Call for Nominations for Fellow

The Fellows Committee invites your nominations for the honor of Fellow.  Please submit your nominations to me in writing along with your reasons for nominating the individual.  These are the criteria that the committee uses as we make our recommendations to Executive Council.  The ultimate decision to bestow this honor is made by EC.

• • Full active life membership in good standing. 
• • Provides exceptional and distinguished leadership over time. 

• • Manifests leadership within the Academy by the strength of their character, which may or may not include holding office or chairing meetings. 
• • Personifies highly valued core values of integrity, truthfulness
• responsibility and investment. 

The honor has been awarded to the following members.  In the case of the first six members, it was awarded while the member was living.

Irma Shepherd                 

Sol Rosenberg

Dick Felder

Howard Halpern

Jeanne Shaw

Ann Mckain

Vivian Guze

Herb Roth

Howard Fink

Grover Criswell

Joen Fagen

David Hawkins

Murial Roth 

Jack Murgrew

Monique Savlin

Murray Scher

Katheryn Van der Heiden

Carole Light

David Loftis

Lee Blackwell

Pat Webster

Rhona Engles

Ed Sharp

Leonard Schwartzburd

Grover Criswell  

Email:   gec444@gmail.com

Chair for the Fellows Committee

Southern Region News and Views

Our Southern Region Committee is happily resting on our laurels right now after an incredible Southern Region Conference at Myrtle Beach on March 21-23, 2014. We were very delighted to have our theme, “The Cost of Virtue: Managing Our Inner Saboteurs” enhanced by our illustrious presenters and our workshop attendees. Our presenters included: Gordon Cohen, Dairlyn Chelette, Lyn Sommer, Jack Mulgrew, David Donlon, Bob Rosenblatt, Anni Tuikka, Steve Eichel, and Suzanne Imes. Our opening experience leader, committee member and theme theorist, Ken Turner, kicked off the experience in his unique, talented way. Each presenter brought their A-Game to us and provided a container to explore our “inner saboteurs.” We all learned about how to be friends with and to change and/or modify our “saboteurs” with full understanding of how these behaviors have protected us. 

Our randomly assigned (leaderless) process groups on Sunday morning offered an opportunity to consolidate the weekend experience and provided a valued place to deal with unfinished business. Our non-therapist attendees, spouses and partners, were invited into our unique experience and given a taste of what their family member experiences in our organization. Non-members, students, young therapists, and new therapists also received a divine introduction and experience into our “inner sanctum.”(This idea of a randomly assigned Sunday morning process group may be of interest and value for our Summer Workshop and I&C formats.)

Sixty-six persons registered and 63 attended.  Thirty attendees were AAP members and the others were non-members, including nine students. (Two of the non-member attendees submitted full membership applications at the end of the conference and will be coming to Summer Workshop.) Five of these students utilized our Joel Rachelson scholarship funds. Forty attendees signed up for CEUs. Participants came from North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington D.C., Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia. We are very pleased with the attendance and are already pre-planning our next Spring Conference. 

Our hospitality queens, Nancy Moser and Lucie Lie-Nielsen, provided a welcoming Hospitality Suite that stayed open until the wee hours of the morning. Nancy and Lucie also provided our Saturday afternoon mentoring meeting for anyone who wanted more support and information during the conference. This group of “newbies” gave helpful feedback to us for our committee’s consideration. For example, they recommended holding the mentoring meeting on both Friday and Saturday. Questions such as: “What is going on here, you are so different than any other organization that I have seen?” “What is the community meeting about and why is there one?” “What is the opening experience and why is it handled this way?” were asked and answered. The mentoring group attendees asked our committee to consider having a mentor assigned to all new first time attendees. They also suggested that the committee provide a list of all of the attendees and emails for networking purposes. (We don’t do this for our conferences at AAP, but everyone is invited to make any personal contacts that they wish.)  All shared appreciation for the time and energy that AAP members gave to them at breaks, meals, etc. and all felt welcomed, if somewhat overwhelmed.

Our registration process, including brochure, was captained by Curt Arey, who also handled the CEUs. He is our computer and organizational wizard and did a yeoman’s job. Our treasurer Hannah Hawkins-Esther kept us clear and solvent. As she works on the accounting, the early feedback is that we made a safe and helpful profit. Melissa Beddingfield was our “Gal Friday”. Wherever we needed a good steward, she was there keeping all running smoothly. Our chair for the conference, Don Murphy, could not make it due to his attendance at Jerry Traver’s funeral, but he sent many encouraging messages to us before, during, and after the weekend.  We are a well-oiled team that helps each other with the grace and hard work that is required to provide such a valuable experience. I love being the captain of this ship and am having more fun than I can tell you.

With appreciation and pride,

Maureen Martin, Chair; Hannah Hawkins-Esther, Curt Arey, Nancy Moser, Ken Turner, Melissa Beddingfield, Lucie Lie- Nielsen, Don Murphy, and Dairlyn Chelette

Looking Forward

The Strategic Planning work group, which addressed racial diversity in the Academy, was headed by Loretta Sparks, who gives her report below.

Within the Academy concerns have been raised, over the years, that our membership is not racially diverse.  EC has reflected those concerns as well.  In the last few years, we have seen increased diversity in the attendees at Salon and Chapter events as well our Scholars Program.  However, our new membership has not reflected that increase in diversity.  

Clearly, more than concern is needed if we are to take our desire to have a membership that reflected greater racial diversity off our wish list and move it to our work list.

What we need is you!  We need you to offer workshops that explore the many aspects of diversity at I & Cs and Summer Workshops.  We need you and one or two others who are willing to put the time into liaison between the academic and professional psychotherapy communities and the AAP committees at the heart of our outreach, Membership, Salons, Chapters, Scholars and I & Cs, to see that procedures are developed and functioning to ensure increased minority outreach and hopefully membership.  

Loretta Sparks, 

Past President

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