About us

Mission statement

Houston Psychoanalytic Society is dedicated to promoting psychoanalytic and psychodynamic principles through creative discussions with the greater Houston community. The Society holds monthly meetings with invited local and national speakers, provides networking and continuing education opportunities and sponsors accredited workshops throughout the academic year. These events are open to the public.

Stance on racism

Many of us have awakened to the inescapable reality that racism and all of its cruel brutalities, injustices, and inequalities is endemic. That we have collectively participated in such blindness to this reality speaks to the power of unconscious mental functioning. We as psychoanalytically informed clinicians have unique abilities and responsibilities to explore in ourselves and to listen in our consulting rooms for the denied pain and trauma that finds its expression in racism. To fail to view racism as defending against disavowed mental states is to protect and maintain its destructive forces. We must commit to countering a tendency to fall back into the comfort, or discomfort, of silence on this issue in the clinical setting and in our professional societies. The Houston Psychoanalytic Society is committed to a society where the hates of racism are not allowed residence in the shadows of our minds or our communities.

About psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is both a way of viewing the human mind and behavior and also a method of treatment for mental illness. As a treatment, it is deep and intense, and the length of treatment is usually measured in years. Some people are drawn to psychoanalysis as a way of understanding themselves better or as a way of increasing their potential for satisfaction in life.

Psychoanalysis as a perspective on human experience is used in the humanities as a critique of literature, art, culture, social groups, and history. In the more than one hundred years since the inception of psychoanalysis, a great deal of innovation has occurred. Many different theoretical schools of psychoanalysis now exist, and its principles have been applied to psychotherapy, which is less intense than psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy may be practiced by any licensed mental health professional who has learned a psychoanalytic approach to therapy. Psychoanalysts are mental health professionals who also have intensive post-graduate training in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.

Houston Psychoanalytic Society is open to anyone who is interested in the study of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy. Some of our members are analysts, some are non-analyst psychotherapists, and some are interested in psychoanalysis for other reasons.

Our programs offer continuing education credit to licensed professionals, and we present topics that range from treatment issues to the use of psychoanalysis to study an academic subject or a cultural phenomenon. We represent different theoretical perspectives in our programs, as well.

bylaws

A Texas Non-Profit Corporation

ARTICLE ONE - OFFICES

Section 1.01. Principal Office. The principal office of the Corporation in the State of Texas shall be located in the City of (city) Houston, County of (county) Harris. The Corporation may have such other offices, either within or without the State of Texas, as the Board of Directors may determine or as the affairs of the Corporation may require from time to time.

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