The Education Committee’s goals are to promote educative psychoanalytic programs which reflect the broad range of interests of our membership. We gather suggestions and requests for programs and speakers and present these to the Executive Committee, which has final say regarding each proposal. VAPS is a multi-disciplinary group by training as well as psychoanalytic orientation and interests. In order for VAPS to remain vibrant in our small community, we aim for the offerings and speakers to come from a broad base. In recommending speakers we consider the psychoanalytic orientation of the speakers, their geographic origins, their gender and their reputation as effective presenters. Below please see a list of speakers of the wonderful speakers we have been honored to have as our Scientific Meeting presenters. We take the necessary steps to insure that our programs offer CEU credits for most of our members. Finally, we try to keep costs in mind. VAPS has been able to build a bank balance over the years that, with judicious care, has allowed us to ask speakers from considerable distance to come to our small state.

Overview of Education Committee Member Responsibilities: 1) Plan and organize the November Scientific Meeting; 2) Attend 3 to 4 Education Committee meetings per year; 3) Interface with other committees or Program Chairs (i.e., Applied, Ethics) when they organize a conference; 4) Offer a Members Forum for those members interested in sharing psychoanalytic concepts/perspectives with one another; 5) The Education Committee Chair(s): Write a report for the Annual Business Meeting, which includes two parts: (a) a summary of the prior year’s educational events, and (b) a financial report showing both expenditures and income for each conference. 6) Attend the Annual Business Meeting and serve on the VAPS Executive Committee, and attend all Executive Committee meetings, usually 4 to 5 per year.

A short list of past presenters for the VAPS Scientific Meeting:

1999 Jill Savage Scharff “Tensions in Psychoanalytic Thinking and Promise for the Future”

2001 Leston Havens “The Spontaneous Moment: Moving Away from

Explanation in Analytic Therapy”

2002 Jessica Benjamin “The Third’s the Thing”

2003 Glen Gabbard “Erotic Feelings in Therapy: Uses & Abuses”

2004 Nancy Chodorow “Uncertainty in This Analytic Moment”

2005 Christopher Bollas

2006 Theodore Jacobs “Challenges in Psychoanalysis: Approaching the Unapproachable”

2007 Haydee Faimberg “Analytic Listening: Listening to the Links Between Generations”

2008 Donnel Stern “Partners in Thought: A Clinical Process Theory of

Narrative”

2009 David Scharff “The Interpersonal Unconscious”

2010 Michael Parsons “On Being Alive as an Analyst and as a Person”

2011 Joyce Slochower “Idealizations and their Underbelly: Some Thoughts on

Analytic Process and Therapeutic Outcome”

2012 Ronald Britton “Clinical Problems in Finding Space”

2013 Dominque Scarfone “The ‘Actual’ in Psychoanalysis”

2014 Adrienne Harris “Self-Care, Omnipotence, and Analytic Subjectivity: The

Delights and Perils of Working in States of Uncertainty”

2015 Sherry Salman '”The Play’s the Thing': Purpose, Pattern, and Process in

Jungian Dream Interpretation”

2016 Marilla Aisenstein “Beyond the Dualism of Psyche and Soma”

cancelled/to be rescheduled

2017 Abbott Bronstein “A Day with Abbot A. Bronstein, Ph.D.”