At this moment in APsA’s life, it feels important to speak clearly about how I understand the role of President and the priorities that leadership must hold.
I believe deeply in psychoanalysis remaining alive, relevant, and ethically engaged with the world. For me, that vitality is sustained first and foremost by the strength of our clinical work, the rigor of psychoanalytic education, and the vitality of our institutes as places where analytic knowledge is transmitted, renewed, and thoughtfully challenged. These commitments form the organizing center of my vision for APsA.
The Role of the President
I see the President's primary responsibility as stewarding the professional, educational, and institutional life of APsA itself. Encouraging clinical practice and supporting high-quality analytic education are not adjuncts to this role - they are its core. From that center, psychoanalytic thinking can then be brought meaningfully into dialogue with broader social and cultural concerns.
That understanding of the presidency shapes how I have led-and the experience I bring to this role.
As a child analyst, I approach leadership from a developmental perspective attentive to growth, timing, and repair after rupture - in individuals, groups, and institutions. This stance also informs my commitment to strengthening psychoanalytic education across the lifespan and to supporting institutes as the backbone of our profession.
I also see research, clinical scholarship, and education as inseparable from psychoanalytic practice. Throughout my work in APsA, I have been committed to scholarship and educational initiatives that remain close to clinical work and that bring analytic inquiry directly into treatment and training. This includes my work editing Echoes of Childhood: The Foundational Role of Child Analysis in Adult Analytic Work (Sehon, C. M., Jan 2026), which reflects my conviction that psychoanalytic work remains vital when research, education, and clinical practice are kept in active dialogue.
My leadership experience has taught me that morale, participation, and trust are sustained when members feel that clinical work and education are clearly valued, carefully stewarded, and held at the center of organizational life.
I believe APsA is best served by leadership that keeps the clinical and educational core of psychoanalysis clearly in view, while creating the conditions for thoughtful engagement with the wider world. When clinical work, education, and scholarship are well stewarded, morale, participation, and trust can be restored — and psychoanalytic thinking can then extend outward with depth and integrity.
This is the leadership stance I bring to this moment, and the responsibility I am prepared to undertake.
