This year’s conference in LA, “Self Psychology in a Multidisciplinary World,” broke new ground for the IAPSP community with a format jam-packed with contributions covering a wide spectrum of immensely important topics in our field. Six short panels, a greater number than usual, were offered and discussions of them were conducted in small groups that stayed together throughout the conference. Let your colleagues know what worked for you, what didn’t, which presentations were most meaningful to you, and what else you would have liked to see.

Mary Reiss

This was my first conference; I loved the energy of being with so many other clinicians who do this kind of work. I especially enjoyed the self-reflection that came from the small group discussions. I look forward to Boston in 2016.

Jon Sletvold

This was my first self psychology conference, and it was a surprisingly positive experience. Most plenaries were enlightening and challenging, and I also enjoyed the sessions I attended and the group discussions. Not least I liked the atmosphere and the warm welcome I received as a newcomer.

Randee Johnson, Ph.D.

Isaac Bashevis Singer once said “When a day passes it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story.”

I loved the stories informally shared in LA. It was great to catch up with colleagues and reminisce about last year in Jerusalem. As for this conference, I needed more. More plot, more character, more narrative, more clinical material. The discussion group following each panel served as an excellent opportunity to process the experience of the plenaries. The consistency of the small groups added to the experience. Unfortunately there were too many plenaries.

I look forward to next year in Boston and the creation of new stories.

Donna M. Orange, Ph.D., Psy.D.

My own preference would be for fewer plenaries and for more paper sessions
so that we may hear more voices, and especially so that newer voices may
emerge.

Flora Lazar, Ph.D.

As a newcomer and a student, I suspect my reaction to the conference may be unrepresentative of the majority of attendees, but I hope of interest to those who are actively deliberating on how to expand the audience for self psychology and promote conference attendance. First, I was delighted to open my conference packet and find news of the IAPSP new “scholarship” initiative to support students/early stage professionals seeking to attend the conference. Many of my fellow social work students at the University of Chicago and the interns/externs where I work looked enviously at my trip and would have welcomed that subsidy. It’s the difference between attending and not attending for most students.

I attended the conference because I thought it would help me bridge the gap between theory and practice. The current watchword in classrooms where the curriculum is not confined to the so-called “evidence based practice,” is “pluralist practice.” As a scholar by training — and one with a special interest in the “schismatic” past of psychoanalysis — part of me thought, admittedly naively, that I could arrive at greater clarity about my particular clinical pluralism largely at the theoretical level. If only the dialogue among theorists was clearer, I thought. So the conference title was very alluring.

The conference achieved this objective, but paradoxically, thanks to Richard Geist’s pre-conference session, I left realizing that this vestigial view would not serve me or my fellow students as well as I might have anticipated in the consulting room. We are swimming in psycho-dynamic and cognitive theories, but we get precious little help taking any single theory and putting it through its clinical paces. How does the theory — say self psychology — inform the clinical judgments we make along the way? How would we understand and respond to the various situations that confront us and how would that differ from the way other theorists guided by other theories would respond. Which forks in the road would we take and why?

If the association hopes to attract more students, I would encourage it to build on the example of Richard Geist’s session and consider a student “track” that would help those who are still sorting out the basics from a solid vision of what self psychology has to offer in the consulting room and why it is distinct. I would recommend IAPSP begin the track before the conference with a handful of simple online offerings like the pre-conference session I attended. Offer it once or twice before October so students, perhaps those whose conference travel the organization plans to subsidize, come primed to participate in case discussions alongside more seasoned professionals. The IAPSP has an opportunity to break out of the once a year rhythm and join the 24/7 news cycle — that is, to become a more continuous force in the lives of students. I would urge it to take up this opportunity.