Henry Seiden, Chair

The Publications Committee recommends policy affecting our journal, Psychoanalytic Psychology, our newsletter, Psychologist-Psychoanalyst, and our review of book and journal synopses, Psychoanalytic Abstracts. Because publications account for over one-third of the Division's budget, and because reading the Division's printed communications is the main or only mode of participation by most members, the responsibility of the committee is significant. Members meet in person annually at the Spring Meeting and otherwise conduct business by phone and e-mail. The related Editorial Board of Psychoanalytic Abstracts meets annually at the summer APA meetings, and the Editorial Board of Psychoanalytic Psychology meets at the Spring meeting, typically right before the meeting of the Publications Committee.

Psychoanalytic Psychology
The committee decided this year to follow the suggestion of APA Press, our publisher, to change to a 7 x 10 format for the journal as of Winter, 2003. This size will allow the editor to publish more material at no extra expense. Considering that in 2002 there was a 20% increase in submissions, and that we continue to try to reduce the time between acceptance and publication of manuscripts, the committee endorses this new format. The permanent extra pages granted by the Board in August 2001 have been invaluable in the effort to reduce the backlog.

In August of 2002, the Division Board, responding to the enthusiastic consensus of the Publications Committee, unanimously reappointed Joseph Reppen as journal editor. Board members noted his diligence, fairness, and effectiveness, and expressed their appreciation of his having increased both the quality and the visibility of Psychoanalytic Psychology, especially via his founding and chairing the Council of Editors of Psychoanalytic Journals.

This past fall, Nancy McWilliams and Jonathan Slavin began pursuing the goal of getting the journal contents into the CD-ROM archive of the Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing Company. Despite complicated questions of cost, electronic rights, and negotiations with two publishers and PEP, the project was endorsed emphatically by all committee members, the outgoing and incoming Presidents, the Executive Committee, and Board members. During the winter of 2003, a contract was signed by APA Press and PEP providing that as of the coming revision in the PEP archive, all issues of Psychoanalytic Psychology (up to three years ago, as is the case for other publications) will be on the PEP CD-ROM.

Psychologist-Psychoanalyst
Bill MacGillivray continues to publish a quarterly newsletter that is interesting, intellectually stimulating, and psychoanalytically current. He has involved the committee in conversations about special columns and other issues of content, and about ad placement, policy, and pricing. He has been successful in persuading Division members to write for Psychologist-Psychoanalyst and has increased the coverage and breadth of the newsletter. The copyright policy that he and the committee devised was approved unanimously by the Board in August.

Psychoanalytic Abstracts
In 2002, thanks to Arnold Schneider's leadership, we had for the first time in many years an active Editorial Board. The Board of Psychoanalytic Abstracts is supposed to have an official Liaison and six representatives from the Division, with three-year, overlapping terms, but in recent years the only Division attendees at the annual meetings had been Joe Reppen and Arnold Schneider. The following individuals are now on the Board: Arnold Schneider (Division Liaison), Hedda Bolgar, Toni Heineman, David Kemmerer, Martin Schulman, Johanna Tabin, and Timothy Zeddies.

At the August meeting, all members except Zeddies were able to attend. They discussed coverage (which new journals to include in the Abstracts), electronic access, subscription activity (there has been a decrease, as there has been in all psychoanalytic journals), and marketing opportunities. Alvin Walker, the editor of the journal, and Linda Beebe, Senior Director of PsycINFO, provided information on ongoing work and special projects of PsycINFO.


Miscellaneous
Disparate lists of members, held in different APA departments and on different databases, have aggravated the Division for years. This past spring, after Arnold Schneider noted glaring inconsistencies between our membership numbers and subscriptions to Psychoanalytic Abstracts, Membership Chair Joe Couch and Nancy McWilliams tried to find ways to eliminate the disparities. We made notable progress in August, when Susan Knapp of APA Publications met with Division officers and Ruth Helein and brain-stormed solutions. The relevance of this issue for our committee is that Ruth, along with Joe Reppen and occasionally the other editors, receives frequent complaints from dues-paying members that they are not getting one or more of our publications.

At the August Board meeting, it was noted that very few reviews of psychoanalytic books are appearing in the APA Review of Books (formerly Contemporary Psychology). After a meeting of a Division delegation with Robert Steinberg, incoming APA President and editor of that journal, Nancy McWilliams was asked to write a letter of complaint to Jefferson Singer, editor for clinical books. Dr. Singer responded graciously, noting his psychoanalytic sympathies and his own complaint about deadbeat reviewers. Reportedly, he sends many analytic books out for review, but receives few publishable essays. Nancy used the Division listserv and newsletter to solicit reliable reviewers to solve his problem, eventually receiving over 60 e-mails from interested Division members. She forwarded their names, along with their interests and areas of expertise, to both Dr. Singer and Bill MacGillivray. Bill organized them into an alphabetized, annotated list which, to save duplication of effort, we copied to Dr. Singer. Bill hopes to tap these volunteers for reviews in the newsletter. Dr. Singer has registered his emphatic appreciation, but we are deferring celebrating until more psychoanalytic reviews appear in the Review of Books.

Henry Seiden, Chair, through 2012
Frank Summers 2011
David Lichtenstein 2012
Batya Monder 2013


ex-officio:
William MacGillivray Newsletter Editor
Johanna Krout Tabin Abstracts Liaison
Eliot Jurist Journal Editor
Larry Zelnick, Internet Committee Chair
Mary Beth Cresci, President
Marsha McCary, Treasurer