Many old members will know a little about the people currently serving on the executive council, particularly as a number of them are founder members of IAFP, or have been involved in the organisation from its infancy. However, we thought that it would be useful to welcome new members by doing some introductions.
Bart de Smit, England
Estela Welldon, England
Tegwyn Williams, Wales
Christopher Cordess, England
Friedemann Pfäfflin, Germany
Peter Gottlieb, Denmark
Abe Halpern, USA
John Young, USA
Stephen Freiberg, Australia
Ingrid Thompson, Canada
Enda Dooley, Ireland
Sandra Grant, England
Some of these positions are up for re-election so if you feel like getting more involved in the organisation, now is your chance.
Bart de Smit
Prof. Dr. Bart N.W. de Smit is Emeritus Professor of Forensic Psychiatry of the Vrije University of Amsterdam and former Psychiatric Advisor of the Ministry of Justice in the Netherlands. Since his retirement he has lived in London. He is a founding member of the IAFP and was chairman of the organising committee of the 1994 Congress of the IAFP in the Hague, Netherlands. Currently he is President of the IAFP and was inaugurated as such in May of 1995 for a two year period.
His hope for IAFP is that it will continue to develop as a sophisticated professional international body aimed at the clinical and research identity of forensic psychotherapy within the context of the criminal justice system.
Estela Welldon
Estela Welldon was the founder of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy in 1991 and is President for life. She designed the first course on Forensic Psychotherapy and is its Course Director. The Course was initially run under the auspices of the British Postgraduate Medical Foundation, and now leads to a University College, London (University of London) Diploma. She is a pioneer in the application of Group Analysis and Social and Sexual Deviancy and is the author of Mother, Madonna, Whore. Through the IAFP she would very much like to realise the fair treatment of offenders world-wide, with preventative action based on the psychodynamic understanding of delinquent criminal behaviour, and the ending of the institutionalisation of perversion.
Tegwyn Williams
I work as a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in a newly established secure unit in South Wales dealing mostly with the severely mentally ill offender and, after a period of training at the Portman Clinic, consider myself to be an educated amateur in Forensic Psychotherapy. I was a founder member of the Association and have been secretary since 1992. I would like the Association to be at the forefront of developing and evaluating therapeutic strategies with mentally abnormal offenders in all settings including prisons, hospitals and the community. To this end I would like to encourage the Association to multi professional and multi agency membership and ownership of the necessary skills both to work with this client group and develop an organisation such as ours.
Christopher Cordess
Dr Christopher Cordess has been Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in London, since 1986, and is an associate member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He has published chapters and papers on Forensic Psychiatry and is co-editor (with Murray Cox) of Forensic Psychiatry: Crime, Psychodynamics and the Offender Patient, published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Friedmann Pfäfflin
PD Dr. med. Friedmann Pfäfflin, Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst. 1978-1992 Dept. of Sex Research, Psychiatric University Clinic, Hamburg. Since 1992, Dept. of Psychotherapy, Ulm University, Ulm. Head of workunit Forensic Psychotherapy. Hopes for IAFP in 1996: A good annual conference April 26-28, 1996 in Ulm with a great audience and an emphasis on research to structure future work in this important field.
Peter Gottlieb
I work as the head consultant for a forensic psychiatric unit with 60 beds and 60 outpatients, offering psychiatric services for the most seriously disturbed criminal and psychiatric patients from Copenhagen with Court mandated orders of treatment.
By now I have some 10 years of practice in the evaluation for the courts and treatment of offender patients.
My background of dynamic training - obtained mainly in group therapy - is a great help in clinical as well as administrative matters.
I find it important that the IAFP will be able to keep and strengthen the link to general psychotherapy and at the same time further develop and outline the forensic specialty. I hope to be able to host the 1998 conference in Copenhagen appropriately.
John L Young
Dr Young is an attending psychiatrist at the Whiting Forensic Institute, a maximum security facility under the mental health department of the state of Connecticut. He is also an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. He primarily works directly with insanity acquittees and collaborates on related clinical research. His broader interests include issues that involve religion as well as law and psychiatry.
My major hope for the IAFP is that it continue to foster excellence in education, research and practice of forensic psychotherapy by encouraging collaboration and fellowship.
Stephen Freiberg
Dr. Stephen Freiberg is a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist working in Sydney, Australia. He did his psychiatry and forensic psychiatry training in Sydney while working with the Prison Medical Service of New South Wales for many years.
He completed his senior registrar training with a dissertation on individual psychotherapy with male prisoners. He is a founding member of the IAFP and has been on the International Advisory Council of the IAFP for several years.
He currently works in full-time private practice in Sydney. He is also on the International Editorial Board of the American Journal of Psychotherapy.
Ingrid Thompson
Ingrid Thompson, Ph.D. (Cantab.). I am a professor at the McGill School of Social Work, McGill University where I teach courses in clinical criminology, and child sexual abuse. For many years I have also been at the McGill Clinic in Forensic Psychiatry, an out-patient service for adult offenders and the first of its kind in Canada. At the clinic I do research, see patients and conduct clinical supervision of social work students. I was very pleased when the IAFP was formed as I felt it would respond to an important and unmet need for practitioners doing clinical work with offenders; namely to meet and discuss the issues that arise from working with this particular population. I see the IAFP as an important resource to provide support for forensic clinicians and to develop the field to its fullest potential.
Enda Dooley
Presently Director of Prison Medical Services in the republic of Ireland. Trained in Forensic Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and was Consultant at Broadmoor Hospital prior to taking up present position in 1990. I am particularly interested in therapeutic strategies aimed at addressing the problem of personality disorder in the prison situation. Given the legal and professional ambivalence over the issue of personality disorder (related violent or criminal behaviour) and its management it is likely that this group will be increasingly incarcerated in prison. I would like to see IAFP giving consideration to theoretical and practical aspects of the management of this group, in particular the matter of recognised standards of therapist competence.
Sandra Grant
Dr Sandra Grant has been a Consultant Psychotherapist since 1979, and over this period has been influential nationally in developing the specialty via the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Joint Committee on Higher Psychiatric Training. She has served on the Council for the Association for Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy in the NHS and is a training analyst with the Scottish Association of Psychoanalytical Psychotherapists. Over the last five years she has become involved in management, currently holding the post of Clinical Director of Adult Community Mental Health Services across Glasgow. This has fostered her interest in psychotherapeutic work with a more disturbed client group. She would hopefully see the IAFP continue to provide a professional forum for learning and to lobby the development of the specialty. Her main goal would be to increase the shared learning with those working within the criminal justice system at all levels.