MIP Presidential Inaugural Statement
November, 19, 2025 • Abigail M. McNally
As I begin my own journey from this new organizational vantage point, I am in complete awe, to a degree that I never expected. We are actually an extraordinary institute. As an independent, free-standing psychoanalytic training home, we have survived and thrived for decades. We will celebrate MIP’s 40th anniversary at the end of my term. We have almost miraculously managed to bring together a group of warm, bright, curious clinicians and thinkers from vastly different theoretical perspectives with a rare common interest: the naming, thinking about, comparing, accepting, and valuing our different philosophies of psychoanalytic change.
And yet, we are vulnerable. Wilfred Bion’s theory of group dynamics, tells us that good individuals can come together, form a group, and that that group, like the content of a dream, will share both manifest and latent levels of engagement. He would tell us that at our best level of functioning, we come together in classes, committees, subgroup meetings, and Board meetings as a‘work group,’ with a conscious, shared goal or task. But, his theory also tells us that unconscious dynamics swell under the surface, rooted in the desperate need for survival. The group can implicitly function as what he calls a ‘basic assumption group’ on the level of more primitive, paranoid-schizoid, desperate fantasy. Bion describes three forms of ‘basic assumption group’: ‘dependency,’ ‘fight or flight,’ and ‘pairing,’ and Turquet adds a fourth of ‘oneness.’ I encourage the Board to read up on these concepts and to consider that we have had all four kinds at play in our organization at various moments in time. Perhaps most importantly, the lure of primitive ‘oneness,’ “when members seek to join in a powerful union with an omnipotent force” has predominated, followed by a reactive symbolic subgroup, finally disturbed enough by this dynamic that they were pulled into ‘fight-or-flight,’ unconsciously committing their own financial power abuse in survival desperation underneath the stated ‘work group’ aim of transitioning our institute towards the next generation.
So, this mouthful is all to say that I do believe that unconscious pulls come from wide varieties of gradual misuses and abuses of power, - from talking over someone without listening, to leaving By-Laws vague and unofficial so a President can do whatever they, he, or she wants. Like the difference between boundary crossings and boundary violations, momentary swells of overpowering are inevitable, pervasive, even normal. They happen. What does not have to be inevitable are the chronic, deepening big P Power abuses that can make an institute sick. It is my mission to build upon an Ethic of Care, and elaborate it into an Ethic of Containment. I will describe agenda items that follow from this Ethic of Containment through three aspects: Metabolization, Scaffolding, and Loving Recognition.
Ethic of Containment
1) Metabolization
As you can probably tell, I am someone who feels that containment begins with sensing and naming what is actually happening, however anxiety-provoking it may be to do so. As we await the potential release of the Epstein files, we become all the more aware that one way abusers of power stay empowered is by silencing others through explicit and implicit pressures not to speak. This first key facet of ‘metabolization’ encourages us to gather up the affective fragments in our bodies, in our interactions, in our history, and have the courage to transmute this beta into narrative, not just behind the scenes, but to each other. It means naming the things that are difficult to say aloud.
As President, I hope to exercise the authority that I have been granted through a democratic process and go no farther than that. Yet, I will undoubtedly falter as a leader in this regard. If and when you feel I am mis-stepping or overstepping, I encourage you to speak to me directly about it rather than let your concerns fester under the conscious surface. And, if and when you do, I hope to try to clarify or recognize the error of my ways and repair the situation and grow. Relatedly, I hope to make room for all voices, not just the loudest or most vehement ones. Our nation is dominated by those with volume and extremity. Our nation and our organization need to hear from every one of us. And, in the name of Metabolization, I encourage us as a Board to tune into our reflexive function. Let’s be self-conscious in the most beautiful of ways, such that we might ask ourselves: What dynamic is happening in our group today? What role am I playing here, and is it serving Bion’s ‘work group’ task or is it quietly serving a more primitive, unconscious mission?
2) Scaffolding
For many, we are in a moment of overwhelm and despair in our nation. My personal despair comes not just from witnessing a narcissistic power-abusive leader wreak havoc on needed structures, but even more importantly, from the resulting fight-or-flight basic assumption sweeping splitting through this country. After a patricide, there can be a natural unconscious fantasy that the cancer has been excavated and now we can all get back to peaceful, friendly agreement, yet that is already the beginning of another destructive basic assumption of oneness. I believe whole-heartedly that if everyone is thinking the same thing, then someone in the room isn’t thinking. We NEED disagreement to grow out of groupthink, and yet we need to work tirelessly to hold disagreement without othering. We are a comparative institute, I think we can do this.
I recently had the privilege of listening to a philosophy podcast in which American political theorist Wendy Brown, Ph.D., was interviewed about her latest book, Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber (see PhilosophyPodcasts.org). For those who don’t know her, Brown happens to be married to Judith Butler, and is a brilliant political and philosophical scholar in her own right. Drawing from Nietzsche, Marx, Foucault, and Weber, she explores how subterranean powers shape Euro-American political identities, subjectivities, and expressions. In this particular text, she urges our country to retreat from the inflammatory, loud edges of the political war, and back into examining, comparing, and honoring, before criticizing, the original core values inside democratic and republican perspectives. Brown sees, and I agree, that this political moment is increasingly an all-or-nothing attack on the Other, rather than taking really seriously, curiously, and open-mindedly the values underlying differing perspectives on policy.
I do believe that Brown’s close reading of Max Weber’s theory is deeply relevant for how we, at MIP, might grow out of the repetitive history of warring factions and power abusive leaders placing pressure to think in one particular way. I would like to take an example of two values that have an appearance of being in a kind of conservative vs. democratic conflict and that I think we can strip down to their most basic essence in order to re-analyze some of our own complex Board decisions. It doesn’t take much thought to realize that “conservative” contains one particular core value often associated with the Right, that is, “to conserve” or “to keep things as they are.” Whereas its opposition, “to change” or “to evolve from the way things have been historically” is often associated with the progressive Left.
However, as someone who sees conservation and change as two imperative values in the process of healthy transformation without catastrophic destabilization, I want to challenge this assumption. ‘Conservation land’ getting “conserved” reveals how change isn’t always for the better! And changes, if implemented too carelessly or without the building of group consent and trust, can lead to new rifts, new split factions, and ultimately, new entire groups of MIP members deciding to leave the institute because they don’t feel their voices have been heard. To my mind, MIP is an organization that has daringly leaned heavily away from conservation of what has always been, away from rules, away from firm policies in favor of case-by-case analysis. Yet, this beautiful value can sometimes have a shadow side; there is such a thing as being flexible to the point of fracture or collapse. So, I hope to continue the implementation of priorities begun under Frances’ presidency that will help contain the pedagogical and clinical environments at MIP with some missing ethical and structural scaffolding. To this end, I hope to:
Ensure that the PGFP returns to being an integrated and communicative branch of the Institute
Support the completion, distribution, and publication of a more detailed and clearer MIP Code of Ethics
Support the Training Committee’s mission to enhance oversight of candidates’ experiences in classes, progressions through the program, and supervisor awareness of the rules and regulations
Finish the writing and ratifying the first set of official MIP By-Laws
Advocate, with the By-Laws Task Force, for a new checks-and-balances layer of governance that will help prevent on-going abuses of power by the future MIP leadership
Implement procedural reforms around the operation of Task Forces to help decrease the repetitive power struggles that have unfolded between these groups and the Board
3) Loving Recognition
Finally, the third aspect of an Ethic of Containment I conceive of as Loving Recognition. I return here to an atmosphere of Care and want to deepen this idea with a simple notion found in Hegel’s philosophy and Jessica Benjamin’s theory of intersubjectivity. Both essentially conclude that love IS, first and foremost, recognition. The act of being willing to see the separate, whole, dynamic subjectivity of the other is a fundamental act of love. We can disagree from a place of regression, hate, and othering, or we can disagree from a place of listening and truly recognizing the whole other, even if a disagreement persists.
This aspect of Containment invites the most delicious agenda items of all:
Returning to dialoguing with the Racial Equity Task force recommendations and examining where we have landed since this conflict left off. I hope to help move the disagreement from othering to a containing dialogue that involves true recognition of the values inherent in different perspectives. I do believe we can proudly say we have already successfully begun this work at the recent Coordinating Committee meeting exploring the complex and sensitive topic of paying faculty of color.
Conscious, intentional recognition of ALL who enter our doors, whether people of color, transgendered individuals, Republicans, disabled individuals, new members who do not belong to any training subgroup, or anyone who might feel like a societal or institutional outsider. In the last few months, we received a letter from someone explaining that they were letting their membership expire due to feeling one is shunned at MIP if one holds a more conservative political view. Likewise, at the fall party a new member who was not part of a training program ended up reporting they/he/she felt very unwelcomed. Also since the Fall, one of our candidates gratefully brought to our attention the lack of consciousness at MIP around gender inclusivity. We can do better, and yet, we do not need to turn regressive hate towards ourselves... we can self-reflect and we can grow.
And most simply, I want to recognize each other as the unbelievably active, dedicated members of this rich community that we all are. This evening, I am acutely aware that it takes a VILLAGE to run a psychoanalytic institute. I feel overtaken with gratitude and appreciation for how much work we all do to keep this place running: committee co- chairs and members, faculty, Board members, supervisors, deans, liaisons, officers of the corporation, managing director, and ombudspeople. This must truly be a labor of love for us all to show up for this place the way we do, and I only hope we can continue to grow MIP back into being a home that offers us as much love in return.
Finally, if we can establish a stable atmosphere of ethical containment, I would hope to turn an exciting corner to new goals of Creative Expansion. If we get there, I hope to transition us towards this new horizon with a Board Retreat in which we might tackle such questions as: Where does MIP head in its psychoanalytic identity 40 years after its founding? Who are we, exactly, who call this place our home? What exactly does it mean to be a “comparative” institute in 2025? What does it mean, to be, - hopefully, - an ever more diverse institute than when we first opened our doors? How and where can we deepen our connections and dialogues with diverse communities with little exposure to psychoanalytic thinking and with whom we have had little exposure in our own theoretical development? Where are the cutting edges of knowledge about the human mind, from field theory to non-verbal mind-to-mind communication to radical new conceptions of consciousness, and how do we keep our curriculum on the cutting edge rather than back in time?
So, thank you for electing me, thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to me this evening, and I invite you and thank you for speaking to me and to each other in the years to come.
