from a British Object Relations perspective.

As has been customary, we are also pleased to present news related to the professional accomplishments of our individual candidate, analyst, and community members in a section we call "Members In Action." This month features announcements regarding members Caron Harrang and Shierry Nicholsen, as well as candidate David Parnes.

Finally, we have included a brief survey at the end of the newsletter so you can let us know how we're doing. Your responses will be extremely helpful in planning for future issues.

If you have questions or comments about the articles we publish, are a member with an idea for a story, or want to join the newsletter staff, please write to me here . Also, feel free to forward the newsletter to individual colleagues who may not be on our mailing list. Forwarding directions are at the bottom of every issue. The next issue of Selected Facts will be published this coming winter (February 2016).

Maxine Nelson, LICSW FIPA

Managing Editor

NPSI Board of Directors

President: Caron Harrang

Past-President: David Jachim

Secretary/Treasurer: Maxine Nelson

Director of Training: Dana Blue

Director: Adriana Prengler

Administrator/Recording Secretary: Hollee Sweet (non-voting)

Candidate Representative: Julie Hendrickson (non-voting)

Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute is a non-profit corporation dedicated to educational and scientific activities based in Seattle, Washington. The primary mission of the organization is to provide the highest quality psychoanalytic education and training for individuals seeking to become psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically informed psychotherapists. The organization also supports the ongoing professional growth and development of our psychoanalyst, candidate, and community members. In so doing, the organization aims to contribute to the current regional, national, and international psychoanalytic understanding of mental life and to the emotional health, creativity, and well-being of those treated through the practice of psychoanalysis.

Letter from the President

"If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together"

African Proverb

Fall is always a busy time for any psychoanalytic society and institute as faculty and candidates resume didactic work after the summer break, committees continue work on activities slated for the academic year, and the board focuses on keeping both society and institute goals in line with its strategic plan. As NPSI President it is my job to keep the big picture in mind while at the same time attending to the many details involved in running a successful educational non-profit organization.

Before sharing a few thoughts about what's emerging in the governance of NPSI, I'd like to share a moment of inspiration derived from the daylong meeting for IPA Society Presidents held last July at the 49th Congress of the IPA/23rd IPSO Conference in Boston. This was my first opportunity to meet other Presidents in a meeting chaired by IPA President Stefano Bolognini and Vice-President Alexandra Billinghurst. What struck me is how passionate psychoanalysts are as a group and how devoted to maintaining our profession and nurturing the development of the next generation of analysts who are our future. To emphasize the importance of working together to further psychoanalytic training and the ongoing development of theory and technique, Stefano quoted an African proverb that says, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." This struck me as deeply relevant for NPSI as a relatively young psychoanalytic organization. Even as individual effort is required in any organization, it is only when individuals work together, despite differences and inevitable conflicts, that anything significant is accomplished.

With this proverb in mind, let me share a few of things we've accomplished by going together. In the last issue of Selected Facts I reported that the Board had formed an Advisory Council of experts in mental health law, accounting, financial planning, social media, distance learning, education policy, and fundraising. In September the Board and available Council members (shown below) met for the first time to discuss the organization's needs and how we can work together. Out of that meeting a committee was formed to pursue distance learning as described in the Director of Training letter (see below). Other plans include novel ways to approach fundraising and how to continue reaching out to the community to increase our visibility. For example, we now have a LinkedIn page allowing us to connect with colleagues around the world. Check it out (and follow us) at https://www.linkedin.com/company/northwestern-psychoanalytic-society-&-institute

Left to right: Doug Ulrich, Teddy Jachim, Gary Kunis, and Patrick Nalbone

Another way we are going forward together is in co-sponsoring some of our special events. For example, we have teamed up with the Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study to bring Joseph Aguayo, PhD FIPA to Seattle for a two-day workshop on February 5-6, 2016 titled "Reconsidering the Contributions of Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion: Then and Now." Leading up to this workshop, NPSI will host a series of monthly seminars focusing on seminal papers by Winnicott and one concentrating on Bion's Italian Seminars and taught by Morry Tolmach, Ann Glasser, Jeff Eaton, Maxine Nelson and myself.

In the spring, monthly seminars will continue as we prepare for EBOR 2016 on "The Feeling Mind and Lived Experience: Clinical Transformations in Psychoanalysis." We are very excited to have Mark Solms, PhD FIPA (South Africa) with us as one of our plenary presenters along with Maxine Anderson, MD FIPA. Working together on this, our most important special event, is a dynamo organizing committee chaired by Rikki Ricard and including Gina Balli, Margaret Bergmann-Ness, Claudette Cummings, Lynn Cunningham, Ken Cunningham, Anna Delacroix, Tony Hacker, Julie Hendrickson, Adrian Jarreau, and Barbara Sewell. Stay tuned for additional information on our Eleventh International Evolving British Object Relations Conference (October 28-30, 2016).

I want to note that our community continues to grow adding diversity and richness to our organization. Since the last issue of the newsletter the following individuals have become NPSI Community Members: Eric Huffman, LICSW, Christopher Keats, MD FIPA, Kimberly McKittrick, Mary Sacco, LMHC, Darchelle Worley, LMHCA, and Jeffrey Ochsner, FAIA. We welcome each of you and look forward to your participation in our scientific meetings, study groups, and new certificate program detailed in the Director of Training letter (below).

In closing I want to thank everyone at NPSI who is "going together" to help our training institute and membership society develop and grow. Without your passion and hard work we would not be able to continue our psychoanalytic training, develop distance-learning capability, produce a successful biennial international conference, expand our study group offerings, or develop a certificate program to share fundamental concepts in psychoanalysis. Your efforts individually and collectively and the creativity expressed in working together are my inspiration to continue working as President of NPSI.

Caron Harrang, LICSW FIPA

President, NPSI

Letter from the Director of Training

Welcome to the new academic year!

Candidates returned to classes just after Labor Day and seeds planted last spring are well into a growth cycle. At the same time, new seeds are being sewn. In NPSI terms, here is the news of this season from the Institute.

Accreditation

After two years of preparation, and a tightly scheduled site visit last spring, NPSI received word in July that the Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education had granted us initial one-year accreditation for our training program in psychoanalysis. Special thanks are due to the ACPE Committee, chaired by Maxine Anderson and David Jachim and comprised of Margie Bone, Caron Harrang, Patrick Nalbone, Nicole Wiggins, and myself. This group worked tirelessly to draft, collect and collate replies from many members to the extensive ACPE application questions. Our completed document was over 100 pages long, without the six appendices.

At the site visit in April, the goal was to demonstrate the workings of the whole organization, which we did over a very busy few days. Thanks to all who attended the classes, clinical seminars, supervisions, committee meetings, board meeting and wrap up session with our visitors. They were particularly impressed with our ability to work together as a group, with our entire community participating in the effort.

The report from ACPE was complimentary, noting many areas of strength at NPSI. The major improvement called for was to promote external certification for our analyst members. This issue dovetails with work by the NPSI Board, so stay tuned for details about how we intend to accomplish this. We will file a report with ACPE next year outlining our progress and at that point hope to secure accreditation that will extend for several years. In addition to enhancing our credibility and demonstrating our commitment to high psychoanalytic standards, accreditation will eventually allow our candidates to receive federal student loans.

Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis

In October, NPSI faculty inaugurated its new certificate course titled "Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis." Course participants are meeting weekly during the academic year to study the bedrock concepts of psychoanalytic theory and technique. The faculty rotate monthly, so that by the conclusion of the course, learners will have met many NPSI members, candidates and passionate colleagues, in addition to becoming better acquainted with the concepts that underlie our field.

In other training news, you will have read in the President's letter (above) the announcement of monthly seminars being planned to provide ongoing learning for therapists and analysts in the community in preparation for the Joseph Aguayo event scheduled for February of next year and our biennial Evolving British Object Relations conference in October 2016.

Changes in Requirements for Control Case Frequency

Following a lively discussion at the NPSI membership meeting held last May, in concert with training organizations around the globe as described by IPA President Stefano Bolognini, and in response to feedback from our candidates, the Education Committee implemented an important change in training requirements at the June meeting. NPSI candidates may now receive credit for one of their three training cases at a frequency of (at least) three times per week. The other two cases will remain at a frequency of four or five times per week as previously required. I invite everyone to observe the impacts, where evident, of this change to continue to help our training evolve in pace with the rest of the world community of psychoanalysts, while carrying forward the excellence for which our program is well known.

PEP-Web

In the past, NPSI members and candidates have needed to personally decide whether to subscribe as individuals to the Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing website (PEP-Web). The PEP is an online database that contains articles and papers from all the major psychoanalytic journals and many classic psychoanalytic texts (including the full-text and editorial notes of the 24 volumes of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud). With the addition of our Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis course, the Institute's need for accessibility to the PEP increased and the decision was made to invest in our own subscription. This allows our members and candidates to subscribe through NPSI (rather than through their memberships in other organizations) and permits the reprinting of articles for our classes that conforms to copyright regulations. Another exciting development is that, thanks to a generous donation from the Lynn Cunningham family, we now also have a computer terminal at NPSI, which serves as an internet access point for students in our classes.

Distance Learning

The newly formed Distance Learning Committee, comprised of Board Advisory Council members Gary Kunis and Patrick Nalbone, along with Caron Harrang and myself, has established its goals for the coming year. These include securing funding, developing policies and procedures, and selecting and installing the necessary technology that will allow NPSI to offer virtual training in both real-time and previously recorded formats.

In anticipation of a productive academic year,

Dana Blue, LICSW FIPA

Director of Training

Letter from the Candidate President

This summer, I attended the IPA Congress in Boston. It was my first congress and I found the experience really quite profound. The individual papers and presentations aside, the overall experience of meeting with analysts and candidates from every corner of the globe was remarkable. In part, I think it was a feeling of there being solidarity in numbers. From the isolation of the office to the marginalization of our discipline in the larger community, it felt wonderful to be together with so many others who have committed themselves to the field. I felt warmly welcomed by fellow candidates and IPSO committee members, and rejuvenated to be in the presence of other eager beginners. And I was many times moved and humbled by the senior and seasoned, wise and wizened. I left Boston feeling I had a keener sense of my place in the analytic community: on one hand, feeling that I have received excellent training at NPSI, and on the other hand, that I still have lots to learn.

One of the highlights of the congress was the chance to hear Otto Kernberg being interviewed by a younger colleague. His stories, anecdotes, wry observations and passionate exhortations were mesmerizing. Among the many things he spoke of was how analysts, in decades past and particularly in the universities, had held considerable power and status. He considers the later decline of this power and status to be in part the result of an arrogant and dismissive attitude towards other disciplines that led to a backlash against psychoanalysis. He urged the analytic community to reengage with other disciplines, in universities and other settings, to bring psychoanalysis into greater connection and dialogue with other fields and to decrease its relative isolation.

As I begin my two-year term as candidate president, I have been thinking about this new role I'm taking on, as a liaison between the candidates and the Institute. My thoughts go to the poor Ego, having to navigate between the competing demands of the Id and the Superego (as well as the external world)! I also think about my attempts as an analyst to maintain a neutral and equidistant position in respect to the different parts of a patient's self. I hope I can contribute to and foster open and productive communication between candidates, faculty and committees.

This last month, I observed the holiday of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Though not a particularly religious person, I am always moved by the holiday's themes: acknowledgment of the mistakes and harms done in the past, humility, and moving forward into the next year with a fresh start. I suppose this comes to mind because I sense my own growth as a clinician (and a person) is maintained by the ongoing work of embodying these ideas. As well, I see the need of the analytic community as a whole to inhabit these traits, as it strives to maintain its vitality and rejuvenate its status in society.

And so a new year begins afresh.

David Parnes, LICSW

Candidate President

Regional and International News

The 49th Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association and 23rd International Psychoanalytic Studies Organization Conference

"Changing World: The shape and use of psychoanalytic tools today"

Many members of the NPSI community participated in the IPA/IPSO Congress in Boston this past July. Maxine Anderson, MD FIPA, former NPSI Director of Training, shares a reflection on the closing ceremonies of the Congress:

It is no longer a puzzle why I stayed through the closing ceremonies of this IPA Congress. It had been an intense time, from Tuesday through Saturday, participating in many sessions. Many sessions, of course, I did not get to sample. It had been a very busy several days and I felt saturated, both intellectually and emotionally. And yet, I did not feel like leaving the premises until the Congress was officially over. It helped that the closing ceremonies occurred on Saturday afternoon rather than Sunday, which meant that I could easily catch my Sunday morning flight home without missing anything.

So I sat with an old friend from the East Coast that last Saturday afternoon, and we agreed to go to dinner together following the ceremonies. It seemed that neither of us wanted to say goodbye to this Congress as we both thought we had experienced several goodbyes recently: she to serving on the IPA Board, and I to my Institute position at NPSI, but also to several friends and family I was not likely to see for a long time.

What stands out in my mind from those ceremonies were IPA Vice-President Alexandra Billinghurst's final words: a poem by a Swedish poet, which she first read in Swedish and then in English. I had the occasion to speak with Alexandra briefly, an hour or so after she closed the Congress with the poem, and we both came to tears recounting her reading of the poem and the impact it had on each of us. I offer it here:

Everyone is a world, peopled

by blind beings in dark commotion

against the self the king who rules them.

In every soul thousands of souls are trapped,

in every world thousands of worlds are hidden

and these blind, these underworlds

are real and living, though incomplete,

as true as I am real. And we kings

and princes of the thousand possibilities in us

are ourselves servants, trapped

in some greater creature, whose self and being

we grasp as little as our own superior

his superior. Our own feelings have taken

the color of their love and death.

As when a mighty steamship passes

far out, under the horizon, lying

in the evening glitter. - And we don't know about it

until the swell reaches us on the shore,

first one, then another, and then many

which strike and boom until everything has become

as before. - Yet everything is different.

So we shades are troubled by a strange unease

When something tells us that others have gone ahead,

That some of the possibilities have been released.

From Songs of Something Else: S elected Poems of Gunnar Ekelöf.

Translated by James Larson and Leonard Nathan

Princeton Legacy Library (1982).

Save-the-Date

Call for Papers Coming Soon!

Sabah Al-Dhahar

Eleventh International

Evolving British Object Relations Conference

Sponsored by Northwest Psychoanalytic Society and Institute

"The Feeling Mind and Lived Experience:

Clinical Transformations in Psychoanalysis"

October 28-30, 2016 - Pan Pacific Hotel - Seattle

Plenary presenters:

Mark Solms

Maxine Anderson

Mark Solms, PhD FIPA is Professor, Department of Neuropsychology, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and current Chair of the Research Committee of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He is also a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and a Training and Supervising Analyst with the South African Psychoanalytical Association as well as its current President. He has published over 300 papers in both neuroscience and psychoanalytic journals and five books, including The Neuropsychology of Dreams (1997), Clinical Studies in Neuropsychoanalysis (2000), and The Brain and the Inner World (2002). His last book was a bestseller and has been translated into nine languages. He is the editor of the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud and the forthcoming Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud.

Maxine Anderson, MD FIPA is a Training and Supervising Analyst with the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Oregon Psychoanalytic Center, and the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. She is also a full Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Contemporary Kleinian and Bionion thought impacts her thinking, as reflected in several of her published papers and chapters, as she's tried to look closely at the realms of our humanity (as thought-based functioning) and our inhumanity (as the collapse of the space needed for thought). Her most current focus has been on lived experience, a view of the realms of intuitive, affective experience as the fount of creative potential and growth, which must be mediated and elaborated into thought but which can also be enslaved and even tyrannized by our thought-based positions. Her forthcoming book, with the working title of The Wisdom of Lived Experience , explores these issues.

If you are interested in joining the organizing committee, please contact Rikki Ricard at [email protected] . This invitation extends to individuals living in other major cities in the United States, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia who would like to help promote EBOR 2016.

NPSI Society News

Courtesy of Joe Aguayo

Workshop with Joseph Aguayo

by Caron Harrang, LICSW FIPA and Maxine Nelson, LICSW FIPA

NPSI in co-sponsorship with the Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study will be presenting a two-day workshop on February 5-6, 2016, titled "Reconsidering the Contributions of Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion: Then and Now" and featuring

Joseph Aguayo, PhD FIPA, a Training and Supervising analyst with the Psychoanalytic Center of California (PCC) in Los Angeles.

The workshop will begin Friday evening with a public lecture by Joe titled "Winnicott and Bion: Irreconcilable Differences?"

Saturday morning includes a panel discussion on "Bion's Italian Seminars: Facilitating and Learning from the Group Experience." The idea for this panel originated in a teleconference study group Joe facilitated in 2015, in which panel members Caron Harrang, LICSW FIPA and Maxine Nelson, LICSW FIPA were participants. The group read and discussed the nine seminars included in Wilfred R. Bion: The Italian Seminars , a series of clinical seminars Bion conducted between 1967 and 1979 (Los Angeles, 1967; Brasilia, 1975; Tavistock, 1976-79; Rome, 1977 and Sao Paolo, 1978) in which he transmitted ideas developed in his epistemological writings of the 1960s vis-à-vis his exemplification of "being in the moment" with a live audience. Organizers of the event are hoping to evoke Bion's way of working with groups. Thus, like a Matryoshka doll, the panel presentation will be a group experience intended to evoke not only a sense of what it was like to participate in the 2015 Italian Seminars study group with Joe, but also the experience of the Italian clinicians who participated in the 1977 seminars in Rome with Bion.

On Saturday afternoon, Joe will facilitate a clinical seminar exploring clinical material presented by an invited clinician. Discussion will include attention to how the case might be viewed from a Winnicottian or a Bionian perspective.

In preparation for the weekend workshop with Joe, we have planned four pre-event seminars which will take place the third Wednesday of the month from 7:30-9:00 pm at NPSI. The topics and facilitators for these meetings are:

October 21, 2015 : "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena" by D W Winnicott (1953). In Playing and Reality (Winnicott, 1971). Facilitated by Morry Tolmach, LICSW.

November 18, 2015 : "Hate in the Countertransference" by D W Winnicott (1947). In Pediatrics to Psychoanalysis: Collected Papers (Winnicott, 1992). Facilitated by Ann Glasser, PhD.

December 16, 2015 : "A Personal View of the Kleinian Development" by D W Winnicott (1962). In Maturational Processes (Winnicott, 1965). Facilitated by Jeff Eaton, MA FIPA.

January 20, 2016 : "A Binocular View of Bion's Italian Seminars." Facilitated by Caron Harrang, LICSW FIPA and Maxine Nelson, LICSW FIPA.

Details and location information for all NPSI events can be found on the NPSI website.

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EBOR 2016 Committee News

by Rikki Ricard, MA FIPA

The EBOR 2016 Committee is actively engaged in the planning stages. We are thrilled to have Mark Solms as a plenary speaker and Maxine Anderson as our second plenary. The evocative dialogue that will ensue around neuroscience and psychoanalysis promises to enrich and enliven all who participate in the conference. Works already published by Mark Solms, and in process by Maxine Anderson, have inspired the EBOR conference title, "The Feeling Mind and Lived Experience."

Please keep your eyes out for the Call for Papers and a Call for Art, which will both be coming out soon. Registration for the conference will follow shortly after. We expect this conference to fill quickly and encourage you to register once you receive the flyer that will include the official form. The EBOR Committee is actively reading and discussing a number of incredibly rich papers and our own conversations around these topics have proven to be quite inspiring. These dialogues will continue in a more public way beginning in March 2016 when we will have a number of monthly pre-conference meetings at NPSI to discuss these seminal ideas and their influence on our work as clinicians. Please stay-tuned for further information. Updates on EBOR 2016, including writings by both Solms and Anderson, will be found on the NPSI website , with additional items added regularly.

If you are interested in helping in some way to bring this conference into being, please contact me at [email protected] . There are many opportunities for involvement and a chance to bring this event forward from the ground up.

EBOR 2016 Committee:

Rikki Ricard (Chair)

Gina Balli

Margaret Bergmann-Ness

Claudette Cummings

Ken Cunningham

Lynn Cunningham

Anna Delacroix

Tony Hacker

Julie Hendrickson

Barb Sewell

Anticipating EBOR

by Lynn Cunningham, LICSW

EBOR 2016 Committee

"An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all."

Oscar Wilde

Old friends who visited at the end of the summer left a thank you card with this quote on the front. It occurred to me that Wilde's viewpoint is particularly apropos to our upcoming EBOR 2016 conference titled "The Feeling Mind and Lived Experience: Clinical Transformations in Psychoanalysis." When I re-read the quote, I began to wonder how Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein might have felt going out on a limb with unfamiliar psychoanalytic ideas about the mind, whether considering one part being in conflict with another part, or an internal world configured, from the beginning, by object relations, anxieties and defenses. Together with the personal confidence it takes to propose a novel idea, who wouldn't also feel some apprehension, mixed with the excitement that comes with sharing new thoughts? These brave thinkers stepped into a vulnerable space indeed among their critical-thinking peers.

Today, the dialectic going on between neuroscience and psychoanalysis is still fairly new. Can these diverse fields complement each other and create a dual-aspect monism now being called neuropsychoanalysis? In his early working years, Freud experienced methodological limitations as a neurologist hoping to map the structure and function of the human brain. Unable to bridge the gap between the physical brain and feeling mind without the necessary conceptual and technical tools, he turned to psychoanalysis to answer some of his questions. Advances in neuroscience enable neuroscientific methods to study both the mind's dynamic nature and the neural organization of its unconscious substructure. What seems possible is that a greater understanding of the brain and mind will come from abstractions derived from inferences that are built into figurative models. A better model of reality through the work of neuropsychoanalysis will evolve from "creativity at the boundaries between disciplines."

The EBOR 2016 conference offers Mark Solms, a neuroscientist and psychoanalyst, and Maxine Anderson, an MD and psychoanalyst, an opportunity to present their latest thinking on how the brain and mind relate. The time feels historically right for such a "bidirectional" collaborative enrichment. A dangerous idea is defined as one that may cause harm or loss, yet has the chance of successfully avoiding disaster and succeeding. These are strong words that give pause. Nevertheless, I'm backing success with its possibility of understanding some baffling old mysteries.

References:

Solms, M and Turnbull, O (2011). "What is Neuropsychoanalysis?" Neuropsychoanalysis, 2011, 13 (2).

Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (G & C Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, MA).

NPSI Institute News

Education Committee

by Dana Blue, Chair

The Education Committee is comprised of the chairs of all the NPSI committees involved in training, forming a network of representation from each of the constituencies of the Institute. As we begin the academic year, the EC includes:

Director of Training: Dana Blue, LICSW FIPA (Chair)

Curriculum/Faculty: Barbara Sewell, LMHC FIPA

Progression Committee: Judy K Eekhoff, PhD FIPA

Candidate President: David Parnes, LICSW

We currently have openings for an Admissions Committee chair and a chair for our group of Training Analysts, as well as a Dean of Students, a position that opened up in June after I was voted in as Director of Training by a special election of NPSI full members. The Board and EC are actively involved in filling these open positions.

Curriculum Committee

by Barbara Sewell, Chair

Current members of the Curriculum Committee, besides myself as Chair, include Esther Karson, Maxine Nelson, and Joshua Cohen (Candidate Representative).

In addition to carrying out our primary tasks (e.g., arranging teaching assignments; regularly evaluating the training curriculum; reviewing syllabi for didactic courses; supporting faculty facilitators; reviewing and discussing evaluations completed by candidates; providing written and/or verbal feedback to faculty), the committee has worked on the following issues during the past year:

Organizing syllabi and documenting meetings from the last two years as required for the ACPE accreditation process; providing written descriptions of our curriculum and meeting with site visitors to discuss the Institute's philosophy of teaching.

Providing feedback to instructors regarding the creation of effective learning objectives for courses and candidates' appreciation of these clear objectives.

Creating a systematic way of evaluating candidates' progress through their training.

Actively seeking qualified instructors from the Seattle psychoanalytic community as well as long distance instructors as recommended by the ACPE site visitors.

Progression Committee

by Judy K Eekhoff, Chair

Current members of the Progression Committee, besides myself as Chair, include Mirta Berman-Oelsner, Barbara Sewell, and Lynn Cunningham (Candidate Representative).

The Progression Committee meets the fourth Wednesday of every month. Candidates' reports are be reviewed every other month, alternating with policy and procedural reviews. Reports are expected two weeks before meetings and will be reviewed in November, January, March, May and July. Lynn Cunningham, candidate representative, will be attending the policy meetings which will be October, February, April and June.

The committee has reviewed the handbook description of expectations and felt there should be an addition to the handbook explaining the format of submitting reports that is desired by the committee. We felt all reports should include the date of submission to PC, along with dates covered and the name of the supervisor. We also clarified that letters to candidates regarding their reports would be cc'd to their supervisors.

The committee decided to have personal contact with each candidate rather than writing a formal letter welcoming candidates to the new term. Ongoing updating of the candidate handbook will reflect changing policies, such as the requirement for analytic frequency, the changing procedures for report writing, and the guidelines for choosing supervisors who meet in person or virtually.

The committee plans to meet with candidates in the first term of 2015 and to arrange a meeting with supervisors sometime during this academic year.

******

NPSI Candidate News

Lynn Cunningham, Reporter

David Parnes, LICSW received the 2015 IPSO Writing Award for North America with his paper, "On growth, a gift and goodbyes: initial thoughts on a termination." The award was presented to David in Boston at the 49th IPA/23rd IPSO Congress this past July. Dave's winning essay has been published in the IPSO Journal and is available on line.

In addition, Dave will be co-teaching the first half of COR's year-long Foundations Course in British Object Relations along with Seattle psychoanalyst Lisa Caldwell, LICSW. He'll also be teaching a unit of NPSI's new Foundations in Psychoanalysis course in February.

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Members in Action

David Parnes, Reporter

Caron Harrang, LICSW FIPA qualified to become an IPA training and supervising analyst in September 2015. Congratulations Caron!

In September, Judy K Eekhoff, PhD FIPA began facilitating a yearlong group devoted to the work of Wilfred Bion. Participants are combining learning from experience with reading classic Bion papers and is the first NPSI study group open to analysts, candidates and therapists in the community.

Shierry Weber Nicholsen, PhD FIPA has, in the past year, been writing on the psychoanalytic activity of free association and also about its intersection with the musical thought of Theodor Adorno. She presented a paper on free association as the template for listening to music at a conference on music and consciousness in Oxford, and has been invited to expand it into a paper for an edited volume. She also presented a paper at the recent IPA Congress in Boston on free association in North American versus French psychoanalytic cultures. In October, she presented a paper on Adorno's notion of listening as co-composing at a music conference in Paris. Her paper "Adorno Kafka Psychoanalysis," linking psychoanalytic thought and the Frankfurt School, was published in Dutch translation and is about to come out in German translation. Finally, a short piece linking Marcuse's notion of one-dimensionality with psychoanalytic ideas, like Bollas's "normotic," was published in Portuguese translation in the Brazilian journal Arte Filosofia.

Survey

Selected Facts is a work in progress, and as such, we are interested in responses to our format and content by readers. Your feedback is anonymous and is enormously helpful in planning future modifications.

Please take a few moments to fill out a brief survey about your experience with Selected Facts by clicking on this link: http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07ebny9682 .

Selected Facts Next Issue Deadline

The next issue of Selected Facts will be published in late February. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2016.

Please feel free to contact Maxine Nelson with general questions or either of our reporters with news items or ideas for stories.

Maxine Nelson Managing Editor [email protected]	Anna Delacroix Copy Editor [email protected]
Lynn Cunningham Reporter [email protected]	David Parnes Reporter [email protected]