2021 ANNUAL MEETING SAN FRANCISCO CENTER FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS
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ANNUAL MEETING NEWSLETTER
Saturday, June 26, 2021
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
OPENING REMARKS AND BOARD OF TRUSTEES REPORT - P A G E 3 PAUL K. SORBO, LCSW, CHAIR
PSYCHOANALYTIC EDUCATION DIVISION ANTI-RACISM TASK FORCE - P A G E 8 KARIM DAJANI, PSYD
RECOGNITION OF GRADUATES OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY EDUCATION DIVISION - P A G E 1 1 BETH STEINBERG, PHD, CHAIR
RECOGNITION OF GRADUATES OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC EDUCATION DIVISION & UPDATES - P A G E 2 0 GARY GROSSMAN, PHD, CHAIR
TREASURER'S REPORT - PAGE 26 STEVE LARSON, TREASURER
AUDIT REPORT - PAGE 28 CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON
NOMINATING & GOVERNANCE COMMITTEE - P A G E 2 9 STEVEN GOLDBERG, MD & BRETT PENFIL, MFT,MPH, CO-CHAIRS
2020-21 ANNUAL GIVING CAMPAIGN - PAGE 30 SUZANNE KLEIN, PHD
ENRICO JONES FUND - PAGE 31 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD
FACILITIES COMMITTEE - PAGE 32 AMY WALLERSTEIN FRIEDMAN, LCSW, CHAIR
ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTOR'S REPORT - PAGE 34 MARCIA HODGES, MNA, CTF
PRESIDENT'S REPORT - P A G E 3 5 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD
DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARDS - PAGE 37 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD
CONCLUDING REMARKS - P A G E 4 4 PAUL K. SORBO, LCSW PAUL SORBO, LCSW BOARD CHAIR Opening Remarks and Board of Trustees Report
Opening Remarks
Welcome to our Annual Meeting of Members!
I’m Paul Sorbo, Chair of the SFCP Board of Trustees and I am very pleased to be facilitating this morning’s zoom meeting.
We are very excited this morning by your attendance as this audience is much larger than our in-person Annual Meetings of recent years - over 49 members have signed up - this is very good news!
Let me review the agenda and let you know what we will cover this morning:
Next, I’d like to introduce the 2020-2021 Board of Trustees as they most often work diligently outside of the spotlight: Paul Sorbo, Cheryl Goodrich, Deb Weisinger, Steve Larson, Steve Goldberg, Henry Massie, Walt Beckman, Chris Thompson, Cathy Witzling, Suzanne Klein, Eric Miller, Brett Penfil, Doug Slakey, Amy Wallerstein Friedman. Now I’d like to highlight some of our accomplishments this past year:
The Pandemic Virus
The pandemic virus, the shelter-in-place orders and the resulting public health guidance over the past year has impacted our families, our communities, our health and our livelihoods. At SFCP, our education programs, administrative services and organizational meetings were provided online throughout the year and Zoom became the norm. Our staff, Aaron Chow, Nicole Lee, Megan Kelly, and Chris Gordon as well as our Administrative Director, Marcia Hodges, all deserve to be commended for their responsiveness and the high quality of service under these trying circumstances.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at SFCP
Since the spring of last year, the Board has grappled with how to address the systemic racism evident in our community, profession and Center. While the Board had adopted an overarching focus of increasing diversity, equity and inclusion within SFCP as a result of the Eisold Consultation, there was a renewed urgency for action prompted by the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protest movement.
Encouraged by many SFCP members, the Board decided to meet over the summer in a series of three meetings to develop an action plan for the 2020-21 year to address systemic challenges of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at SFCP. After much deliberation, the Board chose four action items to support. The Board set up three work groups: (1) to address membership and voting; (2) to address Board seats for people of color (POC); and develop a DEI Advisory Group to consult to the Board. In addition, the Board authorized the Enrico Jones Fund under Cheryl Goodrich’s leadership to create and support scholarship efforts for candidates and trainees of color.
Page 3 PAUL SORBO, LCSW BOARD CHAIR Opening Remarks and Board of Trustees Report (cont.)
The three work groups worked diligently throughout the year and sought member input and feedback through a Town Hall in November as well as through multiple member surveys. Their reports were submitted to the Board at the February 22nd Board meeting. The Board deliberated on these reports for the subsequent four months resulting in the following actions:
1. Voting Rights Work Group. Proposed to revise membership criteria for Full Members, creating a fourth group, Associate Members through a Bylaws Amendment. The intent was to include in the voting membership of SFCP, psychotherapists who have demonstrated serious study of psychoanalysis and interest in SFCP. The guiding principle is that extending voting rights in this way will invigorate our membership through the inclusion of people who have not typically engaged in psychoanalytic candidacy. We hope this enfranchisement will be part of recognizing what non-traditional psychoanalytic practitioners can bring to SFCP and help make SFCP a more inclusive, diverse and equitable Center. Ballots on this amendment were mailed to voting members on May 18th; the voting closed on June 18th; and Megan Kelly collected all of the mailed written ballots received and opened the ballots witnessed and tabulated by me on June 21st. There was a total of 126 votes submitted with 86 for the Bylaws Amendment; 32 against; 7 abstained; and 1 invalid. The amendment passed. The next steps in the months ahead are to confirm all eligible Associate Members as well as to determine the membership dues structure. Current dues will remain in place for the next year.
2. Board Composition Work Group. The Board passed a Resolution in the June 21st Board meeting to increase the number of trustees from under- represented groups toward a minimum target of one third of the membership of the Board of Trustees. The Board will document the approach and actions to attain this goal and report progress on this goal to the membership in the 2022 Annual Meeting.
3. DEI Advisory Group to the Board Work Group. This work group will continue to meet during the summer months to explore the feasibility of an outside consultant working with the Board or developing an internal to SFCP DEI Advisory Group working with the Board or a hybrid model. This work group will submit its recommendations to the Board at the September meeting.
4. Enrico Jones Fund. Cheryl will provide you with an update on this development later in the agenda.
Page 4 PAUL SORBO, LCSW BOARD CHAIR Opening Remarks and Board of Trustees Report (cont.)
The Inclusion/Exclusion Task Force
While the Board’s Work Groups were addressing these tasks during the year, the Inclusion/Exclusion (I/E) Task Force was working diligently as well. Let’s remember, the I/E Task Force was formed in response to the recommendations that emerged from the SFCP’s Spring 2019 Organizational Consultation. The Board authorized the Task Force to study issues related to inclusion and exclusion at SFCP and propose changes, solutions and interventions that would improve the capacity of SFCP to be and feel like, an inclusive institution.
The I/E Task Force submitted their report to the Board prior to the February 22nd meeting. Elizabeth Simpson attended this meeting to briefly review the report and answer questions.
The recommendations are strong, compelling and deserve all of our attention. Let me highlight:
1. The need for a Mission Statement that reflects SFCP’s commitment to considerations of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging 2. Building a Culture of Accountability and Ensuring Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Objectives have Tenure 3. Faculty Support, Expectation and Accountability 4. Succession Planning 5. Organizational Dynamics and Learning about Groups 6. Learning Together and DEI Education 7. Transparency 8. Website improvements 9. Newsletter
The Board has fully accepted this report and is working on how to implement action items in the near and long term at SFCP. The Board is grateful to the I/E Task Force. We appreciate the time and passion invested in this work. We believe this report will provide our organization with an effective roadmap for change for years to come.
Page 5 PAUL SORBO, LCSW BOARD CHAIR Opening Remarks and Board of Trustees Report (cont.)
Revised and Amended Articles of Incorporation
SFCP’s building has historically been classified exempt from property taxes. SFCP learned last fall that it had submitted an incorrect form in connection with the exemption, and to submit the correct form to the San Francisco Assessor’s Office, SFCP needed an “Organizational Clearance Certificate - Welfare Exemption” from the state Board of Equalization. To qualify for that Organizational Clearance Certificate, SFCP must include specific technical language in its Articles of Incorporation that states expressly that SFCP’s property is dedicated to charitable and educational purposes. The solution was to revise and amend the Articles of Incorporation which the Board quickly approved. A Town Hall was conducted on January 31, 2021 to explain the need for these revised articles and to answer any questions. Ballots were mailed to our voting members for a Special Election which ended on February 26th. Megan Kelly collected all the mailed written ballots received and opened the ballots witnessed by me. SFCP received 131 written ballots with 130 approving the amendment with 1 abstention. Marcia Hodges submitted the new Articles of Incorporation to the CA Board of Equalization seeking the Organizational Clearance Certificate - Welfare Exemption. Once the new Certificate has been granted, it will be submitted to the San Francisco Assessor’s Office. Many thanks to the members who voted to approve these revised amendments!
Strategic Planning Process Proposal
In my report to the Board on May 24th, I proposed that SFCP undertake a new Strategic Planning Process to be conducted during the upcoming 2021-2022 year. Our most recent Strategic Plans were created in 2015 and 2012.
1. The objective would be to ensure all sectors of SFCP are headed in the same direction and hopefully reduce the silos currently experienced 2. To engage our membership to have a voice in the planning and establishment of our priorities 3. To update our Mission Statement 4. To determine where financial viability fits into our overall priorities
The Board raised many questions during the ensuing robust discussion including cost, timing, objectives, workload, necessity and previous planning experiences. While appropriately cautious, the Board did approve the development of a design team that would meet this summer to recruit and interview planning consultants. The design team will make a recommendation to the Board regarding a potential consultant and planning process in our September meeting.
Page 6 PAUL SORBO, LCSW BOARD CHAIR Opening Remarks and Board of Trustees Report (cont.)
Acknowledgements
In my last Annual Report, I was communicating our lack of success in recruiting a new President or Co-President. We were entering uncharted waters so to speak in not having a President to lead our organization. The good news was that in my collaborative outreach to the Management Team, Gary Grossman stepped up to meet weekly with Marcia Hodges and myself to oversee the daily operations of SFCP. In addition, Deb Weisinger volunteered to hold the agenda for the Management Team and facilitate these monthly meetings in the absence of a President. I wish to compliment both of these individuals for taking on these extra responsibilities at a critical time for SFCP - thank you!
Page 7 KARIM DAJANI, PSYD Psychoanalytic Education Division Anti-Racism Task Force
Prompts That Led to the Formation of the ARTF:
1) Our socio-cultural surround is demanding our attention. Trump was elected president, George Floyd was snuffed out by a cop in broad day light for all to see, Anti-Semitism is rising, people are being slaughtered in their places of worship as evidenced by the massacres of black parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina and Jewish worshipers in The tree of Life Congregation in New Jersey, Mass murders are occurring weekly, Opioid use has decimated large swaths of the American population, Ahmaud Arbery was killed for running while black, Christian Cooper could have been killed for bird watching while black, the list goes on. Can we really understand these problems by narrowing our lens to the alterity of individuals? ‘Tell me what is unique about you’ is a good question but not the only one worth asking. Don’t we need to expand our lens to consider the impact of history, culture and social systems on the unconscious of individuals, groups and institutions? Some like to assert that the socio-cultural is external, not part of the dynamic unconscious proper. Juan Tuber-Oklander responds by pointing to the obvious – the external is mental. The social is external and the external is mental.
2) We are becoming more aware of a long history in psychoanalysis beginning in 1908 with Trigant Burrow’s The Social Basis of Consciousness and Wilfred Trotter’s Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace that argued for the centrality of the group and the socio-cultural in the composition of the unconscious. Throughout the century many other analytic scholars from across continents and languages built on these ideas. They produced compelling analytic models that attempt to account for the on-going impact of history and culture on the unconscious. This vein of scholarship has been systematically marginalized from our ‘canon’.
3) A countless number of candidates, members and associate members have expressed grave concerns about the “way we have always done things”. Many have articulated their lived experiences of our standards, procedures and cultures to be exclusionary, constraining of thought and creativity and, in some instances, abusive.
Before I go on, I want to clearly state that we do not think we are a racist institute. We have an unconscious and we unconsciously perpetuate exclusionary and racist positions without knowing. This does not make us racists. However, if we do not face and change the various ways we recreate problematic socio-cultural positions we become racists. Personally, I am not enamored with the current language of whiteness as parasitic and find the assertions that all white people are racist and defensive about it to be objectionable and not useful. I much prefer nuanced analytic scholarship on the matter. The tragedy here is most of us are not familiar with it and this is a symptom of the problem I am describing. Why is it that analytic scholarship on the social has been systematically repressed, disavowed and excluded from our canon and training procedures for the past 110 years.
Page 8 KARIM DAJANI, PSYD Psychoanalytic Education Division Anti-Racism Task Force (cont.)
The Process, Findings and The Way We Interpreted Them:
We reviewed our processes, procedures and standards as they are written and codified in our manuals. The main and most striking finding is the complete and total absence of any consideration regarding issues of diversity, inclusion, culture, race and the social. Some might interpret this to mean there are no links between our standards and the wider socio-cultural world. We disagree with this position. Following Freud, we applied his insights on the links between manifest dream material and their latent underpinnings. We think the absence of considering issues of race, diversity and inclusion from our manifest thinking and processes points to dynamic resistances stemming from normative unconscious processes. Freud taught us to appreciate the determinative impact of absent and repressed material/thought. We take the absence of considering the impact of history and culture as it pertains to issues of race, inclusion and diversity to be a sign of disavowal and repression, in short unconscious resistance.
It became clear that we must consciously grapple with how we have always done things.
Naturalization as Resistance:
We anticipated fierce resistance to any substantive structural changes because of the way culture works. Cultural systems perpetuate certain positions, procedures, standards etc. by naturalizing them, meaning putting them outside the realm of reflection and thought. For example, for many our standards of training are naturally good, correct and superior. Pulling these naturalized positions into the realm of reflection, thought and dialogue may feel heretical, dangerous, even annihilating. We are familiar with helping our patients face these emotional states when confronted with difficult truths, we can help ourselves in this way as well. What we are doing here is not heretical, but rather the application of the real gold standard of psychoanalysis- fearless inquiry into all that is mental and human.
Lessening, Loosening or Augmenting Our Standards of Training:
The standards and procedures as they are written and practiced exclude many people. First, an analytic education costs in excess of 70 k a year. This is not trivial money to most. Lessening the required standards makes training more accessible to those with less money. Second, the proof is in the pudding as the composition of our institute speaks for itself. Many persons of color, immigrants and truly creative thinkers are electing not to train here because when they look at us what they see is a homogeneous composition of ‘senior’ members, exclusionary practices, and a systemic lack of engagement with the socio-cultural dimensions of the unconscious. The composition and culture of our institute requires a type of conformity of thought from incoming candidates and reverence of authority that is off-putting to many. For these reasons and many more we came to recommend more objective criteria for evaluating prospective candidates and progressing existing candidates. More importantly, we are strongly recommending the loosening of our training requirements by lessening the mandatory amount of hours and dollars a candidate is compelled to spend.
Page 9 KARIM DAJANI, PSYD Psychoanalytic Education Division Anti-Racism Task Force (cont.)
We came to see our recommendations not as a lessening of our gold standards but a type of loosening that is really an augmentation. Sometimes, less is more. The terms analysis itself connotes a loosening of rigid mental structures that yield an augmentation in ego capacity. Analysis is about loosening rigid links, stultifying ways of thinking, unconscious resistances, rigid belief, false associations etc. Loosening in this sense is a way of opening up to new possibilities, meanings, ways of being that are more conscious, fair and life affirming. Loosening our standards of training adds more than it subtracts. Making our institute and educational offerings more accessible to interested individuals who have been typically marginalized and excluded will make us stronger and our field more vital.
Page 10 BETH STEINBERG, PHD P P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Education Division (cont.)
Even through this challenging year, the three Psychotherapy Training Programs -- the Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (CAPPTP), the Palo Alto Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (PAPPTP), and the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (SF-PPTP) -- have been thriving.
It has become even clearer to us how vital these training programs are to the Center, how much life they bring to the Center, and how their accessibility allows so many people to receive training. I am so grateful to the chairs of the three programs, as well as to all the folks that serve on their committees, for all the hard work they do to make these programs thrive.
In June, we hosted the graduation for the trainees of the three psychotherapy training programs. The graduates from the three programs included:
CAPPTP: Stace Dubin, Laura Feren, Mia Gutfreund, Ali Howard Kirsch
PAPPTP: Lauren Cardillo-Geller
SF-PPTP: Danielle Alexander, Ari Max Bachrach, Rebecca Chadwick, Miya Drucker, Anna Fiskin, Matthew Gibson, Samuel Judice, Sally King, Rhys Mason, Kyle McMahan, Nicole Muller, Danila Musante, Aneesh Nandam, Cassidy Smith, Kristoffer Strauss
CAPPTP is now the only Bay Area psychoanalytic psychotherapy training program where licensed clinicians have the opportunity to learn more deeply about working with children and adolescents. CAPPTP is happy to announce that beginning this Fall, they are adding a course specifically geared to working with parents. Additionally, in the near future, they will be offering a new Foundations program which will consist of eight weeks of classes. Some of the topics that will be covered during this course include: What makes psychoanalytic therapy with children different than with adults? Why is play therapeutic? How do you begin play therapy sessions? And: Clinical technique and interpretation. CAPPTP also continues to reexamine their curriculum with the goal of integrating topics addressing diversity and the sociocultural context.
PAPPTP has had some significant developments over the past year as well. They weathered the transition from in- person to distance learning almost seamlessly. They will start 2021-22 with all three of their programs well subscribed: a full 10-person cohort in their Two-Year Program, at least 10 students in their Fellowship Year, and 10 students in their Post-Seminar Case Conference. Their Faculty-Curriculum Task Force developed a set of educational principles for PAPPTP emphasizing case-based teaching as the most efficient way to help students develop their capabilities as psychotherapists. In addition, they continued their efforts to recruit and orient younger analytic clinicians to administrative and teaching activities in PAPPTP. They also began offering courses to address “otherness” and cultural issues, and they undertook the long-term project of focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Lastly, they have benefited from thinking together with the other PPED programs in identifying and solving common problems.
Page 11 BETH STEINBERG, PHD P P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Education Division (cont.)
The SF-PPTP is extremely grateful to the SFCP faculty for their response to the instructor shortage earlier in the spring and to all who stepped forward to teach, despite the extra pressures of the pandemic. SF-PPTP is continuing to try to increase their supervisor pool as well, in order to make supervision as accessible as possible to their trainees. They just completed another robust application/admission cycle, so many trainees will be looking for first and/or second supervisors starting in July. Anyone potentially interested should contact Maria Longuemare at [email protected].
I am including the opening remarks I made at the PPED graduation on June 5. Shahla Cherazi was our wonderful commencement speaker, and her speech is published in this issue of the Newsletter as well.
Psychotherapy Training Graduation Introduction Beth Steinberg, June 5, 2021
Good afternoon! My name is Beth Steinberg! I am the Chair of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Education Division, and I want to extend a very warm welcome to everyone here – trainees, faculty, and most of all, graduates and their families -- to today’s very special event celebrating the graduates from the Palo Alto Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (PAPPTP), the Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (CAPPTP) and the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (SF-PPTP). It is wonderful to be celebrating all of our outstanding graduates, and while I know we are all sad that we are not yet able to gather in person, we feel very fortunate to still have a way to come together and honor our graduates and also to be able to welcome some of our graduates’ families and friends who would not be able to be here were it not for the remote format. We are also truly looking forward to being able to gather together in person soon and to once again have the experience of thinking, working and celebrating together!
Before I go on and introduce our commencement speaker, I want to make just a few remarks about the crucial role that self-reflection needs to play in helping us folks in psychoanalytic institutions transform ourselves at this moment in our history. And I want to say just a few things about the vital part that the psychotherapy programs are playing in this process.
It is a perhaps the most essential value in the commitment to a psychoanalytic sensibility to be open to looking at ourselves as well as to be open to the idea that there are things about ourselves that we cannot consciously see. Today I want to talk about the importance of engaging in a particularly painful and yet crucial aspect of self- reflection -- that is, the need to reflect on ourselves and our training programs with regard to our social position, our power, and our embeddedness in the history of our country and society.
Page 12 BETH STEINBERG, PHD P P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Education Division (cont.)
Psychotherapy Training Graduation Introduction Beth Steinberg, June 5, 2021
The year 2020 has been marked by unprecedented cascading social traumas. The public health crisis is not the only trauma we have been living through. This year has also seen profound disparities in health care, police violence against African-Americans, and violence against Asian-Americans, Indigenous Peoples and the LatinX Community.
However, as the graduation speaker for my two daughters’ recent high school graduation, history teacher Rene Villacanas, articulated so beautifully:
The events of the last 14 months have only mirrored back to us the fact that that the world is in desperate need of healing and repair from wounds and breaks that happened generations before. After historical periods of collective trauma, instead of creating justice guided by truth and reconciliation, the status quo’s desire to quickly move on has prevailed... But the ugly aspects of our past never die. They remain all around us, … and the longer we defer the healing, the more jarring it feels when the malignant ugliness reappears, as it did so many times during the last year.
Again and again I find myself coming back to the idea (that we know when it comes to our individual work) that before we can help others heal, we first have to learn how to heal ourselves. Historically, psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy have functioned in a monocultural manner; largely limited to middle and upper- class, white euro–Americans, it has been built on underlying values that promote a preoccupation with self- fulfillment, autonomy, and individualism, and it has privileged an individual practice model that has required of its trainees that they be able to afford the extremely in depth and rigorous training that it has offered.
To the extent that we do not reflect on our values and practices as psychoanalytic institutions, we repeat harm and trauma in a manner similar to what we see in the rest of our society. It is only through a willingness to question our own cultural givens and to engage in an honest and considered process of reflection on our positions of power and privilege that we can challenge our cultural encapsulation and address the context that may support systemic forms of exclusion and oppression and ensure a psychoanalysis that is relevant to all and easily accessed by everyone.
However reflecting out ourselves is frightening and painful, likely involving the experience of guilt and shame, especially when we take seriously that even if we have not done any personal harm, we are part of a system that has. Roger Frie, in speaking about collective memory and how societies deal with their shameful mistreatment of minority groups, wrote:
Page 13
BETH STEINBERG, PHD P P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Education Division (cont.)
Psychotherapy Training Graduation Introduction Beth Steinberg, June 5, 2021
[As an analyst of German descent, a] central theme running through my therapeutic work with second and third generation Holocaust survivors has been my concern of being rejected as a so-called bad German. In these moments I may have an urge to turn away from my patient and seek refuge in the stories of hardship and suffering that my own family.… [suffered, but] I know that my own flight into such narratives … is a protective mechanism against the shame I feel about my family’s past and a recoiling from the horrors that I hear. Despite my wish to hide, I still remain caught in the inescapable web of history. The legacy of my grandparents lives. I not only have a moral duty to remember, there is an ethical imperative to respond differently in the present…
At this point in our history, we here at SFCP are trying to do some serious work on these issues, but it is hard, painful work. It can be overwhelming for all of us, white people in particular, to face the burden of our own history. We may feel the urge to seek refuge in a false idealization of ourselves or our “training standards” rather than reflect on our history or hear the painful stories of some of our members. And as Frie reminds us: “By working with our shame, [r]ather than hiding it, it becomes possible to create a climate of emotional openness, grounded in narratives that fully acknowledge the prevalence of injustice, both past and present.” I very much hope we, as a community, can find a way to engage in a process of asking these questions about ourselves, our history, and our practices, that we can find a way to help one another with the anxiety and disruption such a process causes, and that we can remain open to the potential for growth that can emerge from such a process.
The psychotherapy training programs at SFCP have been among the programs here that have played a role in questioning some of the underlying assumptions that the dominant psychoanalytic culture has held dear.They have facilitated an increasingly accessible, welcoming and nurturing environment and have promoted critical thinking about ourselves and our history. This is in no small part because by and large our students have more diverse backgrounds both personally and in the work they do in the mental health field than the analytic community traditionally has; many of our students take for granted critical thinking about social systems, power and privilege.We are grateful to you for bearing the brunt of bringing some of these issues to our attention before we were fully prepared to address them. One of the things we need to continue to reflect on is how we can share or lift this burden from our students and with people of color to do the emotional labor that needs to be done to move us forward.
I will let the chairs of the psychotherapy programs tell you about each of them in more detail, but for now I’d like to say that there is an incredible amount of care and hard work that goes on to make these extraordinarily rich programs possible, and it has been an honor to work with such a dedicated, hard-working and highly creative group of people who are responsible for developing and running them. As these training programs have grown and become a vital part of life here at the Center, we have had over 450 students matriculate through them and over 175 graduates. I am so proud of and impressed by the work that all of you – students, faculty, supervisors, mentors and steering committees -- do.
Page 14 BETH STEINBERG, PHD P P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Education Division (cont.)
Psychotherapy Training Graduation Introduction Beth Steinberg, June 5, 2021
And you, the students, bring such life into the center (into our virtual center) and invigorate us every day; I know I am speaking for all of us when I say that learning with you all has been so gratifying because you all are so eager, receptive and passionate about thinking for yourselves.
A few weeks ago, I attended my two 18 year-old daughters’ “confirmation” ceremony through our temple. A few of you may recall me talking about this 5 years ago as I made this introduction after my son’s confirmation ceremony. The confirmation ceremony represents the end of the young person’s education as a Jewish youth (while in Judaism young people are considered to be spiritual adults by age 13, it is felt that they are better prepared at age 17 or 18), but it also represents entrance into the Jewish community -- and the world – as an adult. A blessing in this setting is: When you think about your child’s future, what hopes and dreams or wishes do you have for your child? At the ceremony of my children this year, the rabbi told a story from the Torah about Adam on the first night in garden of Eden. He had never known night before. He had never seen darkness. As the sun went down, he was scared to death, he was scared of dying. But in that fear and darkness, he picked up two rocks; and he named one rock darkness and one rock death, and he smashed them together and made fire. The rabbi made it clear that this was a story about the value of not just accepting the world as it is, but rather taking the things that we are most afraid of and smashing them together and making light – that is, making something new.
In this graduation, like the confirmation I described, we are also formally welcoming you as members of our community. I know how much hard work you have brought to this training. I hope you will feel free to take it and use it in the way that is right for you. I hope you will always feel that there is a place for you here, and that we are always here for you. However, I hope you will also know that you have already become important members of our community and have made an invaluable contribution. I hope you know that you have already made an impact on us, and that we have already learned from you.
And as you go into this new chapter, I know you will question, I know you will wrestle and I know you will take whatever is in front of you, smash it together to make your own light and bring it into this world. We look forward to following you in your next steps and hope to watch you all continue to not only be involved our community, but to continue to take leadership in the issues you feel strongly about.
I hope that we at SFCP can follow your examples and do the same. James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
I want to thank our excellent staff here for doing so much in the background to make our training programs and this graduation possible: Aaron Chow, Megan Kelly, Nicole Lee.
Page 15 BETH STEINBERG, PHD P P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Education Division (cont.)
Psychotherapy Training Graduation Introduction Beth Steinberg, June 5, 2021
And now it is with great pleasure that I introduce our commencement speaker, Dr. Shahla Cherazi. Dr. Cherazi is known by many here as a dedicated member who has devoted a great deal of time, energy and passion to SFCP and particularly the Child Development Program over the past 30 years. Dr. Cherazi was born in Tehran, Iran when it was a Westernized Monarchy, and she left some years before the Islamic Revolution. The experience had a lasting impact on her and made her realize just how easy it is for a country to lose all freedom. Her father was a highly accomplished Neurologist who always encouraged her. She came to the United States in 1970 as an M.D. to pursue her training and residency in Psychiatry at the Menninger Clinic and a fellowship at Stanford. While she established her own private practice, she met her husband who is a Forensic Psychiatrist. In their blended family, they have four children. I also know she is a devoted mother of two well-loved boys.
Dr. Cherazi has been in private practice in adult, adolescent and child psychiatry for 35 years and is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco. She received her adult and child psychoanalytic training at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis where she has been on the faculty since 1979.
Dr. Cherazi’s greatest interest is in children’s mental health and providing supportive programs for families. Many people have noted that through Shahla’s tireless work, she became extremely well acquainted with the challenges of providing mental health services for teachers, parents/caregivers and children in high-risk communities, and that it was Shahla’s energy, drive, commitment and capacity to create avenues to provide quality care to children that made it possible for SFCP (SFPI at that thime) to make connections with the city of SF and to become players in the effort to provide quality early childhood education. . Prior to the development of the Child Development Program (CDP), Dr. Cherazi was already co-chairing the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute (SFPI)’s Community Outreach Program to develop community educational outreach activities to the child therapist community along with Phyllis Cath in 1989 (1990). It began by offering a seminar for childcare professionals and preschool teachers entitled “The Mental Health Issues In Child Care.” To give a glimpse of how quickly these seminars expanded by 1994, the seminars had helped 30 teachers, 120 children and families.
Dr. Chehrazi then developed the structure of CDP in 1995 and Dr. Cath joined her in 1996 as the co-chair. The team worked hard and were successful at expanding the CDP activities and by 1996, CDP was overseeing five components:
1. The first was “Relationships In Child Care for Young Children,” seminars which were under the auspices of SF State University Early Childhood Education Department and the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and Society. During some of the time, the class was supported by a grant from the Haas Foundation due to the effective fundraising efforts of Dr. Chehrazi.
Page 16 BETH STEINBERG, PHD P P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Education Division (cont.)
Psychotherapy Training Graduation Introduction Beth Steinberg, June 5, 2021
2. The second was “Pre-School Consultation Program.” Dr. Chehrazi had worked since the early 1990’s on developing a program of preschool consultation that over time expanded to twelve preschools in San Francisco.
3. The third was the “Therapeutic Classroom Project.” In 1995, due to the efforts of Dr. Chehrazi, the CDP was awarded a generous grant from the Peter and Miriam Hass Fund to develop an on-site mental health program at a preexisting preschool in San Francisco, the Burnett Children Center in Bayview Hunters Point. This project was a collaboration between SFPI and San Francisco Unified School District and served 75 preschool children and their families.
4. The fourth: From 1995 to 1999/2000, Dr. Chehrazi developed and directed the Therapeutic Classroom Project (which later was called as “Early Childhood Mental Health Program), which was an on-site mental health team providing services to the children and their families as well as intensive training for the teaching staff.
5. And the fifth was the “Child Psychotherapy Seminars.” The 2-year training seminar in child psychotherapy began as a collaboration between the Langley Porter and CDP in 1995. The late Graeme Hanson and Dr. Chehrazi developed the seminars following the model created by the late Paulina Kernberg. The two year program consisted of weekly seminars that aimed to introduce psychoanalytic theory and clinical methods to psychotherapists, often early in their careers, who were working with children and adolescents.
In 2016, Rebecca Schwartz and Debbie Vuong became the co-chairs. Three years ago, the program adopted some changes and became the CAPPTP. The CAPPTP’s mission is to train clinicians to work with children, adolescents, and families in a manner informed by psychoanalytic ideas across a variety of arenas that can include private practice, school-based, and community mental health clinics.
Currently, Dr. Cherazi continues to teach at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis’ Child Psychotherapy Program as well as supervising residents at California Pacific Medical Center. More recently she has been a mentor to the director of Friends of Children. Several people described to me a training that she conducted for the mentors there that was extremely therapeutic and transformational for the group based on the idea of Ghosts in the Nursery in which the mentors got in touch with the intergenerational trauma in their own families. And I just got a notice in my email that informed that along with Dr Kiyomi Cohn Ameriks, Dr. Cherazi is going to be teaching a class on parenting work in the treatment of children and adolescents through the CAPPTP.
Please join me in welcoming Dr. Shahla Cherazi.
Page 17 BETH STEINBERG, PHD P P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Education Division (cont.)
Commencement Speech by Shahla Cherazi PPED Graduation June 5, 2021
I honor and congratulate you on your achievement today. What a time to be graduating from SFCP Psychotherapy’s programs. What a time to achieve the milestone given the challenges of the last year. Not only did you adapt to new ways of learning and treatment, but your normal life was also turned upside down. I congratulate you for your commitment to learning and growth and your commitment to helping others. I need to thank all the faculty and staff members that over the past two years, in spite of the pandemic challenges, have been committed to teaching and have accommodated the program to the unprecedented difficult situations.
I would like to applaud your courage in choosing Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program. You have chosen the psychoanalytically oriented approach to the practice of psychotherapy. It takes courage to take “the path less traveled.” Pursing a field that is painstakingly long and self-reflective and which is not currently popular takes determination and commitment.
As you know, there are close to 180 different types of psychotherapies. Just recently I learned about PCIT and EFT; even though many have borrowed, adapted, and integrated ideas, term, and principles from psychoanalytic theory, they rarely acknowledge doing so. In additional to your courage, I want to applaud your curiosity about the human mind and unconscious conflict and motivation. Over the last two years, you have been taught about many different schools of thoughts within psychoanalysis, many different approaches: classical theory, object relations theory, self-psychology, intersubjectivity, and developmentalism, just to name a few. This knowledge will enable you to appreciate the complexity of intrapsychic conflict and unconscious motivation in human relationships in order to help others.
I consider psychanalytically oriented psychotherapy not only a science but also an art where your prepared mind informs your creativity. As your professional journey matures, you will develop your own voice, style, and approach. This is a very creative process that will not only enrich your personal growth, it will enriches the lives of the people you are treating.
Now for a bit of history. About 40 years ago, the late Graeme Hanson, a talented child psychiatrist who was the director of child training at Langley Porter, the current UCSF, and I began the child psychotherapy seminars. After co-chairing the program for a year, other colleagues replaced me- Jan Baeuerlen, Tina Lapidis and others who followed. I then moved to other areas of the child development program at SFCP. I mention this because sometimes you only need one or two persons to create a program.
As a nation, we are now called to confront persistent injustices in our institutions and culture. I would like to acknowledge the stronger appreciation of mental health issues in our culture. Hopefully this appreciation will lead to changes in national mental health policy.
Page 18 BETH STEINBERG, PHD P P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Education Division (cont.)
Commencement Speech by Shahla Cherazi PPED Graduation June 5, 2021
Over the years, with the generous commitment of many of our colleagues, the psychotherapy programs have expanded and improved. As faculty, not only have we taught you, but we have also learned from you. About two years ago, pre-pandemic, the faculty began a process to reevaluate all of our psychotherapy training programs, which continues to evolve. We set a goal to explicitly integrate socio-cultural awareness into the coursework. Under the current sociocultural pressures of revising and revisiting our theories, we need to be careful not “to throw the baby out with the bathwater.” I have heard strong criticism of the existence of the oedipal complex, which some suggesting the theory is paternalistic and antiquated. I disagree, because for some patients and cultures for whom the oedipal conflict is pertinent in order to understand cultural assumptions and intrapersonal conflict. My first control child analytic case was a 3-year-old precocious girl who was the textbook description of the oedipal conflict. She had a successful analytic treatment over two and a half years. We need to examine in which family constellation when and if the oedipal conflict is applicable.
The faculty’s reexamination of the psychotherapy programs was enriched because of you questioning and challenging us. We continue to improve the program because you are participants as well as trainees. As the faculty strived for integration of new ideas concerning race, culture, and its clinical implication, we learn that the psychotherapy’s traditional neutrality may be unhelpful, and silence can at times be anti-therapeutic especially when confronted with racial issues. It is important to acknowledge and value the sociocultural context of each individual we are treating.
As clinicians we need to seriously question our own assumptions about the culture we are from and the culture in which we are professionally socialized in. Racism is deeply imbedded in the culture and likewise deeply embedded in us. An open inquiry into the affects of racism on our conceptualizations and practice might provide a more inviting space for patients of color to process their experiences. I am pleased to announce that we have established five scholarships for students of color in order for SFCP to become more inclusive and diverse and to be able to better address and integrate sociocultural understanding and sensitivity into the learning/teaching process.
Perhaps because I come from a foreign country, I have always been interested in applied and cross-cultural psychoanalysis. In your work you may be applying psychoanalytic understanding to other settings. With your courage, curiosity, and creativity, you will be the leaders in conceptualizing, voicing, and applying psychoanalytically oriented thinking when you are working at schools, public agencies, or in a variety of other community settings including mental health clinics. I know that you are up to the challenge and you will be able to teach and guide others by offering psychodynamically oriented therapy to help your patient understand the motivations and the conflicts that are below the psychic surface. You have chosen a growth promoting field that not only enhances growth in your clients but also enhances your own personal growth and life experience. I envision you mentoring and guiding others at the different settings where you will be working. Thank you again for being our students as well as our teachers, and I wish you the best in your continuing journey. It is thus I honor and congratulate you on your achievement today.
Page 19 GARY GROSSMAN, PHD P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Education Division & Updates
First, I would like to recognize the 2021 graduates from the Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program: Jessica Ferranti, Madeleine Lansky, Mark Sexton, and Lara Weyland. Congratulations to SFCP’s newest psychoanalysts!
We have 5 new candidates who will begin seminars in September: Please join me in welcoming Ari Bachrach, Cindy Jepsen, Jen Merovick, Karen Mu, and Doug Slakey. We will hear more about them in a future Newsletter.
Karim, I thank you for your eloquent, impassioned, and enlightening account of the reasons for, and the work of, the Anti-Racism Task Force and its report. I announced the formation of the task force last year at this meeting. I saw urgency in our need to address the structural racism in our training program and am proud of the work the task force has done. I want to thank and formally acknowledge the members of the task force: in addition to Karim, Genie Dvorak, Maria Longeumare, Jan Mill, Mayumi Pierce, Ray Poggi, Beth Steinberg and, especially, my co-chair Clara Kwun.
It is now up to the PED to determine how it will respond to the task force recommendations. I understand that there are members who are concerned about the recommendations to adopt the APsaA & IPA standards for psychoanalytic education. Although the process has not yet been finalized, there will be ample opportunity over the next academic year for members to discuss, debate and weigh in on these recommendations and the PED will not make decisions on the training requirements without this member input. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any concerns, questions, or feedback about the Anti-Racism Task Force Report.
Page 20 GARY GROSSMAN, PHD P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Education Division & Updates (cont.)
PED Graduation Introduction May 8, 2021
Good afternoon. Last spring we were faced with the difficult decision of postponing graduation for our 2020 psychoanalytic training graduates. Uncertain about the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, we optimistically rescheduled graduation to October. By the end of May it became apparent that our public health crisis would not be resolved quickly and rather than postponing graduation again, we hosted SFCP’s first ever Virtual Graduation on October 3. We are fortunate to have the technology that allows us to gather together – each from different locations – to celebrate the achievements of SFCP’s 2021 graduates. I want to thank all the SFCP volunteer faculty, the Training Analysts and Supervising Analysts who have contributed to our training program and our candidates during these challenging times. I also want to acknowledge the hours of volunteer time by the PED officers and committee members, with special acknowledgement of the PED Leadership: our Dean, Clara Kwun; Co-Secretaries, Karen Johnson and Jan Mill; Curriculum Committee Co-chairs, Adam Goldyne, who also serves as the PED Outreach Co-Chair, and Maria Longuemare, who also serves as the PED Vice Chair; Progressions & Graduation Committee Chair, Georgine Marrott; Admissions Committee Co-Chairs, Laura Dansky & Ann Martini; PED Outreach Co-Chair, Beth Steinberg; Supervising Analyst Chair, Helen Schoenhal Hart; Mentor/Advisor Committee Chair, Suzanne Klein; Committee on Psychoanalysis Across Disciplines, Naomi Janowitz; and Candidates Association Co-Chair, Eric Miller.
The Covid pandemic has imposed significant losses on all of us. For these new psychoanalysts, it has meant finishing their final year of training seeing patients and supervisors remotely and without the in-person support of colleagues, friends, faculty and staff at the Center. Surprisingly, there have also been gains as we have adapted to this crisis and discovered how much we can accomplish in remote practice, learning and collaborating. The necessity of practicing psychoanalysis by phone and video will, I believe, transform psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic training, increasing accessibility in the process.
The public health crisis is not the only trauma we have been living through this past year. The violence against African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Indigenous Peoples and the LatinX Community is not new, but it is receiving more public attention. Racism runs deep in our country and psychoanalysts are not immune. I believe that as an organization, we have failed to recognized how the structures embedded in our analytic training programs discriminate against people of color, resulting in a membership that is predominantly white. And, as an organization, we have been blinded to the impact on our members and candidates of color. In September, the Psychoanalytic Education Division began a process of addressing these inequities by forming an Anti-Racism Task Force. The work of the task force is nearly completed and a report of its findings and recommendations will be distributed to the SFCP membership next month. My hope is that in implementing these recommendations, SFCP’s psychoanalytic training programs will become more accessible, inclusive, diverse and less burdensome.
I hope you will join us next year, at 444 Natoma, for the 2022 graduation on Saturday, May 7th. Forrest Hamer will be our Graduation Speaker. Following the ceremony, there will be a gala dinner celebration at the San Francisco InterContinental Hotel, on Howard & 5th Streets. All 2020, 2021 and 2022 graduates will be invited to attend as SFCP’s guests. Page 21 GARY GROSSMAN, PHD P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Education Division & Updates (cont.)
Commencement Speech by Katherine MacVicar PED Graduation May 8, 2021
Being a pandemic graduate means learning to cope with your mother (who is now your internal sense of safety) deserting you, as Irma Brenman-Pick brilliantly discussed recently. This leaves you in the pandemic orphanage where you put a brave face on things and wait for her return. A year and more is a lot to expect. We anticipate a huge outburst of joy when she does return, like dancing in the streets drinking champagne or, maybe, acting up on an airplane. And of course we worry about whether mother will ever really return; unless we can vaccinate ourselves out of it, she won’t. It means learning to treat patients from far away without getting too depressed yourselves. It means interpreting patients’ fantasies that this is punishment and that you really can’t stand their presence.
It means having to learn all sorts of new computer functions that are painful to the head, just to see garbled images of classmates and friends. It means having to gabble endlessly so that the meeting isn’t disastrous, or listening to others gabble. It means silences that are very hard to endure. Feeling, at times, that you don’t care about these ridiculous people, only about your own skin, and surmising that others feel the same way toward you. Being unhappy about your vegetative existence, yet unable to bring the outside world back to life. But maybe both mother and life will come back enough; battered and dented to be sure, but enough to remind us of what it was like in the innocent years before this happened.
Candidacy is not enough; you’re going to have more help to really see where you are going, pandemic or no pandemic. I remember this myself—thinking that I so much needed more exposure to primitive states, that I enjoyed the work of Hans Loewald with its focus on pre-oedipal states of mind, and wondered where there was more of this. Then I had an opportunity that changed my professional life. Abbot Bronstein’s uncle, Don Meltzer, was an analyst in Great Britain. A colleague of his, Betty Joseph, was coming to San Francisco. I was in a meeting and fell into conversation with Eddie Weinschel. Eddie told me he had read her papers and thought the work good. For this first seminar with Betty we met in the auditorium of the old Mt. Zion building; the room was packed. Abbot was presenting, a perfectly good presentation as far as I could see, but Betty kept saying that looking at the here and now was more important—how was the patient using you and using her own mind right now. It was a revelation, but a disturbing one. We had been taught to be relatively quiet during sessions and to wait for ramifications or derivatives of the Oedipus Complex, which we were to hold onto for dear life. This new point of view meant really trying to be present during hours. It sounded exhausting.
And then we heard that she was willing to come to San Francisco during Bank Holiday (not a holiday we were aware of) and to give a small clinical seminar. Full of anticipation, we assembled a dozen people (mostly quite recent graduates) who were interested. Later on, loads of people wanted to join but couldn’t, because Betty wanted to keep it small. And that’s the reason I want to tell you about it; many people who wanted to be there were not able to do so. Betty stayed at the Miyako Hotel (she stayed at a Western suite rather than a Japanese one) and we prepared ourselves to present cases. The suite had a small sitting room and we crammed chairs in there. She preferred we write a short introduction, not the long histories we were used to, followed by two hours recorded in the most complete form we could manage.
Page 22 GARY GROSSMAN, PHD P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Education Division & Updates (cont.)
Commencement Speech by Katherine MacVicar PED Graduation May 8, 2021
She was not in favor of long histories, or writing notes during hours, of recording hours even with permission, of anything that smacked of clinging to the words. (all of this we did a lot). What interested her was what was the patient trying to get across and how was it hitting the analyst. She rarely rarely asked questions---when you asked a question all you got was an answer. If something was unclear it was the fact of its being so that was interesting, not the specifics of the answers. This was a lot to throw at us. There would be two case presentations every day— morning and evening during the week and morning and afternoon on the weekends. It was stimulating, but exhausting, a whole new world. Betty seemed to have inexhaustible energy while I was definitely fading fast by 8 pm. I felt it was a complete turnaround from what I was used to and that our group was responding, not to the newness of the new point of view, but often by getting into familiar obsessional arguments (was the patient more like this, or like that. Would this sort of interpretation be better, or that kind). In my fatigued state, this was horrible!
What was she like? She was a small person, brisk and cheerful. She dressed in what I would call British style, a bit tweedy, skirts and blouses, a cardigan for the chill, little adornment, dressed for work. She brought little things from Japantown, treats to go with coffee and tea. We knew little of her life, but that’s not completely true—she once had, during one of our trips to London, to cancel because of her brother’s illness. We gave the typical anodyne American good wishes for his recovery, and she said “oh no, he’s not going to recover, he’s dying, poor wretch”. Direct and calm, the facts of life, and a bit shocking to us. One thing we knew of her was that when she was a candidate she was so unhappy about what she felt was her difficulty connecting to the patient’s unconscious that she took an extra year to get additional supervision—and we knew that Roger Money-Kyrle was one of her supervisors. She lived in St. John’s Woods about a half block from Abbey Road and the Beatles’ studio. Melanie Klein had lived up the street decades before. It was easy to walk from her house to Primrose Hill and down to Regent’s Park where I could see the pinioned ducks and talk to the bird watchers, something I did several times. She tended to summer in Italy to get away from the clouds and rain of London.
I remember getting ready psychologically while driving down Geary street, ready to turn into the Miyako parking garage. Meeting Alice or Jan Mill there and taking the elevator up to the lobby. Meeting Sandy, Jim, and Steve in the lobby because we are all early. Harriet and Tora will be a bit late. Betty greets us---Hullo, lovely to see you all. Extensive moving and scraping of chairs—the presenter gets the most comfortable one---copies of the two sessions are madly circulating---sounds of us conversing sotto voce---does anybody need any of the little treats on the table? No? Shall we begin? I guess we did this well over a hundred times. How ordinary! Yet very slowly, very slowly, things improved from our stumbling beginnings.
Page 23 GARY GROSSMAN, PHD P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Education Division & Updates (cont.)
Commencement Speech by Katherine MacVicar PED Graduation May 8, 2021
But, although in those years we went fairly regularly to London, far more often we saw her in San Francisco at the Miyako. The atmosphere was excited and expectant. There were the little jokes, the newsy moments. Papers were rustling as we waited for the last person. There were little announcements. Then she would say, shall we start? And she was truly wonderful at getting to the “selected fact” and showing us how we were responding to it, and what would be more effective. There really has never been anyone else like her in clinical sensitivity. Is the patient able to let you work? Or does he take over as though you are not worth listening to, or in a way that is manic? Or does an insight that occurred in one paragraph get obscured in the next as a more destructive part of the personality takes over? The atmosphere was dead serious and yet friendly. It was, as things always are, quite competitive.
At first, when Betty would say after the session, well, this is interesting, what do people think of this hour, there would be dead silence, everybody furiously looking at the transcript in the hopes some elusive truth lurked there. Betty would then come up with something like what the patient’s response to interpretations was---for instance making quick allusion to them and then going on as though nothing had been said. She would show us we needed to be more narcissistic about our interpretations, stick to them if we felt they were being batted away—something we could store away for future reference. There were dozens and dozens of such technical hints, but it took several years before we were all comfortable enough to give our initial opinions. And several more years before we could effectively use our countertransference as a guide. So, whatever it is you turn to in your development as recent graduates, you can expect to put in a lot of energy before it’s really effective.
Meanwhile, other British Kleinians had heard that San Francisco was an interesting city, and not too far from Hawaii (many of them longed for the sun). So “the boys”, i.e. Michael Feldman, John Steiner and Ron Britton stopped by, and we came to see that while they all relied on Melanie Klein’s work they all use it in their own ways and with their own emphases. And Edna O’Shaughnessy, Hanna Segal, and Elizabeth Bott-Spillius each made several trips. Even Donald Meltzer made an appearance and went into an amazing state of reverie as he considered the material and stated, in his oracular way, that ‘all material refers to infantile states’.
You shouldn’t think that only Kleinians have such groups. Every major point of view values them. When we were starting with Betty, most of us were recent graduates and were still treating many of our control cases and often we were still at sea. I had such a case of disseminated phobic anxiety and panic that stretched over all the patient’s life, making me feel also diffusely anxious. Betty said, look, there is one strong resilient thing that she mentioned in a long series of things she had brought; it was a butter dish and it could withstand anything that went on, all the batterings of her life, and that is you, better able to be resilient and able to help her to become more that way too. I had never thought of myself as a butter dish until I realized Betty was thinking of the total transference, not just projections from objects but from total situations.
Page 24 GARY GROSSMAN, PHD P E D C H A I R Recognition of Graduates of the Psychoanalytic Education Division & Updates (cont.)
Commencement Speech by Katherine MacVicar PED Graduation May 8, 2021
Such insights sunk in very gradually but they helped us get to the point of what Betty called ”getting hold of the material”. Practically never did we “get hold of material” for the first few years. We were on the wrong track, addressing things that were less important and missing the important things. We were allowing ourselves to be sidelined, becoming superegoish , not able to trust our countertranference or just in general not being very good. Gradually though, over the twenty years of being exposed to Betty, we developed into decent analysts.
My greatest wish for you is that you run into “Bettys” in your own development. It makes a tremendous difference in your ability to do the work, and in your enjoyment of it. Psychoanalysis is truly lifelong learning and may none of you ever stop that process.
Page 25 STEVE LARSON TREASURER Treasurer's Report
Generally We are optimistic as we move into the post-pandemic world. Programs are expected to start up again in the SFCP building this fall. There are more PED candidates, an increasing number of analyst members, etc., which contribute to our optimism.
Thus, we are able to invest in long term strategic planning, including in that work such things as building infrastructure upgrades.
More will be said by Amy, the Facilities Committee Chair, but suffice it to say that our investment portfolio did well enough to help pay for important capital improvements.
Revenue Our Annual Campaign is in its 3rd year; and has been a success at about $100,000/year. Looking to this next budget year, we will assume about the same level of revenue from this source.
Revenues from membership dues have increased due to the gradual increase in analyst members and more candidates in the PED training. Also, we are planning for more Extension Division programs, thus also increasing revenues.
Page 26 STEVE LARSON TREASURER Treasurer's Report (cont.)
Expenses Turning to the expense side of the ledger: Generally, expenses of the organization remain substantially the same as in the past with a few exceptions. Important ones are as follows: 1. Because of the superb work of our Administrator, and her willingness, the Board has decided that it is time to expand and extend her contract for the next three years. Funding for this effort will come from the Windholz Fund, thus not impacting other program funding. 2. With regard to honorariums, if we are able to find leadership for a Visiting Professor this year, the Windholz Fund has agreed to underwrite it. 3. The organization has in the past year been developing and upgrading our Salesforce database. To date we have focused on upgrading spreadsheets and various related software. Of course, this is an ongoing process, and it will continue. Also, the overall expenses for the Center in the 21/22 budget are expected to be higher than in 20/21, mostly because of the reinvigoration of available classes and programs at the Center. This means that costs from such things as security, utilities, and cleaning will again be back to normal levels.
One other comment: the reason expenses are higher than income in our pie charts is because of depreciation. Depreciation is a non-cash expense. However, The Finance Committee's goal is to gradually allocate revenue for depreciation into a facilities reserve.
Conclusion The SFCP budget is always very tight. It is again this year, with a slight balance on the plus side. We shall do all that is possible to maintain or grow that margin throughout the year. CHRIS THOMPSON AUDIT COMMITTEE CHAIR Audit Report
In April of this year, our auditor, Crosby and Kaneda, completed a review of our financial statements and reported this review back to the Audit Committee. The review found no material matters of concern in our accounting processes or policies. However, they did provide guidance in two areas:
The Auditor recommended separation of investment funds for endowments and for operating reserves. At the time of the review these were co-mingled into a single account. At the recommendation of the Auditor, and adopted by the Finance Committee, these funds were separated and are now managed separately. The auditor also found a minor revenue accounting concern created when we invoice for services that are fully-delivered in subsequent fiscal years. The auditor recommended an adjustment to reverse these entries and re-enter them in the correct fiscal year. We took these adjustments in our chart of accounts. In order to keep the financial statements clear and transparent, and to avoid these entries in the future, the is evaluating process changes so that invoicing and revenue occur in the same fiscal year.
For our next fiscal year we received quotes to do a review ($4,800) or a full audit at ($12,000). The Audit committee has recommended we conduct full audits every other year. The Finance committee has concluded that we will conduct a full audit for the current fiscal year during the next fiscal year, and this is reflected in the budget.
Page 28 STEVEN GOLDBERG, MD & BRETT PENFIL, MFT,MPH CO-CHAIRS, NOMINATING AND GOVERNANCE COMMITTEE Nominating & Governance Committee
Steve Goldberg:
We have been busy with recruiting, filling needed positions, especially leadership positions, thinking and acting toward meeting diversity goals. Our goal over time is to have one third of the board comprised of individuals of color or from other historically marginalized communities.
We successfully recruited a new president: Cheryl Goodrich. Cheryl took on her term as president in March, and is already making her presence felt as a leader of the organization.
New board members this past year: Walt Beckman, Graeme Daniels
Departing board members this year: Eric Miller, Brett Penfil, Steve Goldberg
New board leadership this past year: Steve Larson, Finance; Deb Weisinger, Secretary; Deb Weisinger and Cathy Witzling, N&G;
Ongoing leadership: Amy Wallerstein Friedman, Facilities; Doug Slakey, Annual Giving Campaign
Recruitment needs: 2 analyst trustees, 3 community trustees. Paul Sorbo has one year remaining is his term as Board Chair.
The board passed a resolution to reach a goal of one third people of color of from other marginalized communities as board trustees as soon as possible, as well as to inform the membership each year about progress made toward this goal and plan to pursue this goal during the coming year. This is an effort that will require effort from the entire SFCP community- it is more than an issue for the board alone. We will have to work together not only to recruit from our own membership, but also to reach out beyond our usual communities.
Brett Penfil:
At my final annual meeting as a Board member, I called on my fellow Board members to vote in September for either an internal DEI advisory committee or an external DEI consultant to help them face and address the racism that is imbedded in our organization as it is throughout the broader culture. I asked that this been done not only for the benefit of our members and organization, but also for the benefit of our patients.
Page 29 SUZANNE KLEIN, PHD Annual Giving Campaign
I am presenting this report on behalf of the Annual Campaign Committee Chair, Doug Slakey and the members of the committee, Amy Wallerstein Friedman, Steve Goldberg, Hank Massie, Paul Sorbo and myself. Additionally, I want to recognize Marcia Hodges and Megan Kelly for their ongoing help and support of this year’s campaign.
The 2020-2021 Annual Giving Campaign is wrapping up on June 30th. To date we’ve raised $111,000 from 132 donors (87 Analysts, 36 Community Members, 7 Candidates and 2 Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy members). This amount represents 89% of our $125,000 monetary goal but only 26% of our 100% participation goal. While we are generally happy with the dollar amount raised towards our goal we are hoping for much greater participation in the years to come.
We did several things to publicize this campaign. We sent out a mailer, regular emails, and posted monthly notices in the newsletter highlighting donors explaining why they give, and most recently sent individualized letters to those members who had donated in the past but had not yet donated to this years campaign. Additionally, all SFCP members received a phone call from a member of the Board of Trustees, requesting a donation. And finally all donors received either a personal call or note, thanking them for their contribution. Many people have relayed that they appreciated hearing from us and receiving a reminder about the Annual Campaign.
We have just begun developing next year’s Annual Giving Campaign and in keeping with our long term desire of building community, an important goal will be to increase participation both in terms of the number of members who donate and the number of members who are active in the campaign. This will mean adding members to the Annual Campaign Committee, recruiting members to help make calls to the membership. as well as fine-tuning our messaging to try to increase donor participation. We believe that fundraising provides a good opportunity to contact, connect and interact with our members.
As a final reminder, we still have four days remaining in this year’s campaign, so if you haven’t yet donated, please do so by Wednesday June 30th. And we hope we can rely on you to participate in next years campaign as both a donor and a volunteer. Thank You!
Page 30 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD Enrico Jones Fund for Equality and Excellence
A year ago, I was moved to start a Fund to offer Tuition Credit for People of Color in honor of my late husband, Enrico Jones who was a psychoanalyst trained at SFCP, a Professor of Clinical Psychology at UC Berkeley and an African American. In this past year, I am in awe of the contributions which have resulted in donations of over $27,000. We will be recognizing the donors in our Annual Report.
With the excellent collaboration of committee members Amy Wallerstein Friedman and Forrest Hamer as well as staff and program committee members support, we worked through initial administrative set up of the program and conducted a first round of advertising this additional way of welcoming POC to our Center. Considering this is our first year, we are just delighted to announce that the first program to complete admissions and applications to the Fund, the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Education Division, generated many more excellent applications than we had planned to fund, and we will award 5 tuition credits of $2000 each. The Psychoanalytic Education Division and the Coalition for Clinical Social Work have later admissions cycles, but we hope to award up to 4 tuition credits for CCSW participants, at $300 per award and up to 2 tuition credits for Analytic candidates, at $5000 per award.
We recently learned that a number of members were not aware that this Tuition Credit Fund had been initiated, so we are fortunate to announce a Matching Grant offered by Richard Almond in memory of his late wife Barbara Almond. Here is Ric’s announcement of the Matching Grant:
Barbara Almond died in March 2016. At that time, we set up a Fund for colleagues to memorialize her contributions to psychoanalysis and in particular to our local organizations. We now would like to deploy the remaining funds in the form of a matching grant to the Enrico Jones Fund at SFCP. This is appropriate for several reasons:
Barbara grew up in a family that valued civil rights. She was an activist supporting sit-ins of lunch counters in the 1950’s and involved in voter registration in Black New Haven Connecticut neighborhoods while in medical school. Throughout her life we supported Black, Hispanic, and American Indian Scholarship Funds. We were friends of Enrico and Cheryl, attended their wedding, and were sorrowed by his untimely death. As an analyst, Barbara was involved in the treatment, teaching, and supervision of candidates and therapy students. She loved this part of her life, and her students found her a down-to-earth and wise teacher.
At the time of establishing the Fund for Barbara I did not canvass the full SFCP community; this is a chance to remember her, while contributing to the goal of enhancing non-white participation in SFCP training programs. I will be bringing the Barbara Almond Fund up to a full $10,000, and it will match any size contributions until that total is met. This would provide a significant addition to the resources of the Center in scholarship support.
If you would like to contribute so that the Fund receives the full Match of $10,000, please contact Megan Kelly, [email protected] or donate online here.
Page 31 AMY WALLERSTEIN FRIEDMAN, LCSW CHAIR, FACILITIES COMMITTEE Facilities Committee
The facilities committee was just launched close to 2 years ago to oversee and maintain our Natoma Building, our largest fiscal asset. The members of this committee are Chris Thompson, Walt Beckman, Marcia Hodges and Amy Wallerstein Friedman.
We began by an overall building inspection completed by a few building professionals from differing building trades. This aided us to learn about our building and assess the continual wear and tear over the last 9-10 years.
During Covid we have continued to attend to the empty building. I want to acknowledge and give a shout out to the SFCP staff, who periodically actually went to the building, flushed toilets, ran the heating and air ventilation system, met with contractors, and insured that everything was safe and running. Even empty buildings, like an old car need to be turned on regularly to stay tuned up and working. Thank you to all of them.
This year we are currently in contract to replace 3 HVAC units that were over 20 years old and well past their life span. The work was actually begun on June 21, and should be completed within a week. The building has a total of 8 separate units, the other 5 will likely need to be replaced within 3-7 years. And to anticipate a question, due to the complexity of our system with 8 different intersection units, from different manufacturers and different time periods, the thermostats are not user friendly.
Also, this year we completed an upgrade to the IT system to allow hybrid teaching and learning in each of the classrooms. We fixed our front door, which was out of compliance with the building code of the city of San Francisco, and we fixed our rolling security gate which was not working smoothly. We responded to a flood in our basement that was caused by a city sewer line backing up into our basement area. The staff worked diligently responding immediately, and then working with our insurance carrier, drying out the area, replacing the carpets, and saving boxes of materials and books. This is on top of all the regular yearly building maintenance that is managed.
In terms of planning ahead, we will need to replace a few more furnaces. We will also need a total IT upgrade as technology continues to grow and change. As we return more regularly to the building we will assess our audio quality and prioritize needed steps.
And our large project for this upcoming year is that many of the windows are failing, the wood surrounding the panes is rotting. We are currently gathering bids for replacing all the windows on the Natoma side. The committee is excited that in the next year we will be able to return to Natoma and we want the building ready and functioning smoothly.
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MARCIA HODGES, MNA, CTF Administrative Director's Report
It’s so good to see all of you!
Last year, I reported that we had received a PPP Loan from the Federal Government. This year, I’m happy to say that loan has been forgiven, which is helpful to our financial picture to the tune of $86,484!
As many of you know, a couple years ago, SFCP learned that we were supposed to have been monitored by BPPE, the California Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education. We have been working with the other CA psychoanalytic centers to pool resources and hire a lobbying firm. We recently had a meeting with the firm where they provided us an update. We are hoping there will be some kind of resolution by this Fall, but what that looks like is unclear. What they did share is, and I quote, “ It seems that there are quite a lot of issues that need to be addressed … due to the problems at the BPPE…” So, while we still have no resolution, at least it seems there are other entities complaining about the BPPE, too. Of course, Walt and I will continue to keep you updated as we know more.
Finally, I ask that you all unmute yourselves and provide a big round of applause for our amazing staff: Aaron Chow, Communications Manager; Nicole Lee, Education Program Coordinator, and Megan Kelly, Membership Services Manager/ Office Manager. I know you all realize this, but it’s clear to me we would all be struggling much more without their high degree of customer service, attention to detail and excellent work ethic. Of course, you know that we shifted the Center’s address temporarily to a PO Box. What you probably do not know is that with the extra financial assistance from the PPP loan, we were able to upgrade all staff members’ computers to laptops, so we are able to perform our duties more effectively. And we also upgraded the Center’s telephone system, so now the phones can be answered remotely!
Of course, the staff will all be extremely important as we look forward to opening the Center again in September and operating programs both virtually and in-person, requiring much more WiFi bandwidth in the building. We’ve all been working very hard to prepare for that day and look forward to getting to be with all of you in-person again soon!
Page 34 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD President's Report
What a strange yet remarkable year we’ve had. The pandemic led us to make enormous adjustments, personally and professionally which we never dreamt we’d have to make. Speaking for myself, immersion in my volunteer work on the SFCP BOT and recently as President has actually helped me manage by maintaining a strong sense of connection and productivity even as I lived in my bubble.
When I was elected to serve as President in March of this year, SFCP had not had a President in 8 months. And even while I had good exposure to current issues of the Center last year on the BOT, without a year as president elect, the volume of activities which I needed to engage in and get up to speed on has been huge.
Programs: Nevertheless, I’m happy to report that a core mission of SFCP, psychoanalytic education, continues to thrive. Of particular note is how the SF-PPTP faced and met the challenge of having enough teachers and supervisors to admit another bumper crop of students. With its energetic leadership, the program will once again enroll 24 students in the 2-year program. The PED will have another strong class of 5. Palo Alto PPTP will enroll its maximum of 10 in the 2-year program. The Child Adolescent PT and CCSW are still engaged in their admissions process.
Of our many fine programs, one particular success was the Western Regional Child Analytic Conference, led by Marsha Silverstein and assisted by Aaron Chow and Megan Kelly. The silver lining of the pandemic, use of Zoom, allowed people to participate from all over the country rather than just the west coast.
A measure of the program’s success is that instead of the anticipated earnings of $1500, the conference grossed nearly $8000 with minimal expenses.
Inspired by our use of Zoom, our members sorted out that given SFCP’s national accreditation, our programs can be advertised nationally through APsaA and our own website, and people all over the country can attend and nearly all can earn Continuing Education units.
Reopening: For several months the management Team and program chairs have been working with Marcia and staff to develop a reopening plan which accommodates the varied ways members, students and staff need to deal with ongoing covid concerns. The plan will also allow for nimble shifts should the City of SF require resumption of precautions at any time in the Fall. The plan is posted on the website.
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CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD President's Report (cont.)
People: Succession to several leadership roles is a focus of my attention. I’m spending considerable time working with Marcia and members of the MT and BOT to improve our understanding of member’s interests. We are working to improve how invitations to participate are made so that we broaden the pool of members asked to engage in activities. To give prospective leaders a clear job description, Marcia is interviewing current Committee Chairs to document their roles in a Chart of Work. These Charts of work can help someone considering a role to realistically assess the scope of the work.
And speaking of Marcia’s contributions, a process of planning to fund an increase of hours for her from 20 to 30 was underway when I joined the Management Team, and we recently finalized an update to her letter of hire. Through the generous support from the Windholz Fund, we will have this increase of Marcia’s time for 3 years.
Inclusion, and anti-racism efforts: I want to acknowledge that we are in the process of absorbing and reacting to the I/E Report and the PED ARTF Report and recommendations. These are significant self-studies conducted by profoundly committed members. We’re aware that not everyone agrees with all aspects of the reports or their recommendations, and that is to be expected. The reports and recommendations are attempts to open conversations and point a way forward. I am very interested to support ways of gathering member input and promoting thoughtful dialogue so that we make optimal use of the reports.
Both reports remind me of the inspiration I drew from the civil rights movement of the 1960s. That broad movement took many paths—some I agreed with, others I didn’t-- but through all manner of confrontation with bitter realities, this country moved to some greater self-awareness and psychological honesty. But in 2020, a reawakening was overdue.
As psychoanalysts, we are experts in and committed to the work of bearing difficult realities. I am hopeful that SFCP members will work through the controversies now alive amongst us using our expert capacities to face conflict and find resolution or ways to live with the conflicts.
To assemble information which some asked for last week the Management Team assembled a detailed account of the context and the process of that study and emailed that letter to all members. You may find it clarifying and perhaps reassuring that the process has been and will continue to be thoughtful and measured.
I often remind myself that some humbleness is called for at these moments. We can’t yet appeal to science to settle our differences. And while each of us may have great conviction about the best ways to teach and conduct psychoanalysis, other esteemed colleagues can have equally strong yet different convictions. If we can keep our minds open, all of us may discover ways forward we didn’t contemplate at the beginning of the discussions.
Page 36 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD Distinguished Service Awards
Leora Benioff Presenter: Deb Weisinger
Leora has retired as the Chair of Postgraduate Education for analysts, a position she held for a number of years, organizing clinical forums including presentations to visiting professors by analysts. She was instrumental in bringing the 7th International Congress on Couple and Family Psychoanalysis to SFCP, “Who is the Couple? Who is the Family? Creating New Therapeutic Possibilities, ’ reflecting her deep commitment to psychoanalytic couple and family understanding and therapeutic work. She was also one of, if not the 1st, candidate representative to the PED. We want to recognize her commitment and service to the SFCP and the greater psychoanalytic community. Thank you Leora.
Sheena Craig Presenter: Debora Fletcher
Sheena Craig represents the best of SFCP Community Members. She has been an active Community Member and volunteer for approximately 17 years. She served as the Forum co-chair for 5 years and as a member of the Membership Integration Committee since its inception. She even generously provided refreshments for Dialogues for a few years, often donating the bagels, cream cheese and coffee.
Sheena is known for being caring and following through. As co-chair of the Forum, she was most importantly the face of SFCP to students and attendees interested in learning about analytic work. She was always there to provide a warm welcome, network with attendees, handle the administrative paperwork, and recruit presenters.
On the Membership Integration Committee, Sheena has been a dedicated member, taking minutes for all the MIC meetings for years, as well as helping with the annual SFCP party and other MIC events.
Sheena is stepping down from volunteer activities at SFCP. We want to thank her and take this opportunity to acknowledge her generous and tireless work. We will miss her so much.
Page 37 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD Distinguished Service Awards (cont.)
Karim Dajani Presenter: Gary Grossman
Karim deserves our recognition and appreciation for his tireless efforts to bring organizational psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalytic practice into the 21st century and he persistently reminds us of the necessity of incorporating socio-cultural perspectives in all areas of our work. As a member of the PED CC’s Curriculum Revision workgroup, Karim championed the inclusion of socio-cultural perspectives throughout the curriculum. He is the co-chair of the CC sub-committee on Culture and serves as the Faculty Representative for Electives. In addition to his many contributions reclaiming the socio- cultural in psychoanalysis, Karim has also been a voice for racial equity, representation and inclusion. He served on the planning and work group for Ken Eisold’s organizational consultation and on the PED’s Anti-Racism Task Force. Karim has also been an inspiring teacher in our analytic program, PPTP, and the Extension Division. Thank you Karim!
Clara Kwun Presenter: Beth Steinberg
Clara tirelessly gives to SFCP in many capacities. In addition to being the Dean of students in the PED, being involved with and having been the co-chair of the CCSW, teaching in many programs both here at SFCP and in the community, and mentoring, supervising and advising many many students and chairs and leaders here at SFCP, during this time both of social and political trauma and upheaval both in the world and in our community, Clara has gone above and beyond to take leadership in the process of change here at SFCP. She served on Ken Eisold Work Group in 2018, then on Inclusion/Exclusion Task Force, and then became the co-chair of the PED ARTF. She is seen by many as giving so much to students and peers with her wise judgement, deep empathy and vision and being a true diplomat, weighing perspectives of many and guiding groups toward well thought out action plans. In addition, she has done perhaps more than anyone else in our community to build bridges between SFCP and people of color who are entering our field and developing as clinicians. One person wrote, “everywhere I turn, I see Clara teaching classes, offering supervisions, consulting and networking, both to offer care and outreach to developing clinicians and also to strengthen the fabric of SFCP. She is also a fostering and benevolent presence in multiple programs at SFCP—the psychotherapy training program and the adult and child training programs, both as a teacher and as a leader.” Congratulations Clara!
Page 38 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD Distinguished Service Awards (cont.)
Michael Levin Presenter: Beth Steinberg
Michael has been exceptional in his service to the SFCP community. He has been the Chair of the Scientific Meeting Committee for the last several years, which has brought exceptional speakers to the Center; he is also a member of the highly active Curriculum Committee of the PED; he recently stepped down from his position of Chair of the Admissions Committee for PPTP. His service to the community also extends to extensive involvement in mentoring and supervising trainees at all levels, including informally mentoring numerous students and candidates, going out of his way to support their endeavors and interests. And he is extremely generous in his teaching for our community, readily going above and beyond to step up and share with candidates and students his fine mind, rigorous thinking and what is inevitably a profound learning experience. Mike teaches both for PPTP and in PPTP’s third year program, Integrations, and he has made an enormous contribution to candidate training over the years. He did a particularly heroic job this past year providing two lengthy simultaneous courses to the first and second year candidates on relatively short notice due to the short lead time between curriculum being developed for the year and the year beginning. He has also been active in promoting psychoanalysis in the greater public sphere including through his co-founding the Frontline Workers Counseling Project in spring 2020 with Elizabeth Rawson, an independent organization providing pro-bono mental health services to frontline medical workers in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. Thank you so much Michael!
Brett Penfil Presenter: Meryl Botkin
Brett Penfill has served as Chair of Community Membership, a member of the Membership Integration Committee and served on the Board of Trustees for 3 years. Those who have worked with her on the Board have stated that she was an outstanding Board Member and pointed to her passion and focus. Her experience as an Organizational Consultant gave her an understanding of group process and dynamics. Brett used her understanding when she Co-Chaired the Nominations and Governance Committee to develop job descriptions for board members, charts of work that outline tasks and ways to accomplish them. She also developed an orientation for new Board members that included a mentorship program. She was the Co-Chair of the working group on for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. All comments about Brett underscored how she gave voice to questions that needed to be raised and how was passionate she was about the expansion of voting rights for Community Members. Members of the board said she was a “role model of a good Board Member” and will be deeply missed. All of us on the Membership Integration Committee will miss her humor, clarity of thought and the ability to cut through all the noise to see issues clearly. Thank you, Brett, for all of your service.
Page 39 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD Distinguished Service Awards (cont.)
Ray Poggi Presenter: Deb Weisinger
Ray’s distinguished service and commitment to SFCP has been not only long standing but also full and diverse. He has been a Training & Supervising Analyst since 1997. Along with Co-Chair Elizabeth Simpson, Ray has been facilitating Working Together Retreats for the past 10 years. Although he is stepping down as the Co-Chair of the Committee on Groups, we want to recognize his leadership and profound commitment to facilitating SFCP’s reflection on group processes, including helping our organization reimagine our participation in racial justice issues. He has been an outstanding faculty member and continues to consult with faculty and the SFCP community, most recently with the PED Anti-Racism Task Force. We want to recognize the many areas in which Ray has contributed to SFCP and continues to do so. Thank you, Ray.
Elizabeth Rawson Presenter: Gary Grossman
Elizabeth is being recognized and celebrated for the founding, along with Mike Levin, of the Frontline Workers Counseling Project. This is an extraordinary achievement. In the midst of the ballooning public health crisis due to the novel coronavirus, Elizabeth and Mike created a program providing free psychotherapy and counseling to anyone working in a frontline role during this pandemic. They recruited therapists from around the SF Bay who provided at least one hour of free service per week to a frontline worker. Their easily accessible webpage seamlessly links frontline workers with an available clinician, serving workers throughout the bay area. At a crucial time, when many of us were overwhelmed with the challenges of remote practice and adapting to the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic, Elizabeth, a full-time psychiatrist and 2nd year candidate at SFCP, made the time to respond to this profound need for mental health care in our community, creating an invaluable service practically overnight. Congratulations Elizabeth!
Page 40 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD Distinguished Service Awards (cont.)
Maureen Smith Ruffell Presented by Cheryl Goodrich, PhD
Maureen Smith Ruffell is currently a Co-Chair of PAPPTP, where she also supervises and teaches, and is a supervisor in the residency programs at Stanford and San Mateo County. Maureen is also a member of the Admissions Committee for PAPPTP and SFCP as well as a Supervising and Training Analyst for SFCP.
My good friend and colleague on the Peninsula, Maureen is described by her colleagues as a clear and decisive leader, reliable, steady, and an especially atuned listener. She’s a dedicated problem solver, never afraid or reluctant to take on a challenging problem with diplomacy. A pleasure to work with, Maureen executes with high standards, humor and skill. Good with group process, she keeps an open mind about innovations in the program. Her good judgement, positive attitude, interpersonal warmth and thoughtful counsel is treasured. Congratulations on this recognition, Maureen.
Elizabeth Simpson Presenter: Gary Grossman
It should be no surprise that Elizabeth has previously received a DSA from SFCP. Elizabeth has been instrumental in so many of our organization’s programs over the years, including the Extension Division, the Psychotherapy Forum, CCSW, Committee on Groups, and Working Together Retreats. This year, we are acknowledging Elizabeth’s above and beyond service on the Inclusion/Exclusion Workgroup – a group that was established by the BOT to address our Center’s challenges with inclusion and exclusion, as documented by Ken Eisold in his recommendations to SFCP. The I/E Workgroup was still in the process of becoming a workgroup when the COVID-19 pandemic hit resulting in the suspension of meetings. Elizabeth rallied us, inspired us, championed our mission and brought needed focus to our group. Under her leadership, we rose to the challenges we faced, began meeting twice monthly and our meetings became consistently generative and productive. Elizabeth single- handedly synthesized our 18 months of discussion into the comprehensive set of recommendations that were documented in the Workgroup’s final report to the BOT. Although we, as a Center, still have work to do to implement the I/E workgroup’s recommendations, we have pathways to becoming a more inclusive Center because of Elizabeth’s leadership. Congratulations Elizabeth and thank you!
Page 41 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD Distinguished Service Awards (cont.)
Sarah Stadler Presenter: Kira Steifman
Sarah has served as Chair of the Child Colloquium Committee for approximately six years, and is stepping down from her post in July. During the past challenging year, Sarah boldly led the committee as it was forced to pivot and adapt to an online platform. As a Community Member, I personally benefited from each Child Colloquium, finding them to be containing spaces in which to learn from others and to reflect upon the impact of COVID, Zoom, and Doxy on our patients, our relationships with them, and our ability to do our work. Sarah’s deep commitment to psychoanalytic thinking and to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion have helped to increase the level of interest in and attendance at Colloquium events not only by graduated analysts, but also by the larger community, which includes trainees, interns, and students of psychology. Sarah is stepping down from her post in July. Thank you, Sarah, for your dedication and generous contributions to SFCP.
Debbie Vuong Presenter: Beth Steinberg
Debbie Vuong, along with Rebecca Schwartz, assumed the leadership of the Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (CAPPTP) in 2016, and sadly, Debbie is going to be stepping down from this role. As co-chairs, Debbie and Rebecca transformed the program. They have revitalized the faculty, curriculum, and brought it into alignment with the other PPTP programs. With their thoughtful, subtle leadership, they have brought an emphasis on culture, diversity and inclusion to the curriculum in a way that has led to valuable discussions amongst the faculty and students, while also keeping the importance of psychoanalytic education in the treatment of children and adolescents in mind. It has been impressive to see the clear structure they set up within the organization, the number of people they recruited to lead committees as well as their inviting and inclusive manner. Debbie brought wonderful energy, strength and courageous creative thinking to her CAPPTP leadership role. She has an inclusive vision for CAPPTP and effectively created a steering committee consisting of a wide-range of people, spanning the gamut from psychoanalysts to a recent CAPPTP student. She's an organized collaborative team player and her enthusiasm and sense of humor were vital aspects of the work with the committee. Her ability to help a group think and be open to changes has benefited so many, especially the students. Debbie was the first non-analyst and person of color to head up the CAPPTP (or any psychotherapy training program here at the center), and that took a tremendous amount of courage and strength. Debbie has also been working on the COG for the last several years, and she has done a tremendous amount for the organization in this role. As the chair of PPE division, I have worked closely with Debbie, and her hard work, her knowledge of psychoanalytic thinking with children and adolescents and her ability to hang in there in the face of painful organizational upheaval has been inspiring and has benefitted us all. I hope she has felt enriched by the process as well.
Page 42 CHERYL Y. GOODRICH, PHD Distinguished Service Awards (cont.)
Although Debbie communicated with me that she unfortunately was not able to make it to the Annual Meeting as she is in South Dakota for her bi-annual family trip and there is no wifi or service out at our cabin, which is awesome for her! She said: “I would like to thank the SFCP community and the Management Team for this award. I'm touched and flattered to have been thought of. Psychoanalysis changed my life, and it's a privilege to be a part of this community. I would like to thank some specific folks who have been and are currently amazing sources of support and inspiration in my volunteer work at the Center. Namely, Clara Kwun; Elizabeth Simpson, Ray Poggi and my other COG committee members; the late Myrna Frankel; Beth Steinberg and the other psychotherapy training program Chairs; my CAPPTP Steering Committee members, my partner-in-crime, Rebecca Schwartz; and of course, my husband and my two boys.”
Page 43 PAUL SORBO, LCSW BOARD CHAIR Concluding Remarks
Acknowledgements & Closing Remarks
1. Eric Miller, PhD: Thank you for all of your efforts in serving as this year’s Candidate Representative to the BOT
2. Brett Penfil, MFT, MPH: In recognition of your 3 year term on the BOT, your very active and personable style of challenging your colleagues and myself with directness and humor; thanks for all you contributed especially in Co- Chairing the Nominations & Governance Committee with Steve; for creating a Board member orientation program and never giving up!
3. Steve Goldberg, MD: In recognition for your 6 year term on the BOT; thank you for your steadiness, your calm and reasonable approach to problem-solving; and your ability to self reflect and change. We are indebted to your participation in the Annual Giving Campaigns and your Co-Chairing the Nominations and Governance Committee with Brett. I appreciate that you have agreed to consult on several efforts over the next year.
In closing, we are not without our challenges as members and as an organization, there is clearly much work ahead of us and more we can do but I want to acknowledge the tremendous talent, passion, and commitment of our SFCP members who willingly and enthusiastically volunteer countless hours to create this unique community of many voices - thank you!
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