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Constructivist Chronicle
My Account of the Berlin Congress
By Franz R. Epting
Go to photo Deciding to go to this congress was a
big step for me. Coming from a German-American family, the idea of
attending the Congress aroused such mixed emotions-- I had not been
able to bring myself to visit Germany before this time in my life. To
my delight this visit was like a homecoming for me in so many ways. I
found the Germany of my fondest hopes, an open accepting society in
Berlin where diversity is celebrated and personal kindness abounds. ( I
had a city bus wait for me when I arrived a few seconds late at the bus
stop.) I might be a bit biased since a big thrill for me was that no
one ever asked me to repeat my name and everyone pronounced it
beautifully. But much more than any of this is the fact that I found
Berlin to be a city much in the process of becoming something new and
exciting. This brings me to the PCP Congress at Wannsee that I am
supposed to be talking about. I found the Congress to embrace this
spirit of becoming. Wannsee is a beautiful section of Berlin and the
beautiful new conference center, where the Congress was held, sat just
across the road from the area's large lake. The weather held sunny and
warm for the whole conference and put everyone in a very good mood. This
was chilled only by the fact that two blocks up from the conference
center stands the stately mansion where, in 1941, Heydrich had Göring
assign him to prepare the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question in
Europe" at what has come to be known as the Wannsee Conference.
Jörn Scheer and his organizing
committee of Norbert Ammermann, Ursula Bartholomew, Anna Catina, Rölf
Deubner, and Ulrike Willutzki really knocked themselves out, literally,
to see that this was a superbly run congress. For example Anna Catina
stayed up until 4:00am to receive a late arriving guest on the night
before the meeting was to begin. These committee members were
everywhere at once seeing that things ran smoothly. The papers were of
very high quality and well scheduled except for the fact that I had
wished that clinical papers and research papers could have been arranged
in blocks so that one did not have to choose, for example, between two
good clinical papers or two good research papers. I must say I really
appreciated the fact that the conference schedule only required one and
one half blocks of presentations before refreshments were served.
Again on a very personal level, I had
my list of peak moments at the Conference: one was listening to David
Vogel carry on about "Nietzsche, a psychologist for our time" and
another was hearing from Richard Bell about how well we have done with
our "Grids and Stats" in terms of making a real difference in the
advancement of psychometric theory and application. I am sure that
everyone has their favorite list of presentations since there were so
many excellent ones to choose from. My only regret about the congress
came in the closing session with the title " Will PCP survive after
Y2K?" For me there were too many defensive voices and not enough of the
"vision thing". But you have to remember I was a graduate student in
the 60's when optimism was alive and "Man of La Mancha" was opening on
Broadway with its lead song which implored us all to dream "The
Impossible Dream". This was all followed by a "Gala Banquet" boat cruise
on the Wannsee and was it gala and grand with high spirits and plenty of
hope for the future. For me I thought it was a very good sign that the
boat did not sink and we are all still here to see another client, write
another article, and teach another student.
Dr. Franz Epting
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