INTEREST GROUPS 2001

By Laura Roberto-Forman

As Interest Group Coordinator for the 2001 meeting in Miami, it was my pleasure to help construct a remarkable schedule of AFTA colleagues working on the cutting edge. This report is intended to fill everyone in on the sheer scope of groups in progress, point out the special groups created for the Pan-American meeting, and mention some very worthy groups that have not met in recent years (but probably deserve to). My experience with almost 15 years of meetings has led me to look at Interest Groups not so much as "interesting"—but rather as paradigm-shifting interchanges. Thanks go to Volker Thomas for encouraging a piece on these fascinating entities.

There were 21 Interest Groups held this year. The roster included the following:

· Ethical Dilemmas in Training and Supervision

· International Family Therapy; Jewish Families

· Couple Therapy

· Racial Domination and Privilege

· Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transsexual (GLBT) People and their Allies

· Teaching Family Systems in Psychiatric Residencies

· A Conversation Between Latino Therapists in the USA and in Latin America

· Narrative Therapy held conjointly with Postmodern

· Gender Dialogue

· Larger Systems

· Substance Abuse in Context

· Interventions With Latino Families/Latino Identity (in Spanish)

· Narrative of the Therapist; Relational Family Therapy

· Illness and Disability

· Brief Interactional

· Typology

· El Grupo—Working With Latino Families

· Systemic Study of Family Process

· Family Therapy Research.

As coordinator, I had the privilege of corresponding back and forth with the Chairs and co-Chairs of each group. I began to receive blurbs for the conference brochure that were clearly adapted to make the most of our time with guests, who represented Central America, Latin America, South America, Canada, and Europe. For example, the International Family Therapy group chose the theme of collaborating across borders, describing a North-American/Costa Rican teaching team and a collaboration between Japan and Korea. The Family Therapy Research group examined the larger context within which research is conducted, especially political, economic, and cultural challenges in research and program development across the Americas. The groups had worked to identify, delineate and address larger political realities as they impact our training, practice, research and professional identities, more extensively and across every type of group.

The two Interest Groups that I attended this year were GLBT and Their Allies, and Teaching Family Systems in Psychiatric Residencies. GLBT and Their Allies focused on trans-racial and international adoption, looking at the growing number of GLBT families choosing this option, and at the family issues that arise at the intersection of racial, cultural and sexual diversity. The co-Chairs, Anne Bernstein and Jane Ariel, brought a wonderful videotape of a lesbian couple and their racially similar adopted daughter, transitioning into adoption of a young son who is racially different. Attendees included a mother with her new, internationally adopted baby (from China); and a grown adopted daughter.

In the Teaching Family Systems in Psychiatric Residencies group, members focused on larger "guild" and academic systems issues that have limited training of psychiatry residents in family therapy. The discussion moved in the direction of sharing teaching materials, and sharing experiences in academic medicine. Members interested in sharing syllabi and teaching materials, and in following the conversation of the Interest Group, were encouraged to contact Ellen Berman at emberman@yahoo.com. It became clear to me, from my sample of two groups, that the increased scope of the meeting, across the Americas stimulated every group to include many larger-systems issues in their agendas.

AFTA's Interest Group archives also cast a light on the ways in which our philosophies and organizational commitments have evolved over time. The number of unique and generative Interest Groups has grown in recent years to the point that conjoint meetings, such as this year's Narrative Therapy/Postmodern collaboration, are encouraged in order to conserve space at our annual meetings. Nevertheless, each Group has its own history, succession of Chairs, evolving conversation, methods of working, and membership. In looking over the history from 1994 to 2001, 73 Groups have been created at one time or another to serve the professional needs of members. They have ranged in topic from "Alternative Retirement Communities" through "Developing a Systemic Model of Internal Process" and "Feminist Family Therapy" to "Process/Outcome Research," "Live Supervision," and "Spirituality." A glance through the history of ongoing, as well as curtailed, groups, helps to show us the direction of AFTA's "thinking" at certain periods in time. Some groups have seen a name change, or been subsumed into a context which echoes and also expands the previous work. For example, at one time a group was formed to study "Public Sector Consultation," and this year's "Larger Systems" group echoed the theme in its discussion of fostering family-school-community collaboration. It must also be pointed out that there are some groups not convened recently whose work remains very important, e.g. "Personal Tragedy and the Healer," last held in 1994; and "Senior AFTA Members," last held in 1996.

This brief tour through this year's initiatives, and the Interest Group archives, shows us the raw talent and power present in the AFTA membership, a power that serves AFTA in several ways. There is the power of the idea, the power to name things, directing our attention to unvoiced problems in the welfare of families such as the need to increase awareness of sexual diversity. There is the power of clinical practice and theory, the power we use as clinicians to understand, advocate for and strengthen couples and families. For example, the Couples Therapy Interest Group has been one of the most consistent forums for members with a commitment to delineating what makes couples therapy unique and most relevant. There is the power of research, discovery, and empirically validated techniques, to which AFTA has increased its commitment in recent years, and which was addressed this year in the Family Therapy Research Interest Group, the Brief Interactional Family Therapy Interest Group, and the Systemic Study of Family Process Interest Group. There is the power of personal experiential "knowing," or "going deep," which is served by groups such as the Narrative of the Therapist Interest Group and the Relational Family Therapy Interest Group. This year, "A Conversation Between Latino Therapists in the USA and in Latin America" allowed members and guests to dialogue about immigration, "staying" in and "leaving" one's country, the dynamics of visits, and what globalization will mean in our personal and professional lives.

Finally, there is political power. Believing that "the personal is the political," I see in my own life how the paradigm-shifting discussion of our Interest Groups shapes my advocacy and the values that I bring into my training and practice. AFTA 's Interest Groups are moving even beyond the personal as the political, into coalitions, collaborative research and training projects, and task groups that aim to disseminate AFTA "thinking" into larger professional and social arenas here and outside the US. The view, from the seat of this year's coordinator, is illuminating and vastly encouraging.

Laura Roberto-Forman has been a member of AFTA since 1987, and is the incoming Secretary. She is a professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Eastern Virginia Medical School, an adjunct professor in psychology at Old Dominion University, and has a part-time practice in southern Virginia.