Dear Colleagues,

It has been a very productive fall. The education program is in full swing. We had our first major conference of the season, "The Paradox of Power", presented by Heather Clague and Helene Goldberg, which was very well done and very well received. Jules Bernstein has presented another excellent Ethics Conference, a repeated favorite with our group, which had so many people interested, it had to be moved to a larger venue at the JCC. On October 18, the "Introduction to Control Mastery Theory" Conference will be presented (will have already been presented by the time this newsletter comes out), by Steve Kanofsky, Jan Schreiber, and myself. Later in the month, on Oct 27, Michael Bader will present "The Sexual IQ of Men", elaborating the findings from his exciting new book. Case conferences and research conferences are underway in San Francisco and in the East Bay, powerful avenues for people to learn about Control Mastery Theory as well as get to know and get known by your colleagues. Please see SFPRG.org for more details. (Click on the link below).

I would like to say hello to our Norwegian colleagues and report on a very special learning opportunity. The Bergen group is led by Hans Peter Broch and Dag Oulie, who have been attending the March workshops for years. I first met Hans Peter at a Society for Psychotherapy Research Conference in Toronto, in 1989, along with John Curtis, George Silberschatz, John Gibbins, and Terry Meyers. At that time, we invited Hans Peter to come to the March Workshops the following year and he has come many, many years since. Hans Peter came to study with Joe Weiss, Hal Sampson, and the SFPRG, followed by Dag, and by then the next generation of academics such as Per Einar Binder and Helge Holgersen. Last year Tor Sletten came and the Bergen group has brought many more talented clinicians and students who have enlivened the March Workshops and even interned in our clinic.

Hans Peter and his group have developed a very robust teaching program in Bergen. The Bergen group has contributed an impressive body of writing and research on Control Mastery Theory. They have supervised over thirty published and unpublished papers and dissertations on Control Mastery Theory.

The Bergen group has sponsored a conference for years in Spain, first in a town called Quenka, and in the last five or six years, in another medieval town called Almagro. This year, Hans Peter, Tor, and another Bergen academic, Kari Lossius, organized an entire conference in Almagro devoted to teaching Control Mastery Theory. The attendees were practitioners and academics from Norway and Sweden. John Curtis and I were honored to be included in the faculty, which included Hans Peter, Tor, Dag, Kari, Per Einar and Helge. John Curtis taught "Pathogenic Beliefs and the Patient's Plan", and "Plan and Plan Formulation Method". I gave a talk on "The Significance of Turning Passive Into Active Testing in Control Mastery Theory" and "Treatment of Borderline/Narcissistic Pathology from a Control Mastery Perspective". Per Einar gave a talk on "Control Mastery Theory and Winnicott", while Helge gave a talk on "Control Mastery Theory and Mentalization". Hans Peter showed a DVD on Control Mastery Theory made by Susan Badger and George Silberschatz.

Like the March Workshops, the Almagro Conference was an intimate opportunity to get to know many of the participants, who seemed very taken with the theory, particularly with the enthusiasm and expertise of the Bergen presenters. We invited all the attendees to come visit us for the March Workshops and many of the participants expressed an interest to join us this March. I didn't realize how many of the Bergen group routinely receive our newsletter and so I take this opportunity to send a heartfelt "hello". I have asked Hans Peter to try to catalogue the titles and the abstracts of the papers written and supervised by the Bergen group about Control Mastery Theory (in English). I look forward to a long and rich collaboration between the Bergen group and our SFPRG.

The fall is getting off to a wonderful start. Don't forget to come to the Members' Mambo/ Town Hall Meeting at the Swedenborgian Church October 26. We invite all of you to come to the classes, join the membership, sign up to volunteer, and give us your ideas. Have a great month.

Steve Foreman

To Everyone at SFPRG:

I am stepping down in my role as Chair of the Education Committee where I have served for the last 18 months. I appreciate the support that I have received from SFPRG members in this position. David Auld will be stepping up to assume the Chairmanship of the Education Committee. We all wish him well and appreciate his willingness to take on this responsibility. I am confident that the Education Committee will be in good hands in David's competent care.

Sincerely, Patsy Wood Former Chair of the SFPRG Education Committee

Notes from the Incoming Chair of the Education Committee:

We are very grateful to Patsy Wood, Ph.D. for serving as chair of the Education Committee for the past 18 months. Her hard work and dedication have contributed greatly to our ability to provide high quality training to our membership. We hope that she will remain involved, for we will benefit from her wisdom and ongoing participation.

One of the directions the Education Committee would like to pursue is offering more presentations about Control-Mastery Theory to graduate students. If you would like to participate in a Speakers' Bureau representing SFPRG, please contact me at davidauld@sbcglobal.net.

I look forward to serving in the capacity of Education Committee chair, and I welcome your input and involvement. Soon you'll be hearing from me regarding plans for the 21st International Control Mastery Conference (formerly known as the March workshops). The Education Committee is thinking expansively as to how to further strengthen SFPRG.

I'd like to thank everyone who participated in the validation of the self-report version of our new pathogenic belief scale. The data-gathering phase is now complete and the preliminary analyses are very exciting in that both reliability and validity are extremely promising. The sample of respondents is diverse (unlike so many samples that rely exclusively on undergraduate students), which will make the results more generalizable. I gave a brief presentation on the pathogenic belief scale at a recent conference in New Haven and many people (both clinicians and researchers) were interested in the work and requested copies of the scale. I should have more to report on the results in the next newsletter so please stay tuned.

We have also completed the therapist version of the pathogenic belief scale (and several related measures) and invite everyone to try it out. This phase of the research is crucially important and requires clinicians who are familiar with control-mastery theory. You will be asked to think of patients that you know well and to complete ratings on those patients (this is all done confidentially, of course, and no identifying information on your patients is requested). The scales are all on-line so all you need to do is click on the link below.

It will take about 15 minutes to rate a patient. Those who have helped pilot test the measures found it very useful clinically and said that doing the ratings helped sharpen their clinical thinking about their cases. Please let me know what you think and thanks in advance for your participation.

George Silberschatz

What began as a curious recognition of Okinawan landscape paintings in Stanley Steinberg's office led to a series of delightful interplays of recognizing and being recognized - the most recent was a special invitation by the American Consulate, Naha, Okinawa Sept. 3-12, 2008 for Stanley and me to speak about his extraordinary experience painting with Okinawans from the Nishimui Artist Society, artists who are credited with founding Okinawa's modernist art movement.

Stanley's story tells of him as a newly drafted medical officer whose first assignment was Chief of Psychiatry of the Ryukyuan Command. Starved for culture and community on this island that had been devastated by the war, he and other like-minded physicians happened upon an artist colony near the ruins of Shuri Castle. Recognizing their talent as artists with worldly views, Stanley boldly asked to be a student of theirs. Over the next two years, 1948-1950, Stanley and his friend, Walter Abelmann, MD painted with artists, Tamanaha, Ashimine and Adaniya. They brought other physicians to paint with these artists and commissioned art in exchange for Lucky Strike cigarettes - one of the currencies of the day. The distinction between occupier and occupied was left unspoken as a deep friendship developed between these Americans and Okinawans. Likewise, the Okinawan artists, starved for an audience for their art, greatly appreciated the recognition and support by these physicians. To them, art was life, itself.

Stanley helped me start my collection of Nishimui art. The dearth of information on these Okinawans prompted me to make Stanley's private collection of paintings and photographs of these artists the centerpiece for an exhibit I curated, Painting to Live, at UC, Berkeley's Institute of E. Asian Studies, May 29-Sept. 7, 2007. The exhibit was the first U.S. showing of these Nishimui artists and the physician who painted with them, Stanley Steinberg. A timely exhibit, given our own involvement in war with Iraq, the exhibit highlighted the intimate connection between these Okinawans and American physicians through art. Okinawans from Okinawa were proud to have a piece of their history publicly recognized on the mainland U.S. For many people, both here in America and on Okinawa, it was their first exposure to these artists.

Recognizing the importance of this exhibit, Stanley's contribution to the preservation of the roots of Okinawan modern art, and the promotion of positive Japanese-American relations, Takayasu Fuji from the American Consulate, Naha, Okinawa invited Stanley and me to come to Okinawa as guest speakers at the Okinawan Prefectural Museum and Museum of Art and the University of the Ryukyus.

On the first anniversary of the Okinawan Prefectural Museum and Museum of Art, Sept. 5, 2008, Stanley Steinberg, the keynote speaker, presented his experiences with the Nishimui Artists to a packed audience. All but one of the artists that Stanley painted with have passed away, but their children, among them the daughters of Tamanaha and Ashimine, were part of a panel discussion with Stanley and me. We spoke of the importance of these artists in reestablishing fine arts in Okinawa after the war and the need to show these artists' works at home and abroad.

On September 9, 2008 at the University of the Ryukyus, Professor Yamazato Katsunori of the Department of American Literature and Culture, hosted a lively discussion of the complex relationship of the artists with Stanley and the US military, in general. I was asked what my motivation was for putting together the exhibit, Painting to Live. My motivation? The recurrent theme was this - recognizing Okinawa's importance in Stanley's life through art was like having an important part of me being recognized by Stanley, my mentor I deeply admire. Okinawa is home to me. Likewise, having Stanley be recognized for his important contribution to Okinawan history and art has been greatly appreciated by him. What a great gift in life to be recognized and recognize in return.

The Okinawans are experiencing a resurgence of pride in their cultural heritage and identity, particularly after a traumatic war experience, and the many years of discrimination and shame - during the Meiji period by the Japanese, followed by a lengthy American Occupation. Being recognized as valuable and worthy of attention, particularly from people in positions of power, is important in breaking the shackles of shame. We are all familiar with this struggle in our clinical work. Needless to say, Stanley and I won the hearts of the Okinawans, and they continue to win ours.

Being involved in this process of recognizing and being recognized with Stanley Steinberg has been a great privilege.

Sincerely, Jane Dulay, MD