Dear Colleagues,
First, let me remind you of three important conferences. If you haven't taken an introduction to CMT or if you just want a great experience formulating cases, don't miss John Gibbins' and Terry Meyers' class, "Plan Formulation: an Introduction to Control Mastery Theory" scheduled for September 29 from 9 - 4:15 at 9 Funston.
Next, it is only 5 weeks to "The Curative Element in Psychotherapy: A Dialogue Between Attachment Theory and CMT with David Wallin and myself on October 24 from 9 -- 4:30 at the SFJCC.
Finally, Denny Zeitlin will present "The Challenge of Intimacy: Control Mastery Couple Therapy" on November 17 from 8:30 -1:30 pm. Don't miss these important conferences.
Last night we had our 2nd annual Honorary Dinner honoring co-founder Hal Sampson and our past president and current Clinic Director, Jessica Broitman. We had three goals last night:
1) to acknowledge and honor two very important people who made exceptional contributions to SFPRG and to Control Mastery Theory,
2) to raise money for SFPRG so we can continue to develop CMT through our Clinic, our teaching and our research, and
3) to have a good time and enjoy being together with friends.
I am happy to say that all three goals were met.
Before the conference, I received an email from one of our out-of-state members who said he almost flew in for the dinner though it would have been quite impractical. In his email, he wrote, "I was introduced to Control-Mastery Theory at a Cape Cod Institute in the summer of 1993. Joe, Jessica, Cynthia and Bob Shilkret presented. I had read Joe's book for the conference. It changed my practice and my thinking about psychotherapy entirely. It was the best and most significant professional learning experience I have had. It was not until I began supervision with Jessica, however, that I really began to understand and apply the theory. She has been a brilliant, patient, kind, supportive, generous, genius of a supervisor and friend. I am very grateful." He went on to say how much he appreciated Hal for his "development of the theory with Joe" and other specific help Hal had given him as well.
The outpouring of appreciation for Jessica and Hal continued through the evening with many people standing up to tell their stories and express their gratitude. Peter Schumacher spoke from the heart of his appreciation for Jessica and Jan Schreiber spoke about her 25-year wonderful experience with Hal. Of course, many people's stories circled back to last year's honorees, Irwin Gootnick and Suzanne Gassner for their roles in teaching or inspiring those who spoke last night.
Hal was not present at the dinner last night but spoke to the group via videotape of two interviews done by Suzanne Gassner and Lynn Watkins several years ago. In his remarks, Hal talked about the importance of Alexander and French's work on the "Corrective Emotional Experience" in therapy, a central concept to Control Mastery Theory. He also reminisced about his early collaboration with Joe Weiss, and how struck he was that even Joe didn't fully appreciate how new and different were his ideas were at that time.
Lynn asked Hal what he thought about the future. First Hal quoted Yogi Berra, the Yankees' catcher and philosopher who said, "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future." But Hal went on to speculate about the future of Control Mastery Theory. "If you think of the future," he said, "you don't want Control Mastery to be a museum piece or a mausoleum thing. You want it to be a living thing. How's it going to live? It's not going to live by repeating what Joe said, what I said. We have something to offer - but, it's only going to live if the next generation infuses it with new vitality. In addition to training people, I'd like to see an intellectual and research center in which we actually brought into it top notch people from other theories who challenged us, who criticized us, who made us think, who made us not simply recite the verities of the ancients. Joe and I are the ancients. We had a lot to say. We are pretty good. But, don't you want your kids to do better? In any desirable future, our most cherished ideas will be changed. What if there's total stagnation, and fifty years from now, people are reciting the Bible as we wrote it? I think that's terrible. I think they should learn from it but they should move beyond it and come up with, not new ideas for the sake of new ideas but through genuine hard work, thinking, experience, building on what's there, transforming."
We are trying to get these interviews uploaded onto our website. It touched me deeply to hear Hal expounding so thoughtfully about psychotherapy and the research group. Hal loved the Clinic and thought that our future was in our training program. His hope that we would invite top-notch thinkers from other theories to engage in a lively dialogue. That is our goal on the Education Committee now. We hope to offer many new dialogues in the near future. On October 27 we will have a dialogue with David Wallin and Attachment Theory. We are planning a conference for the spring when we will talk about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and dialogue with a local expert and author of two books, sharing what CBT and CMT have to learn from each other.
It is a very stimulating and rich time for our group. I hope you have a wonderful September. See you next month.
Steve Foreman
