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ISST General Membership Assembly 2020

President’s message from David Edwards

Nominations for Honorary Life Membership of the ISST

For this Assembly, the Executive Board has taken the unusual step of making seven nominations for Honorary Life Membership.

This is the 6th ISST General Membership Assembly and we are coming to the end of the two-year term of the 6th Executive Board.  You can see the membership of these 6 Executive Boards here:  https://schematherapysociety.org/Past-Executive-Boards.  However, the Executive Board only made nominations for Honorary Life Members for the first time in 2018, when Joan Farrell and Wendy Behary were nominated and subsequently confirmed by the General Membership Assembly.

Since the founding of the ISST in 2008, a large number of people have made significant contributions to our society, by rendering significant service to the ISST, either on the Executive Board,  or on other committees, as well as advancing the understanding and practice of schema therapy through training, research and writing. So we decided it was appropriate to catch up a bit and make several nominations.  We don’t think this necessarily creates a precedent.  Future Executive Boards can decide to nominate a smaller number or no one at all.  But all of those we are nominating have undoubtedly made “outstanding contributions to schema therapy and the ISST” which is the wording of the Statute with respect to Honorary Life Members.

Most of the nominees have served on the Executive Board, and four of them were involved in the founding of the ISST and served on the first Executive Board in 2008.  They and all the other nominees have continued to make contributions to the ISST and the promotion of schema therapy through training and academic and clinical writing over many years.

At my instigation, we have included two of our current Executive Board members, Eckhard Roediger and Travis Atkinson. Of course, Eckhard and Travis had no say in this decision, and the other Board members were unanimous in supporting their nomination.  The previous Board also nominated one of its members in the same way:  Joan Farrell. As you will see from the citations that you can read below, Eckhard has the distinction of having served on every Executive Board since the beginning  - 6 terms in all - and has shouldered immense responsibilities with respect to running the office in Frankfurt and managing our finances. Travis is undoubtedly well known to all of you because, during his three terms as Media Coordinator, he has contributed a large amount of time as well as professional expertise and tireless energy with respect to the planning and running of conferences and dealing with complex issues related to the website and, for example, data protection.

Below the citations for the nominees are listed in alphabetical order of their surnames. I encourage you to vote to approve the bestowing of Honorary Life Membership on all seven of the nominees. Read the citations on each one to see the evidence for the nature and quality of their “outstanding contributions.”  Of course, there are others who have also made significant contributions that we could also have nominated, but seven is already a large number and future Boards will, I am sure consider these others in due course.


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