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PRESIDENT'S
COLUMN January 2002 Where Have We Been? Ten years ago I had the privilege of serving as President of Division 39. I did not imagine that 10 years later I would serve again in this capacity. So I would like to begin this column by thanking the membership for the confidence that permits such an unusual, "repeat performance." I hope to be able to provide the kind of leadership that justifies it. For more than 20 years Division 39 has been my professional home. We have faced many challenges and had our share of controversies. But through it all our unity as psychologists—psychologists who represent a psychoanalytic perspective within APA and in the larger psychoanalytic world—has been strengthened. And the friendships garnered and developed during these years have been one of the great rewards of my professional and personal life. In preparation for writing this column I found, buried in the depths of my computer, the president's columns I wrote ten years ago. As psychoanalysts we know that it pays to look back in order to move forward. Much has changed in these ten years. Ten years ago we were just emerging from the successful settlement of the lawsuit, spearheaded by Bryant Welch (who joins the Division Board this year as an APA Council Representative), and we were reaping the benefits of it. Independent institutes which had many Division 39 members successfully joined the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA); the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) had abolished the waiver requirement for psychologists; new independent institutes with founders closely affiliated with the Division were established; the Psychoanalytic Consortium, representing the three major mental heath professions (psychology, social work and psychiatry) was established during my term; and our efforts to develop our own Board certification (ABPP) in psychoanalysis was successfully revived. In the intervening years Division 39 has grown and flourished. Thanks to the commitment of our membership—and readiness to express it by voting—we have one of the largest Divisional representations in APA Council. Within the Division we established new committees to reach out to the diversity of our membership, including the Committee on Multicultural Issues and the Graduate Student Committee. Our Sections increased from 5 to 9, representing more fully the broad interests of our members. With the initiative provided by Fellows chair George Stricker we have been able to establish a Fellows category in our membership which recognizes outstanding career contributions to psychoanalytic psychology. Our publications are thriving, most recently under the leadership of the Publications Committee chair, Nancy McWilliams. Through the capable efforts of our journal editor Joe Reppen, Psychoanalytic Psychology has expanded its offerings and now represents the broad perspectives that mark the vitality of psychoanalytic psychology. As you see in this and past issues, our newsletter has become extraordinarily meaty, thanks to the work of its editor, Bill MacGillivray and his predecessors. Psychoanalytic Abstracts continues to offer the membership exceptional access to what is being published in the psychoanalytic world. Our local chapters, now numbering 30 have flourished, providing a professional home both to psychologists around the country and to allied mental health professionals in many localities. The Division has recognized this valuable contribution by adding a category of membership, with voting rights, for allied professionals. As a result of an enormous amount of dedicated work by many of my predecessors (Lew Aron, Spyros Orfanos, Laurie Wagner and Maureen Murphy) the Psychoanalytic Consortium has been successful in producing a standards document on psychoanalytic education upon which all four member organizations of the Consortium (The American Academy of Psychoanalysis, the American Psychoanalytic Association, Division 39, and the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work) could agree. There is always a danger in singling out individuals for recognition, but the risk is worth it in noting the extraordinary contribution made by Laurie Wagner, who stayed on top of every detail and found a way through complex political and conceptual thickets, and by Nat Stockhamer, whose steady wisdom, garnered through years of experience, informed every step of the process. The adoption of this statement of standards by all four primary psychoanalytic groups in this country is an accomplishment whose significance cannot be underestimated. This document, published in our most recent newsletter (Fall 2001, vol. XXI, no. 4), represents an articulation of the vital elements in high quality psychoanalytic education, while providing flexibility for differences in training traditions and educational methods. It was hammered out through literally years of discussion and debate both within the Division and with our sister groups. The document will form the foundation of the work of the Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education (ACPE), which has already been incorporated, and which will function independently of the Psychoanalytic Consortium. It is, as Murray Meisels asserts in an article published in this issue, a mainstream document, one that is absolutely in keeping with Division 39 and APA policy, that psychoanalysis is not another independent mental health profession—alongside psychology, social work and psychiatry—but represents an advanced specialization of recognized, licensable, mental health professions. It is a document that will allow institutes offering serious training to mental health professionals to receive broad validation of their training practices, while encouraging others to raise their standards. Where Do We Go From Here? Speaking frankly, we are in no position to rest on our accomplishments. Division 39 faces some real challenges for the future, and it is on the future that I would like to focus my efforts in the year ahead of us. One year is not much time. Our most recent past presidents established important goals for our Division, and rather than reinvent the wheel, or take us in yet another direction, I plan to maintain continuity with their initiatives to further strengthen the work of the Division. In doing so, I plan to focus on what I believe are limited and attainable goals, rather than grand ideas whose implementation will never actually occur. What are the challenges? For one, our membership is slowly aging and, as a result, declining in numbers. This attrition is occurring in all of psychology, and in all professions, as the baby boomer generation nears retirement. This fact raises the question of the future of our Division and the future of a psychoanalytic voice in psychology. This issue is given even greater urgency by the precipitous decline we have seen in our graduate student membership in the last two years (from nearly 10% of our membership to less than 5%). The reasons for such a significant and rapid loss of graduate student members are not clear and I have asked our Membership Committee to contact graduate students whose membership has lapsed try to understand what happened. But in addition, I believe we must focus our efforts on a more comprehensive effort to insure the future for our Division and for the vitality of psychoanalytic ideas in psychology. To this end, I will be undertaking, as my presidential initiative, a series of steps, some of which were begun in the term of Past-President Maureen Murphy. The aim of these steps will be to renew an interest in the study and teaching of contemporary psychoanalytic ideas in undergraduate and graduate psychology courses and programs, assist interested faculty in acquiring the tools for including psychoanalytic ideas in their curricula, and reach out to interested graduate students for involvement and participation in our Division. At the same time, we will be trying to increase the diversity of our membership and provide them with the kind of contact, interaction and services they want and need. Here are some of the plans we have developed: I. Insuring the Future: A. Teaching Psychoanalysis: It is difficult to expect that there will be another generation of psychologists with an interest in psychoanalytic psychology if undergraduate and graduate students have little or no exposure to a contemporary view of psychoanalysis, one that is—as we in the Division know—vital, controversial and exciting. With a few exceptions, most texts used in both undergraduate and graduate courses (not just clinical ones, but those which deal with development, personality, psychopathology, as well as psychotherapy) represent psychoanalysis—if they do so at all—as it was construed 50 and 100 years ago. Even faculty who may wish to include psychoanalytic ideas in their teaching often are unaware of current developments across the full spectrum of psychoanalytic thinking and/or have little access to useful reference material. To address this, I have asked the newly reconfigured Education and Training Committee (ably led by former president Spyros Orfanos) to develop several "model curricula" both for "stand-alone" courses in psychoanalysis at the graduate and undergraduate level, as well as for the inclusion of psychoanalytic material in graduate and undergraduate courses in psychopathology, psychotherapy, personality, development and other relevant courses. These "model curricula" will not be one final, set-in-stone idea of what psychoanalysis is or how it should be taught. Rather they will represent a range of ideas and suggestions, circulated among our many experienced teachers in the Division; a menu, so to speak, from which faculty can select what they may wish to include. These model curricula will provide not only a digest of the diversity of ideas in contemporary psychoanalysis, but perhaps most importantly, access to the materials. This initiative will include sending model curricula out to major clinical, counseling and professional psychology training programs around the country, contacting program and department chairs and soliciting their interest in receiving such materials, and distributing it to their faculty. Some of this work has already begun under the auspices of our Membership Committee, chaired by Joe Couch, which has been in contact with faculty, program chairs, and others around the country to collect the basic data we will need to move this process forward. The Education and Training Committee will have funds for the distribution of model curricula, relevant reference material, and in certain instances instructors' copies of texts for faculty who are interested in looking further. In a related step, we have already planned a workshop to be held at the next APA meetings in Chicago in August, for faculty interested in learning about incorporating psychoanalytic ideas in their undergraduate and graduate courses. This workshop will acquaint faculty with the current range of issues in psychoanalysis and enable them to integrate these ideas into their courses. We strongly encourage members of the Division who have ideas on these issues, and suggestions about those we might contact, to be in touch directly with Education & Training Chair Spyros Orfanos and Membership Chair Joe Couch (email addresses on the back page of this newsletter). B. Outreach to Graduate Students: Until this past August, the Graduate Student Committee had been led by graduate students who very ably planned some of the most interesting programs we have had at our Spring meetings and at APA. Their plans for the coming Spring Meeting in April are an example of the creativity they brought to this effort. However, working alone, with insufficient resources, and with other burdens as graduate students, did not permit the continuity of leadership that is necessary if we are going to take seriously the idea of nurturing our graduate student members and insuring the future. Following consultation with the most recent chairs, our Past President, Maureen Murphy, and I undertook a reorganization of this committee. The Graduate Student Committee is now chaired by Karen Rosica and Joe Schwartz, both experienced members of the Division who have agreed to take on the role of guiding this committee in the coming years. They will be assisted by a committed group of graduate students representing a range of programs around the country. In addition to planning programs at our meetings of interest to graduate students this committee will work closely with the Education & Training Committee and the Membership Committee in outreach to graduate students, to identify individuals and programs where psychoanalytic interest can be nurtured, and graduate students encouraged to be involved in all aspects of the Division's endeavors. As part of our commitment to graduate students we have already established the Stephen A. Mitchell Graduate Student Award for an outstanding graduate student paper to be published in our journal (contact journal editor Joseph Reppen, email on the back page, for further information). In addition, it is my intention as president to include graduate student members in every working committee in the Division. As the year begins, we have new graduate student members on the Education & Training Committee, the Membership Committee, the Publications Committee, the Committee on Multicultural Issues, the Internet Committee, and, of course, the Graduate Student Committee. In future columns I will ask some of these graduate student members to comment about their experience in the Division. I also encourage all interested graduate students to contact me and our Graduate Student Committee chairs (email addresses listed on the back page) to become involved. II. Working FOR our Membership: A. The Internet: It is time to use the full functionality if the internet for the Division's programs, initiatives and communication. Several steps were undertaken during Maureen Murphy's term and it is my plan to bring them to completion this year. At the Board meeting in January, the Internet Committee, chaired by Larry Zelnick, will present a request for proposals (RFP) to enhance the Division's web site so that it is more user friendly, provides full access to necessary and useful information, and allows the establishment of message areas (bulletin boards) for committees, sections and other Divisional groups. The web site will also provide access to current and past issues of our newsletter and abstracts of articles in our journal. The Internet Committee is also well into the process of establishing a one-way list serve for the posting of important messages and information to the membership. In addition, we will be using the coming year to move our membership directory to the web (along with a printed directory), a change that will permit members to update their contact information in a timely way. Those who do not want contact information available on the web will be permitted to opt out of the directory. B. Diversity: Our Committee on Multicultural Issues, chaired by Dolores Morris, has been actively involved in the Division's involvement in the biannual Multicultural Summit, sponsored by several Divisions in APA. The Division was a major sponsor of the past multicultural summit and held one of its Board meetings at the summit. We will be planning similar participation for 2003. I especially want to encourage and strengthen the Division's commitment to multicultural issues and outreach to a truly diverse membership. In addition, an Interest Group on the Sexualities was established during the past year. At the January Board meeting I will be asking the Board to formalize our investment in this area through the establishment of a Committee on Sexual Identity and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Issues. The charge to the committee, if the Board approves it, will be to conduct an assessment of the needs of our membership regarding LGBT concerns; to work closely with the APA Division on LGBT Issues, including joint programming; to provide an updated view of psychoanalysis to LGBT psychologists in APA who may have felt, for good reason, concerned about the attitudes of psychoanalysis; and to make recommendations to the Board regarding programming at our Spring and APA meetings. C. Psychoanalysis in the Real World: Under the leadership of Maureen Murphy, the Division Board had undertaken an assessment of some of its mission with regard to services to our members. One of the central concerns we identified was the very narrow—and inaccurate—view of what a psychoanalyst is and does among members of the public and the media. We do much more than treat patients one-on-one in our offices. Well before September 11, our members were involved in community-based projects that bring us out of our offices and into a much broader connection with groups, organizations and essential social services. Since that infamous date, this has been even more the case, as our membership will see at an exhibition at the forthcoming Spring meeting being arranged by President-Elect Jaine Darwin and Treasurer David Ramirez. But too often, little is noted about these kinds of efforts. In the coming months we will be reorganizing our Public Information Committee to make it an effective vehicle for assisting our members in talking with the public and the media, and in representing the full range of what we really do, in the real world. And: Much more will be happening in the coming year, but I need to reserve some space in this issue for other articles! Some plans will be more accurately reflected in forthcoming columns. Until then, be sure to look for the program for the Spring Meeting in the mail and on our web site (www.divpsa.org). Elaine Martin and her committee have done an extraordinary job, as you will see. And do feel free to email me with reactions and suggestions at any point. Jonathan H. Slavin, Ph.D. Jonathan H. Slavin, Ph.D.,
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