President’s Report, February 2025

We are now beginning the second half of the APS season with a range of programs I hope you will attend and enjoy. Next week, February 22, the Education Committee will hold its first SMS of the new year, albeit delayed, with Vida Khavar, LCSW: Exploring Dynamics Around Gender and Sexual Identities of Clients This program will address the mental health needs of LGBTQ youth and families, and it meets the requirements for CE in cultural diversity.

Our year will continue with an SMS with Mark Waugh, PhD: The Shadow of Axis II in the Clinical Situation on March 15. As many of us are aware, the always inadequate Axis II conceptualizations in the DSM-IV were abandoned for DSM-V, or perhaps better, “exiled” to the appendix. Like Clementis’ fur hat¹, however, Axis II continues its shadowy afterlife. Dr. Waugh will resuscitate the vital importance of the role of personality functioning in both diagnosis and treatment. He will also discuss the specific diagnostic tools we can use to enrich clinical conceptualization and guide treatment.

Many of you are familiar with the work of Malin Fors. We were able to have her here virtually in 2020 shortly after her award-winning book, The Grammar of Power in Psychotherapy, came out on DVD. Since then, she has become a globetrotting expert on the problems of adequate understanding of the problems of rural and other marginalized populations.

I hope this conference will help all of us to think about “the only cultural group in this country it remains fashionable to despise” (according to my Appalachian patient). Granted, many of our patients are able to “code-switch” and suppress their rural roots, but they still may be “unseen” by those of us who were not raised in this culture.

And yes. We will have dessert in the afternoon, or I will place an emergency call to the Artisan Cakery.

Bill MacGillivray, PhD, ABPP
APS President

¹ Clementis was a member of the Czech Politburo. In 1948, he was in the group photo of the Czech leaders. As it was a cold day, he gave his fur hat to the party leader, Gottwald. Subsequently, Clementis was denounced and murdered by the regime. Since the photograph was still in use, the decision was made to airbrush   Clementis out of the photo. The problem was that his fur hat remained on Gottwald’s head, a ghostly presence and admission of a crime.

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