Presidential Letter

December 10, 2001

Dear Colleague and IFPE Member,

It is with a sense of sadness and gratitude that I write on the occasion of my final letter to you as IFPE President; sad at the prospect of losing direct contact with you, our membership, and grateful for having allowed me the privilege and satisfaction of serving you in this capacity. The past two years have been a time of tremendous change, both in IFPE and the world at large, during which I have spent many wonderful moments with some of you at our 2000 conference in Chicago and the 2001 conference in Ft. Lauderdale. I know there are many more of you who have not been able to attend either conference and no doubt many whom I have never had the opportunity to meet. On the other hand I have corresponded with many of you and, looking to the future, hope I will have the good fortune, perhaps at a future conference, to meet those of you I do not know personally.

The last two conferences were remarkable in terms of the excitement generated and the delighted response from those who attended. Although the Chicago conference set a record for attendance with 160 registrants, our attendance for the Florida conference this past November was predictably small, with about 90 registrants. This, of course, was due to the tragedy of September 11 and the resulting shock waves throughout the airline and travel industries. Understandably, many of our colleagues decided to stay home this year during these frightening and uncertain times, and some of those who were unable to attend contributed donations to IFPE in support of our mission. I want to thank you for this extraordinary expression of generosity as a countermeasure to the negative impact that low attendance inevitably has our organization. I also want to extend a special thanks to those of you who were able to attend the conference this year despite these difficulties. Needless to say, the 2001 Ft. Lauderdale conference would have been cancelled were it not for your dedication to our small and fledgling organization.

Indeed, IFPE's size is what makes it such an intimate organization and the experience of being a part of it so special. Despite the unsettling events of recent months, many of our presenters traveled to Florida from far and wide to participate in this yearís meeting in order to converse with one another about our timely conference theme: Psychoanalysis and Culture. Those who attended found the program enriching and one that helped take us, if only one step further, toward a better understanding of the culture of psychoanalysis.

The next issue of the IFPE Newsletter (which should appear in February) will help to bring those of you who could not attend the Florida conference up to date with highlights of many of the paper and panel presentations, including the keynote Hans W. Loewald Address given by Paul Roazen. The next issue of the newsletter will be made available to you both on the IFPE website (at www.ifpe.org) as well as a hard copy that will be mailed to the membership.

I would now like to take a few moments to bring you up to date on recent events and actions by the Board, before saying my farewell to you.

2002 IFPE Conference

Despite the low turnout for the Florida conference, participants were thrilled with the program of presentations, the quality of interaction in discussions, and the relaxing tropical environment afforded by the Lago Mar Resort. In fact, we were so taken with the conference facilities, the beach-side and secluded locale, and warmth of the hotel staff that the IFPE board has decided to hold its annual conferences at the Lago Mar every other year. We will unexpectedly be returning to the Lago Mar for our 2002 conference the last weekend in October due to our decision to cancel our earlier plans to hold next yearís conference in New York. Due to difficulties that we were unable to resolve in locating a suitable venue in Manhattan, we decided to hold our 2002 conference at the Lago Mar instead. The conference theme for next yearís meeting will be Psychoanalytic Space; the call-for-participation will go out in the mail to you around the end of January. Gerald Gargiulo, who will be succeeding me as President January 1st, will serve as Co-Chair of the 2002 conference along with Harold Davis (who had been slated to serve as the "local" Conference Co-chair in New York).

2003 and Future IFPE Conferences

As previously noted, IFPEís 2003 conference will convene in Los Angeles. Judith Vida, an IFPE board member and co-chair of our Psychoanalytic History Committee, will serve as Co-Chair of the Los Angles Conference and is currently finalizing plans for selection of the conference hotel. Gerald Gargiulo will serve as the other Co-Chair of the Los Angles conference with Judy during his tenure as President.

In 2004 we will return to the Lago Mar Resort in Florida and continue to meet there every other year. New York has been removed from the loop of alternating conference locations due to the prohibitive costs in mounting conferences for an organization as small as IFPE. We are, however, exploring the possibility of organizing IFPE-sponsored one-day mini-conferences or other forms of meetings in Manhattan in lieu of the annual IFPE Interdisciplinary Conference. Jerry Gargiulo, Hal Davis, and Marty Schulman will serve as an organizing committee to explore this possibility and we will keep you posted our their progress. We are also hoping that our colleagues on the Eastern Seaboard will take the opportunity to attend our conferences in Florida and take advantage of the tropical location to bring their families or loved ones with them for fun and relaxation. The years that we do not meet in Florida will be alternated between California and Chicago, which means that the 2005 IFPE Conference will convene in Chicago, most likely at the Palmer House Hilton.

These plans are schematic and could change. It is possible, for example, that we will convene a future conference at a location outside the United States, perhaps in Canada, Mexico, or Great Britain. For the time being, however, our principal concern is to solidify our membership base and allow you to feel more at home in the rotation of conference sites we are currently committed to. Next year I will resume my position as Chair of the IFPE Site Committee and continue to work intimately with you on determining future sites for conferences.

IFPE Website

As many of you no doubt know, we have had considerable problems with our website, but I am happy to say that we have enlisted the very capable services of GenericType, a website-service company in Emeryville, CA to administer our website for us (they also design our Conference Announcements and Conference Program/Membership Directories for us.) Please let us know if you encounter any difficulties in accessing or using the website so that we can let our liaison at GenericType, Judy July, know about it.

Currently we are using the site for annual conference information, two bi-annual newsletters, and an Archives section that contains the full text of the Loewald Keynote Address and Presidential Address from our 1999, 2000, and 2002 conferences. When we have more money to devote to our website we hope to expand the Archival section to include other articles by IFPE members and conference participants and other information about our members. In addition to the website version, we are producing the IFPE Newsletter in a hard copy format which will be mailed to the IFPE membership for those who do not use the web or prefer to read the newsletter in a more traditional format. Please contact our Newsletter Editor, Bill MacGillivray, if you have any articles or other information you would like to have included in an upcoming issue of the newsletter. Billís email address is: drmacg@bellsouth.net

Status of Organizational Membership

The IFPE board has recently decided to alter our membership categories with a view to eliminating the confusion as to what kind of organization IFPE is and who we perceive our membership base to be. IFPE is the only international interdisciplinary psychoanalytic organization in the world devoted to an individual membership base. As you know, conventional psychoanalytic organizations are creatures of psychoanalytic institutes (APsyA, IPA, NAAP, IFPS) or tend to serve a given mental health profession (Division 39, American Academy of Psychoanalysts). Because we include organizations in IFPE, some people have assumed that we are an organization- or institute-based organization, which we are not. This is why we have decided to eliminate the category of Organizational Member, and to re-name it either Organization Patron or Sponsor, a designation we will make a final decision on in the months ahead. Organizational Patrons/Sponsors will continue to be listed in our Directory and will continue to have one vote in our annual elections, but membership, per se, will be reserved for individuals only.

We hope this decision will make your relationship with us less ambiguous and enhance your sense of identification with IFPE. We will continue to seek new ways to make your membership with us an exciting one and an invaluable part of your psychoanalytic identity.

On that note I will say my farewell to you. I am proud of what IFPE has accomplished these past two years and leave my tenure with the satisfaction that we are on a more secure footing. I have tried to find ways to make your membership with IFPE a more vital and enriching one -- as Conference Co-Chair I have tried to make our 1999, 2000, and 2001 conferences responsive to your concerns, and as President I have tried to find other ways to make your membership in IFPE more rewarding. Most of all, I have enjoyed my contact with you and look forward to more contacts ahead. Next year I will remain on the Board as Past President and plan to remain on the Board in some other capacity after my term as Past President expires. Of all my affiliations with other psychoanalytic groups and organizations, IFPE is by far the most gratifying one I feel most passionate about. I hope you share that passion and that you will continue to be a vital part of our community and our endeavors in the future.

Finally, I leave with a sense of security in know that IFPE is in the best of hands with your new President, Jerry Gargiulo. Jerry served as IFPE President before, in 1997, and has served as IFPE Board Member for many years. After considerable coaxing on the part of the Board, we persuaded Jerry to come to IFPEís aid one more time to serve as President again. Jerry is a dynamic leader, enjoys the full support of the IFPE Board, and feels as passionately about IFPE as I do. I leave with a sense of relief and gratitude that Jerry will be at the helm in and, with his capable hands, will guide our good ship toward a more rewarding future.


Faithfully yours,

Michael Guy Thompson, Ph.D.
President