Short and Sweet

As Publications Chair, I have the opportunity to witness directly the challenges of our relatively new editor.

Admittedly, I have a bias; that being: Shorter is sweeter.

I feel protective of our editors and the volunteers that devote their time and energy to AAP. I am very committed to keeping the positions manageable and fun.  To that end, I encourage you to present your material for the Newsletter in a clear, succinct, and well-edited form.  For example, get someone you know who is meticulous and grammatically evolved to read your article before you send it to be published.

As a couple of examples of concise writing, here you go:

Do you think my mind is maturing late, or simply rotted early?
Ogden Nash

Geeks are people who love something so much that all the details matter.
Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo

While I’m at it, if you want to be sure that your submissions to the Newsletter are published, send them as a Word Document to Academynewsletter@gmail.com rather than to Linda’s personal email.

Your Faithful Publications Chair,

David Loftis

EDITOR's NOTE:  The above article with signature is only 179 words!

Do You Really Think You Are Going to Live Forever?

I have just finished reading Jerry Travers’ magnificent obituary on the website of the Ippolito Funeral Home in Summit, NJ. I am through with sobbing for now. The feelings of “this can’t be true – that he is really gone” still come and go. His wake and funeral will be another step in dealing with the reality of his death, but I do not expect to fully grasp that he is no longer with us for some time to come. The narrative arc of Jerry’s life was thrilling to read in its condensed but rich form, and many of the remarks brought him back to life for a few minutes. The way his early life informed so much of what we came to know of him in AAP was lovingly captured, along with the sense of his heartfelt searching, longing to connect in his shy way, and his quirky Irish-Canadian wit. He had brains to spare. Murray Scher and Jerry held up the extreme ends of the continuum of sartorial attunement and expression in the Academy, while they simultaneously shared a tight contiguity and connection in matters of truth telling, intellectual acuity, a sometimes mordant sense of humor, and deep curiosity about the art and science of psychotherapy. Such are the odd couples who are the lifeblood of our band of wandering Arameans. The immediate message I received from Murray upon his hearing of Jerry’s death contained his memory of a remark Jerry made years ago during the nadir of the AAP Talent Show – “Murray, you know, the talent show is what killed vaudeville.”

Jerry belonged to a long-lived (over 30 years) and vital AAP “family group.” Its current members include Elaine Levin, Jennifer Savitz, Debbie Schwartz Kuhn, Don Murphy, Ray Lovett, Kitty LaPerriere, Karen Smith, Matthew Leary, Brooke McLaughlin, Mindy Meachem, Elizabeth Echeverria Field, and Kelly Barclay.  Within the last few years they have lost to death longtime members Sol Rosenberg, Jeannie Shaw, Bruce Schell and now, Jerry. This is both statistically heartbreaking as well as emotionally staggering when we recall the contributions to AAP these now-absent members made over the years of their participation – a president, several EC members, workshops chaired, and innovative workshop and I&C presentations given too numerous to even try to count up, never mind the behind-the-scenes committee work, unofficial consultations, and PR work they did for the Academy.  Like many family groups, they have been through thick and thin with one another. Unlike many family groups, they have dealt with the problem of succession with more courage, vitality and forethought than I believe most of the rest of us have. They have a real age range in their group. In my group, since the death of Alice Umbach, the mean, median, and modal age are almost the same number. I do not, of course, have reliable demographic data on all of the other “family” (a term I do not really like) groups in the Academy. My sense however, is that the issue of succession is related to a number of other dynamics that are beginning to be more directly addressed by us, including an unclear notion of how one gains admission to a group, entrenched notions of specialness, and the denial of death.

This is more than the usual “carpe diem” pep talk that often accompanies the death of a loved one. I hope that these thoughts prompt us all to think of the ongoing life and vitality of AAP, our reverence and devotion not only to one another now, but our awareness of the quality of the legacy that will go on after we’re gone.

Hallie Lovett

JERRY TRAVERS HAS DIED.

       Long time dedicated Academy member, joining around 1975 or so, Jerome Travers died on March 18, one day after St Patrick’s Day, so fitting a deeply Irish man, buoyantly proud of this heritage and prouder still of his Canadian heritage.

      He attended almost every national meeting during his long AAP tenure. He was very active in the former NJ/NY meetings, served on EC, is a long- standing member of the Voices Board and frequent and admired contributor to Voices and other professional journals. He and Mark Stearns created a respected series, called The Psychotherapy Patient, with titles such as: The Difficult Patient, The Self Righteous Patient, The Interminable Patient.

Jerry presented a vast number of workshops, noted for their intellectual depth, lucidity, and appealing manner.

      About 5 months ago he suffered a stroke, was in intensive care for a time, then to a rehab facility where he continually fought infections and minor strokes until this past Tuesday, March 18.

     Referring a patient to Jerry elicited warm satisfaction, even envy, of the patient, knowing the devoted, well thought out care coming the patient’s way. Jerry had some faults, but they are so far removed from memory now, one feels only the void of his empty chair, the silence of his soft manner, his ever present search for the humor in life, and the sadness that no one, absolutely no one, can ever take his place.

    Jerry leaves his wife of many years,+46, the scholar Dr. Mary Segers, his daughter Suzanne, his son John Paul, and two beautiful grand daughters: Evelyn and Julia.

   You can leave an email message for the family at the funeral home website:

  www.ippolitofuneralhomes.com

Even the briefest message can lessen sorrow.

Ray Lovett

Mark Stern and Jerry Travers: Some Personal Memories

          As I read that Mark and Jerry had both died recently, I felt a wave that I know well as grief move through my stomach.  Although I was not extremely close to either of them, I was a long time professional acquaintance of both.  I placed them in apposition as I thought of their substantial co-creation, The Psychotherapy Patient.  Identifying various kinds of psychotherapy patients in practical terms based on the therapist's experience of them, rather than strictly adhering to DSM classifications, Mark and Jerry published a unique journal.  Each issue was dedicated to one such kind of patient.  Cleverly, they published each issue simultaneously as both softbound journal and hardbound volume, thus creating two categories of potential readers, journal subscribers and one-time book purchasers.  Three times I contributed to their project: "Comment" on "The Many Faces of the Hesitant Patient" by Robert J. Willis in Psychotherapy and the Uncommitted Patient (1984), "A Gestalt Therapist's Perspective on Grief" in Psychotherapy and the Grieving Patient (1985), and "On Monomania" in Psychotherapy and the Obsessed Patient (1987).

            Mark was the editor of Voices when I proposed to extract all of the substantial articles having to do with Gestalt therapy from the first twenty-five years of Voices and get this collection published in book form.  He encouraged me in this project and early on was my liaison with EC.Published in 1992, and still in print, the result was Gestalt Voices.  Mark had earlier invited me onto the editorial board of Voices, and through these two involvements he taught me a good bit about the art of editing.

            Jerry, too, perhaps unrecognized by him, gave me a gift.  Overhearing him in a tête-à-tête at an AAP gathering discussing Sebastian Brant's The Ship of Fools (Narrenschiff, 1494), I paused and was invited by him into the conversation.  A man after my own heart, he was, demonstrating contemporary application of arcane knowledge.  I soon purchased a copy and still consult it not infrequently!

            And, so I remember Mark and Jerry with fondness and appreciation.

                                                                                    

Edward W. L. Smith

President's Column

As I sit down to write yet another Presidential Column, I realize that there is little in the way of EC business that I feel pressed to relate this time (if you are experiencing serious symptoms caused by the deprivation of hard facts, see the last Newsletter online or your doctor).  Instead, I thought I’d take the opportunity to let you in on my musings about AAP in general.  In no particular order, they arrive and leave my brain, seemingly at will.  And that is how they will appear here as well.

I wonder why so many of us have not paid our dues yet.  We have sent a statement and two reminders by snail mail and still we don’t pay on time (the deadline was February 15th). We have instituted a late fee (10% of your dues amount) and still we don’t pay.  We on EC wonder if we have created this monster by being too lenient and/or by being too willing to make phone calls to remind and cajole.  Needless to say, this puts an enormous burden on our Dues Chair, our Central Office, and on those of us who are responsible for the fiscal health of our organization.  Coming after late-payers each year costs us money, time, and energy.

  

You will be increasingly aware that EC has lost patience with this problem because, starting now, you will actually have to pay the late fee if you send in your dues late and you will be dropped from membership after April 1^st if you still haven’t paid.  Then, if you want to be a member and come to the wonderful Summer Workshop 2014, you will have to reactivate and pay both the late fee and the $25 for re-activating your membership.  Inactive status, (where you got most of the benefits of membership except attendance at Summer Workshop) without paying your dues for a year, was a category we felt we needed when we first had to clean up the mess in our membership rolls, but it is not in our best interests now.

  

"Mama" has resigned and we must now each take responsibility for ourselves.  Fair warning: the days of AAP’s finances being run like all too many family “budgets” are over.  There now; I hope that I have gotten that off my chest and onto yours.  I’m beginning to sound like my mother, a phenomenon that seems to be occurring more often as I age, as in the familiar phrases from my childhood: “How many times do I have to tell you?!” “Are you listening?!” “Get your nose out of that book and help me make dinner,” and my personal favorite, “You should want to do the dishes.”  Well, I don’t dream that most of us will ever want to pay our dues, but we do pay them because that’s the way the world works. Now, more than enough said.

We are now in the process of vetting Associates and Post-graduate members for possible attendance at the upcoming Summer Workshop.  The qualifications for attendance are listed in Nelia’s column in the last Newsletter, if you’re curious.  In this process, we realized that we are requiring more attendance from them at our I&C and/or Spring Conference process groups than we require of people applying for Full Membership, which guarantees an invitation to SW.  I suspect our anxiety about rolling out this change in tradition has caused us to be overly careful about who we will invite to attend.  However, I am not yet worried about that since this change is experimental for three years, and we can alter what doesn’t work as we go along.

I would have said,  “Please give us/EC feedback on what you think of this new program,” but I despair of getting much, if any, feedback.  We are a wonderful team and really help each other, but I am acutely aware of how often it feels like we are working in a vacuum.  Sometimes we get comments from members in the food lines at meetings,  in the Hospitality Suites, or by hearsay.  While all of these count in various weights, they are no substitute for serious feedback and suggestions.  I don’t know how to solve this problem (like I don’t know how to solve the dues payment problem) and would welcome suggestions…LOL.  

The current forums for your criticism, praise, and ideas are as follows:  the Newsletter as a whole, the blogs now available for each article in the Newsletter, the Annual Business Meeting at the Summer Workshop, and the emails of each of your EC members and officers listed in the Newsletter. 

Formats that are not available for EC feedback are the Net, which is not owned and operated by  AAP, but by Josh Fendel at his most generous, and the Ladies’ Room, where I, at least, go for peace, relief , or socialization, not for business (I suspect that the same reluctance may be true for the EC men in the Gentlemen’s Room, though I could be wrong).   

We would welcome invitations to conversations about AAP business and programs over food, coffee, and walking or sitting in our still beautiful natural surroundings, in person, over the phone and by email.  Some of us even text, though that would not seem to lend itself to complex dialogue.  Most of us do not welcome them in the hot tub, in process groups, at the dance, or on the plane home (perhaps this one is idiosyncratic, as I have escaped into my current book and am as reluctant as ever to get my nose out of it).

I must admit that, as an introvert, it feels funny to be asking, nay, begging, for contact.  But it is hard to do this job well in the aforementioned vacuum.  Granted, I don’t ask for help easily (merely one of my character flaws that begins to glare in this job) but I am asking here and now.  I’ll only speak for myself, but I believe that I have a few companions in this statement: If you like what I’m doing, tell me.  If you don’t like what I’m doing and can offer a better idea, for G-d’s sake, tell me.  And, if you feel nothing, wake up, your beloved organization is entering the 21^st century, albeit slowly.  

Join us,

Lorrie Hallman, President of AAP

Don Murphy's Mother's Cake - Enjoyed so often by all at the Hospitality Suite

Don writes:

Mother had never written down the recipe so our daughter Jodi shadowed her in the kitchen as she made it, jotting down what she did.  Old fashioned cooking at its most obvious. 

Ingredients:

2 sticks butter

3 cups sugar

6 large eggs

3 cups self-rising flour (sifted 3 times)

1/2 pint heavy whipping cream

1 tsp vanilla

Mix softened butter & sugar.  Add eggs one at a time and continue beating.  Add sifted flour and cream alternately.   Bake 1 hour and 20 min @ 325 degrees.  Leave in pan 1 hour to cool.

From Your Editor

Secrets to successful online writing

• Less is more - around 500 words or less, if possible.  Online readers scan - they don't want long sentences or paragraphs that run over 10 lines.  In the column format, a paragraph that might look short in your Word document may appear long online.
• Simple is better - use as few words as possible to keep your sentences short.

• Less punctuation (semi-colons, colons, multiple commas).

• Kick-ass first paragraph to grab the reader's attention right away.  

• Enhance by using links.  If your article refers to something else that can be found on the web, link it.  Readers like the movement and interest of links.  
• Lots of white space keeps attention drawn to your writing.

How I think about editing                                                                                                

I imagine that every AAP newsletter editor has taken a different approach to the editing process. I want to share my way of thinking about it with you.  It is my burden and my truth that I am an English fanatic and feel driven to fix misused apostrophes, awkward sentences, and misspelled words.  I was the spelling champion of my grade every single year from first grade all the way through my senior year in high school.  I'm sure I can blame that on my parents, because in my family, the only way to get love was to over-achieve. Despite years of therapy, I am still deeply influenced by that.   

So I will be editing, rather than just collecting, the articles you send.  I do promise to do my best to be respectful in this process. 

Linda Tillman, Your AAP Newsletter Editor