Our President Elgan Baker writes...

Welcome to the Section website. If you are a member of our Section, we hope that you will find useful information here about the Section Board and our activities and plans as well as information about meetings, competitions for professional writing and even periodic continuing education offerings. If you are not a member of our Section, we hope that you will look around and feel intrigued enough to become interested in our activities and mission and even join us as a member.

As always, we are eager for your input. Our Board has made a specific commitment to engage members of our Section who have not previously been involved in the activities of the Section or its governance. We very much are interested in your ideas, your energy and your involvement. If you have any interest in becoming more involved with the Section and with the Board, please let me know. I would be happy to respond to any questions or to facilitate your involvement in any of the committees which are currently in the process of being formed.

You can reach me at: EBLXA@aol.com

New Mission Statement

Our new mission statement says in part:

We think that psychoanalysis should be a discipline of inquiry not an orthodoxy of belief. That is, that our work, on both the theoretical and the clinical level, is distinguished by the questions being asked and not by the answers which may seem to have been found. We believe that answers are inevitably provisional....

Want to read the whole statement? http://www.sectionfive.org/about/

A letter from Paola Mieli

There's an interesting letter from Paola Mieli posted in our Essays section.

She says: "There is no way to shortcut the process of analysis. The making of an analyst --a formation, more than mere education and training-- involves a process much more rigorous, unique and complex than the one outlined by the Consortium's proposal. The required minimum of 3 analytic sessions per week is in no way a guarantee of "depth and intensity," as the Consortium naively puts it.

For the complete text go to http://www.sectionfive.org/comment/5/17/