On Sunday, April 28th (from 9:00-2:00 via Zoom), the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SFCP) community will be meeting to reimagine our organizational vision and mission. As a membership organization, it is the members — all of us — not one group or sector of the organization that determines our future. And that is exactly what an organizational vision and mission do. Together they guide the organization toward an imagined future.
Our vision and mission work will build on the strategic directions that were determined in the Fall of 2022. Those are:
- Energizing the Membership to Co-Create the Life of the Organization
- Promoting an Inclusive & Reflective Organization
- Re-Envisioning & Building a Sustainable Organizational Structure to Support Prioritized Programming
- Developing & Supporting Leaders
On April 28th, our outside consultants will facilitate a process in which our voices can be heard. We will end the day with a concrete plan for transforming our ideas into vision and mission statements.
Why rewrite vision and mission statements? First of all, SFCP does not currently have a vision statement. A vision statement is a brief description of the world we want, one that we hope all our efforts will lead to. It’s an aspirational statement about the future. It gives us a north star that we all, as an organization, use to guide our collective actions.
A mission statement focuses on what we do now to achieve the vision. SFCP’s mission statement was written over a decade ago. The world and our individual and collective understanding of the world has changed since then. Significant changes include a more nuanced appreciation for the impact of culture, groups, and societal structures on the developing psyche, and on the lived experiences and unconscious processes that shape our relations. While psychoanalysis as a field has had liberatory aims, its institutional practices have historically been constraining and exclusionary towards people from marginalized groups. SFCP needs a mission that reflects our evolving understanding of humanity (and our discontents), and meets the demands of our diverse contemporary world.
In order to both get our minds thinking about our future and to get input from all members – even those who cannot attend the April 28th session – we created a brief survey. We hope as many members as possible will complete it. Responses are anonymous, and will be shared verbatim with the entire membership. Participants in the April 28th session will be asked to reference and include them throughout the day.
Thank you for providing your input. Again, it is all of us together who create the future of SFCP so your thoughts are important and necessary!
Please register here to participate in the Vision & Mission session on April 28 from 9am – 2pm via Zoom.
If you have any questions, please contact Marcia Hodges at marcia.hodges@sfcp.org.
Strategic Plan Operations Team
Ari Bachrach
Meryl Botkin
Debora Fletcher
Marcia Hodges
Maria Longuemare
Brett Penfil