Highlights from the IPA Confidentiality Committee
This Committee was created in January 2017 to review “the ways in which confidentiality pertains to and impacts on the work of IPA psychoanalysts,” to draft documents on best practices for the IPA Board to review and approve, and to advise the Board on related issues for the 2019 Congress. In November 2018, it completed the Report of the IPA Confidentiality Committee. The IPA Board approved this in January 2019, and it is available in five languages on the Resources page of our website. In July 2019, the Committee was made a permanent committee of the IPA. The founding members of this committee, who produced these important reports, include Andrew Brook (Chair), Nahir Bonifacino, John Churcher, Allannah Furlong, Altamirando Matos de Andrade (Ex Officio), Sergio Eduardo Nick (Ex Officio), and Paul Crake (Ex-Officio).
A new membership of the Confidentiality Committee was formed in 2021. This committee aims to raise awareness of and sensitivity to an inherent conflict with confidentiality that emerges in our need to share clinical material with colleagues and supervisors, both orally and in written presentation. Our growing reliance on remote treatment in the wake of the pandemic raises new concerns about confidentiality on digital platforms, and we are committed to bringing attention to this side of the problem as well. From our perspective:
“A basic conflict is ever-present in our work: Our effort to protect our patient's privacy is constantly threatened by impulses to disclose clinical experiences that are hard to keep sequestered.”
The current members of the Committee are Sarah Ackerman (Chair), Gustavo Jarast (Member for Latin America), Susan Kattlove (Member for North America), Giorgio Mattana (Member for Europe), Klaus Poppensieker (Ex-Officio Chair, Ethics Committee), Adriana Prengler (Ex-Officio Vice President), Paul Crake (Ex-Officio Chief Executive), and John Churcher (Consultant).
Our committee recently embarked on a project to raise awareness among members of the IPA of the risks to confidentiality. We are sending out a quarterly email to all IPA members entitled “Something to think about…” that offers examples of the kinds of troubles that analysts can encounter, with links to our publications that address these issues.
We are also developing short documents on “Best Practices” that can help IPA members in general and those who hold sensitive positions in which confidentiality is a particular concern. We hope to complete the following documents and send them to relevant recipients by the end of our term in 2025:
- Best Practices on Confidentiality for Planners of Conferences
- Best Practices on Confidentiality for Journal Editors
- Best Practices on Confidentiality for Institute Directors and Directors of Training
- Best Practices for Remote Treatment
- Best Practices on Confidentiality for IPA Members at Large
Members of our committee presented on confidentiality at recent congresses:
- We presented on a panel entitled “Ethics and Confidentiality in Times of Crisis” in July 2023 at the IPA Congress in Cartagena
- Sarah Ackerman (Chair) presented a talk entitled "Confidentiality in the Present Moment" on February 2024 at the meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York
We contributed to the Report of the IPA Task Force on Psychoanalytic Training in Contemporary Times. There, we wrote about present-day risks to confidentiality, including risks associated with remote treatment (pp. 75-79 of the TF2 Report).
The Confidentiality Committee has also authored a number of publications, which can be found on our
website.
- Report of the IPA Confidentiality Committee (November 2018)
- Confidentiality and Remote Psychoanalytic Work (May 2021)
- Confidentiality in the Administration of Psychoanalytic Practices Using the Internet (May 2021)
Dr. Sarah Ackerman
Chair, Confidentiality Committee