Be Part of ‘Greatest Show on Earth’

In 1972 I attended my first APA annual meeting, in Dallas. I was just completing my first year of psychiatric residency, and my training director encouraged me to attend and helped fund my trip expenses. I was dazzled by the wide range of lectures, workshops, and poster sessions. I particularly remember another resident telling me that she was going to hear “some lady talk about her life with monkeys.” With a stroke of good luck, I followed her to the lecture and heard Jane Goodall give a thrilling discussion of her work with chimpanzees in Africa.

Now, a few years later, I am given the opportunity by the membership to welcome medical students, residents, members, international colleagues, mental health professionals, and their guests to the “greatest show on earth.”

This year’s annual meeting, with its theme “The 21st-Century Psychiatrist,” has been carefully crafted by Philip Muskin, M.D., and his hardworking Scientific Program Committee to help point us toward our role in the 21st century. Throughout this special issue of Psychiatric News, one begins to get the flavor and intensity of the offerings that will be available in Philadelphia. It is fitting that we have this meeting in Philadelphia, since it has been an incubator for our profession and home of some of our early and more recent psychiatric leaders. Today, the Philadelphia area continues to provide the highest level of treatment, education, and research in our field, and I have no doubt it will continue to do so.

This annual meeting will help us begin to deal with the dynamic intersection of information technology, interpersonal therapies, and genetic issues that will advance our work and the effectiveness of our treatments far beyond that which any of us can conceive. Come to Philadelphia. Be a part of the “greatest show on earth.” Learn from your peers and mentors and begin preparing your own presentations for the 2003 annual meeting in San Francisco. ▪