As an individual member of the PsiAN, and as a member of the Board of a similar organization in Quebec, Canada, I am very pleased to inform you that IAPSP has decided to join the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN) as a Strategic Partner, adding to the roster of organizations, including APsaA, Division 39, and many more institutions that have endorsed PsiAN (see https://psian.org/strategicpartners/ for a full list). Here is how our President, Amy Eldridge, described this organization:

“PsiAN is a global community of mental health professionals and stakeholders dedicated to promoting psychotherapies of insight, depth and relationship. PsiAN aims to restore these therapies to their fundamental place in the mental health landscape through education and advocacy regarding their personal, economic, and sociocultural effectiveness in alleviating suffering and transforming lives. This umbrella organization was formed to explore the threats to psychotherapy posed by legislation, insurance policies, marketplace interests, biases in research and training, and cultural pressures, and to suggest directions for collective action.”

I have been a member of PsiAN for two years now and I am impressed with all they have accomplished. I invite you to browse their website to find out some of it https://psian.org/ . I was informed of their existence just after I became involved in a similar organization I helped set up here in Québec, Canada which is called RADAR.Psy (Réseau d’action et de défense des approches relationnelles en psychothérapie- Network of action and defence of relational psychotherapies). Psychotherapists from diverse backgrounds, psychoanalytic, humanistic, Gestaltist, and others who claim that relationship is central in human development and change, came together here, in 2014, to address their growing concern that the treatment we offer is becoming increasingly marginalized in our society. Our objectives are very similar to PsiAN’s in that we aim to explore how research results concerning psychotherapy’s efficacy are falsely used to marginalize our relational practices, and to counteract that misinformation by educating policy makers, the public, and even ourselves, on the whole scope of our present knowledge about relational psychotherapies’ efficacy. We believe that protecting public access to a diversity of practices according to each person’s characteristics and values is of primary importance not only in regard of the efficacy of psychotherapy, but also for society’s well-being. It is now recognized by some authors (Cushman, 2015; Shedler, 2015) that the powerful corporate neoliberal forces at work in our society are driving us towards therapeutic models closer to the medical model with its quantifiable results and controlled practices, known as the “industrialization of health care”. This situation calls for an active political action on the part of relational therapists who could offer alternatives to this neoliberal way of being in the clinical hour as well as in the public arena.

Everyone can become an individual member of PsiAN and we are encouraged by IAPSP executives to join in order to build the strongest and most vibrant community possible to support psychoanalytic therapies. I urge everyone to make this effort. Membership is free and you can join here: https://psian.org/join-us/.

Annette Richard, M.Ps.