IPA Bulletin
Editor's Note - Changing of the Guard

David J. Ames

We are in the happy position of having more articles for this issue and the next than we can easily fit into the space available. However, it is appropriate that I say a word about the world situation, IPA’s Tenth Congress in Nice, our new editor, assistant editor for occupational therapy matters and treasurer-elect.

Words like “awful,” “terrible” and “outrageous” seem banal and inadequate to describe the emotions many of us felt and continue to experience in relation to the events of September 11, which burst upon our Tenth Congress in mid-afternoon.

Born amid the controversies of an earlier international conflict, IPA’s constitution appropriately mandates that the organization be neutral in matters of politics and religion. (See Sandy Finkel’s articles on the early history of IPA in the June and September issues of IPA Bulletin, together with his concluding article in this issue.) I have striven to uphold these rules during my editorship—even at the price of removing some very mild jokes at the expense of Freudian psychoanalysis and Karl Marx, from an earlier editorial! I am dictating this column within a few hours of the initial air assaults on Afghanistan. Whatever we think about the desirability and appropriateness of the world response to the attacks of September 11 (and I think the large IPA membership will encompass most possible shades of opinion), it is my personal belief that one cannot practice psychogeriatrics in a humane and compassionate manner without endorsing the proposition that deliberately flying airplanes full of civilians, including children, into crowded buildings occupied by ordinary men and women going about their daily working lives, with the intention of causing massive loss of life, is evil and wicked. Such acts are not the only evils in our world, but they were the wrongs uppermost in IPA consciousness last September.

I have written in this column previously about the inter-connectedness of everyone and everything and how, as members of IPA, this allows us to help older people around the world by helping each other. I have also written in other places of how dependent those of us who deliver services to older people are on the wider context of a healthy economy and intact society. With the cancellation of several international meetings and a marked reluctance of many individuals to travel at the present time, the fragility of our activities and their dependence on freedom of movement and the rule of law has never been more starkly apparent. This might be a good time for many of us to read or reread Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies. If we lose our relatively open society there won’t be much future for IPA.

Nice, Concertos and What’s Important
I very much regret that in this column and other settings, the marvellous scientific and social program for IPA’s Tenth Congress, so capably stage managed by Philippe Robert and his organizing committee, has been overshadowed by world events. Despite the events of September 11, the Congress was a great success in scientific, educational, financial and social terms.

The Côte d’Azur is one of the loveliest places in the world and I have repeatedly found the French, if one makes the tiniest attempt to be open and friendly, one of the warmest, most life affirming and delightful groups of people on the planet. Driving to Vence and back on September 12, my wife and I had a marvellous conversation in broken French with our taxi driver on the subjects of food and music. As Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto emanated from his CD player, I ventured the opinion that “Le Troisième Concerto de Beethoven, c’est magnifique, n’est ce pas,” to which he made the unanswerable and timely reply “tout Beethoven est magnifique”! I am not sure about Wellington’s Victory or Christ on the Mount of Olives, but I wholeheartedly endorse the thrust of his argument! Here was a man who knew what was important in life.

New Editors to Introduce
Many of you have been wondering who will be the next editor of IPA Bulletin. It is with tremendous pleasure that I can now confirm that David Folks, an IPA member from Omaha, Nebraska, USA, was unanimously selected by the IPA Board of Directors from a strong field of applicants to take over from me as editor for the June 2002 issue for the next four years. David has a strong track record in administration, publishing and the practice of our specialty and gave an excellent talk in a symposium at our Lorne meeting last February. He will, I am sure, prove an excellent editor of IPA Bulletin. I hope all of you will join me in giving him every assistance, especially in sending him articles and snippets of news. David can be reached at: dgfolks@unmc.edu.

Among other appointments, I am pleased to announce that we have found an assistant editor for occupational therapy matters: Jenny Chung, Assistant Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Jenny, who can be reached at rsjchung@polyu.edu.hk, has already sent in an excellent article and promises to be one of our most active and productive assistant editors.

I am also delighted to welcome Thea Heeren as IPA Treasurer-Elect. She will assist Eric Caine in the important and difficult task of running the IPA finances, which appear to have been further strengthened by the diligence of Philippe Robert and his colleagues through the financial success of our Nice Congress.

To those of you who have asked in the context of the rapidly approaching end of my term as IPA Bulletin editor “whither David Ames,” I can now confirm that although a life of semi-retirement on a beach somewhere in Southern Australia becomes a more alluring prospect by the day, I have agreed to assist my friend and colleague, Robin Eastwood, who edits IPA’s flagship publication International Psychogeriatrics, as deputy editor of that organ until at least mid-2003. The editor of International Psychogeriatrics and his very able assistant, Judith Sylph, can be reached at IPAJ.editor@btinternet.com. I encourage you to make this the first destination for any research or review articles you wish to submit to a peer-reviewed journal!

David J. Ames, Editor of the IPA Bulletin, can be contacted at the Department of Psychiatry, 7th Floor, Charles Connibere Building, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville, Vic 3050, Australia (tel: +61 3 9342 2515, fax: +61 3 9387 9201, e-mail: dames@unimelb.edu.au).

David Ames

Reprinted from IPA Bulletin, Volume 18, Number 4