Presidential address: New challenges for proven values.

Abstract

What a wonderful meeting we anticipate here in glorious Toronto! The engines of science, humanism, and collegiality will drive this uplifting event beyond what we have experienced in annual meetings over the past decade. I have been proud and even exhilarated to have been your 126th President in the most exciting days in our history. This peak experience in my personal and professional life could not have been achieved without the enthusiastic contributions of my successor, PresidentElect Rod Munoz. His deep organizational experience and readiness to challenge the perceived wisdom of the past synergized our working relationship. I cannot move ahead in my message to you without recognizing the generous advice and counsel of leaders such as Gerry Flamm, Allan Tasman, Jerry Lazarus, Hugo Taussig, Dan Borenstein, and Drew Clemens. I am truly grateful to my friends and fellow Board members and the many colleagues on the more than 20 components on which I served. Their judgments and insights have confirmed our proven values. Helen, my caring wife, is my advisor and my critic who has kept me on course during the past 2 years. This consummate professional, who directed a psychiatric clinic for the assessment of serious offenders in the New Haven Juvenile Court, has quietly supported my 20 years of activities in the national APA. We wed many years ago, when I was a first-year medical student at Cornell. From the two of us, we are now 15 (not counting five dogs). Three of my four children are married; two are lawyers—Kate is general counsel and senior vice president of a major hospital, and Russell worked with the Navajo Nation, living on the reservation. Two sons, Eric and Doug, are in the financial industry in New York City. That band of thinkers, creative folks, and merrymakers with social commitments made me the proud grandfather of six grandchildren. My family’s support of my efforts at APA, accepting my absences at important events and celebrations, telling me of the wondrous seasonal changes surrounding our beloved old farm in Vermont—a home I have not visited in many months, has kept my spirits alive. I cannot believe that theater, chamber music, museums, and opera have flourished in my absence. Haley, a 6year-old granddaughter at the Dalton School in New York City, presented her grandfather’s work to her class: “He’s President of the doctors of the world. But I never see him anymore.” Traveling 60% of my time has kept me from Haley but has introduced me to incisive and courageous colleagues committed to highquality patient care. You are a pluralistic company of dedicated men and women looking to the future with optimism, encouraging fresh ideas. Our brilliant Medical Director, Steve Mirin, possesses extraordinary administrative and quantitative skills, steering our ship through the wave action expected in organizational transition. All of his work has been touched by equanimity and humor. I treasure our close working relationship, which has catalyzed APA’s advances in the past year. During this year, the Board has once more shown its wisdom in selecting Jim Krajeski as the new Editor in Chief of Psychiatric News, replacing the eminence grise Bob Campbell, who has served us with great distinction.