Dear friends and colleagues,
It is with a mixture of sadness, pride, some regret and relief that I write to you in this last president’s letter. It has been a real honor and privilege to serve as your president over these last three years. That period was proceeded by one year as President-elect and will now lead to my role as Past President for the following year, 2021. Prior to my current position, I worked on and chaired various committees and served on the Board for some years before being elected president, and I hope to have the opportunity to continue that work in the coming years as well. As I hope this illustrates, IARPP is structured in a way that allows for both continuity and change, a tricky balance that we continue to keep an eye on and at times revise through reassessment and modification of our bylaws.
I was lucky to serve as President-elect under then President Chana Ullman (Israel), a strong and talented leader who turned over the reigns at a time of growth and creative expansion of membership offerings and activities. As many of you likely remember, this quickly led to a period of debate and dissent for some as our organization began preparations for its 2019 conference in Israel. Like any vital, international organization, ours does—as it should–contain a multitude of passionate voices, opinions and interests. Therefore, of course, not everyone was always pleased or should have been expected to be, with how I and the Board handled the process of debate and, ultimately, the decision to meet in Israel as originally planned. Still, we made online space (and actual space at the conference) available for ongoing discussion and debate, and ultimately, following a meaningful and successful conference for those many who were willing and able to attend, I believe that our organization emerged from this difficult period energized and strengthened. Of course, what we couldn’t know then and are still mourning now, is that this would be our last in-person gathering for 3 years, an unprecedented event in the history of our organization and world.
Since the pandemic began in March of this year, we have tried to bring our membership as much opportunity for online support and processing as time, energy and person-power would allow. Following two several week periods of meaningful, ongoing, moderated discussion (thanks to Board support and oversight as well as around the clock moderation by Cathy Hicks (Australia), Amy Schwartz-Cooney (USA), Sandra Torribio Caballero (Spain) and Matt Aibel (USA)) that we called the IARPP Open Forum, we are about to meet for IARPP’s first online Symposium, to be held on January 9th and 10th, 2021. “Working in the Midst of the Covid-19 Crisis: What Can Relational Psychoanalysis Offer?” brings together a roster of Relational Psychoanalysis’s most experienced scholars as well as important, newer voices in the field in what I expect will be a very exciting opportunity to learn together during this once in a lifetime (at least we hope) crisis. Registration has begun by the time you read this letter.
Much has happened over the course of the last three years, in addition to the regular, ongoing tasks of organizational management of finances, budgets, personnel, journal contract renewals, committee appointments, elections, crisis responses (think conference cancellations and postponements – 2x – as well as other actions noted above) and so on that any Board must attend to. Among these happenings, thanks to growing international interest in relational psychoanalysis and the efforts of our wonderful International Chapters Committee co-chairs Juan Francisco Jordan (Chile) and Marianne Kennedy (Australia), we have added two chapters in Argentina, a second chapter in Mexico, and new chapters in Romania and Russia. We welcome each of them with warmth and enthusiasm. Most recently, we’ve also added a new committee, “Membership Outreach,” initially conceived of by Vice President Margaret Black Mitchell (USA) and chaired by Board member Hilary Offman (Canada), for purposes of reaching out to and supporting IARPP members in parts of the world where chapters do not yet exist, and the new “Couples, Families and Groups” Special Interest Group co-chaired by Board member Stavros Charalambides (Greece; see this issue of the newsletter). We are also looking into the possibility of offering some form of online video teaching to those members who reside in parts of the world where relational learning is less accessible; this is still in the early stages of exploration. And finally, as we say goodbye to our talented and hard-working “Colloquium Committee” co-chair Amy Schwartz Cooney (USA) who departs to take on her exciting new role as co-editor of IARPP’s journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues, I am very happy to welcome Board member Shlomit Yadlin-Gadot (Israel), who will be joining the wonderful Cathy Hicks (Australia), IARPP Board member and Colloquium co-chair, to co-lead this important committee.
As for the future, if we are to continue growing as an organization, we will need to keep re-evaluating, modifying and adding to our committee offerings and membership benefits just as we try to stay current with innovations in relational psychoanalysis in our colloquia, webinars, conferences and so on. But as important, we must also continue our recently improved translation options. Thanks to those colleagues who are fluent in languages other than English, we have been reminded that unless our organization becomes more multilingual, we will not be able to satisfy the needs of current and potential new members. Towards that end, we now offer translations of the Colloquia papers into Spanish and Greek, efforts are made to offer translations in the newsletter (thanks to Editor extraordinaire Matt Aibel, USA), we will be translating as many of the upcoming Symposium papers into Spanish, Greek, Italian and possibly additional languages as possible — as well as offering a Spanish-only group during the breakout groups portion of the Symposium, and we will be attempting to increase our translation capacities in future conferences and Webinars. Special thanks to IARPP Chapter President Marie Saba (Peru) and Board member Stavros Charalambides (Greece) for their skilled and labor-intensive translation oversight and support as well as Susanna Federicci-Nebbiosi (Italy), who will be overseeing the translation of the Symposium papers into Italian. I hope that some of you might contact us if you are available to help us add to our language offerings.
When I was a newer member of IARPP, I remember feeling surprised and even jarred the first time or two that I learned a new president would be taking over the role; I’m not always a fan of disrupted attachments and loss of the predictable and familiar, at least in professional institutions. It is true, of course, that each president brings her or his own unique style and priorities to the role, and we are each stewards of the organization during particular moments in socio-cultural time. But I have also learned over the years that each IARPP president begins and carries out their work based on organizational wisdom accrued over a number of years and with the ongoing support and mentorship of longtime and founding members of the organization, newer Board members with their fresh perspectives, and an Executive Director and office staff who provide institutional memory, wisdom and support. There’s that tricky balance again that I mentioned earlier, or, put another way, perhaps an organizational version of Bromberg’s “staying the same while changing.”
As I step aside from a role that I have loved in an organization that I love even more, I want to thank the members of the Board’s Executive Committee Margaret, Hazel, Tony, Peggy and Susi for their dedication, support, challenges, friendship and collaboration, as well as all of our past and current Board members for their ongoing hard work, creativity and representation of the membership. Thank you, too, to Val, Elissa and Lucia, our dedicated and always supportive Executive Director and administrators. And thanks to all of you — our members, who support our organization, and contribute your efforts to our organizational activities, professional literature and relational teaching and study.
In closing, I am very grateful and excited to welcome back Susanna (Susi) Federicci-Nebbiosi (Italy) as our next President. Susanna has been an IARPP Board member and relational teacher and champion for many years and, for the first time in the life of our organization, a former President who has generously agreed to serve a second term in service of our organization. We are indeed very lucky that she will be bringing her many talents to the job of leading us during the coming years.
Wishing you and yours a happy, healthy holiday season and better year ahead.
With warm regards and appreciation for each of you,
Steve
Steven Kuchuck, DSW
New York City
Email Steve Kuchuck