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FROM THE PRESIDENT'S DESK If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking. --George Patton I am excited to begin my Presidency in the year 2000 and look forward to facing the challenges ahead of us. I am well aware that any success I may have as President of the Division of Psychoanalysis will be due in part to the people who surround me and who precede me. The collegiality and commonality of goals which have existed among Lew Aron, Spyros Orfanos and myself have been extraordinary to experience personally and a good thing for the Division. I, also, am confident we will experience this continuity in purposes with our President-Elect, Maureen Murphy. Having been involved in Board politics for many years, I can honestly say that I have never seen an Executive Committee work as well as the one currently in place. Both David Ramirez and Kay Saakvitne have done extraordinary jobs as Treasurer and Secretary, respectively. Our Council Representatives, Jonathan Slavin, Nat Stockhamer, Judith Alpert and Harriet Kaley, are all sources of wise counsel. When one is President for only a year these kinds of close working relationships can often make the difference between success and failure. I am lucky to have them. The Division is lucky to have them. In this inaugural column I want to address the issue of the Division's identity and our own individual identities as Division members. Additionally, when I ran for President I outlined six areas on which I would focus to enhance the position and further the goals of this Division. I want to restate and expound on two of those areas: Psychoanalytic Education and Training in Universities and the Psychoanalytic Consortium. Thanks to the hard work of Past-President, Spyros Orfanos, and membership chairperson, Marty Manosevitz, the Division is now 4000 members strong. Who are these 4000 individuals and who are we as a group? What are our common goals? Are we: psychologists-psychoanalysts, psychoanalysts-psychologists, psychoanalytic psychologists or psychologists interested in psychoanalysis? We are, of course, all the above. Further, our identity as the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association is complicated, and enhanced, by our new membership category of allied mental health professional, which includes psychoanalysts from other mental health disciplines as well as mental health professionals interested in psychoanalysis. I have two ways of thinking about the Division's identity. One is a "postmodern" view. We are, in fact, all of the above, an amalgamation of these multiple selves, and we are all the better for it. Our challenge as individuals and as a Division is to nourish all of our identities. As a Division we lessen ourselves by dichotomizing, fragmenting or stereotyping the different aspects of ourselves. My other view of our identity is that of a marriage. As in a good marriage the psychoanalyst and psychologist parts of ourselves are equal partners, supporting and enriching each other. Thus, as a Division we have the resources, talents and proclivities to fulfill our identities as both psychologists and psychoanalysts. PRESIDENTIAL INITIATIVE 2000: RESTORING PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY AND PRACTICE TO GRADUATE EDUCATION My Presidential initiative for 2000 is to restore psychoanalytic theory and practice to psychology graduate education. The future of our Division lies with the students of today and tomorrow. Right now our future is in question. One of my greatest concerns is what this Division will look like twenty years from now. What will be the mean age of our members? To ensure the vitality of our profession we must find ways to make psychoanalysis available, alive and exciting for our graduate students. The alive and exciting part is easy. Making it available is the hard part. To that end I have named Nicholas Papouchis as chairperson of the Education and Training Committee. Nick is a psychologist-psychoanalyst who heads the Clinical Psychology Program at Long Island University. Nick is joined on the committee by fellow psychologists-psychoanalysts in University settings across the country. I am asking them to establish short-, mid- and long-range goals for the Division regarding psychoanalysis in graduate school training. Freud proposed psychoanalysis as part of a general theory of psychology. He was right about that. The future of psychoanalysis rests on its ability to explain, understand and help human beings. The future of psychoanalysis will not be determined by fights over who is and isn't an analyst, what constitutes analysis and at what frequency. The future rests in the relevancy of psychoanalysis to the lives of individuals and the life of society as a whole. Psychoanalysis explains things. That is its greatest strength and one to which I believe students will respond. I know I did. My undergraduate education was mired in behaviorism. I admired my professors. I identified with them and part of that identification was a rejection of all that was psychoanalytic. I did so with little actual knowledge of psychoanalysis. What can I say? I was young. But, when I entered graduate school at the age of twenty-two a new world was opened up to me and I drank from it with a mighty thirst. Psychoanalytic theory made sense. It was comprehensive. I believe I was quite similar to many of the students entering graduate school today. The difference lies in the fact that today, no one is there to teach them what I was taught. Yes, there are us "old-timers," who serve as clinical supervisors, but full-time psychoanalytically-oriented faculty teaching and doing research are few and far between. Psychology graduate programs survive on research and research money. This is a fact which we must face if we are to have any impact on graduate education. Thus, I am asking the Education and Training Committee and the Task Force on Research and Practice, headed by Sidney Blatt, to form an alliance in their interrelated efforts on behalf of psychoanalysis. Our own members are often unaware of the fine research in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy. Even worse, academic psychologists view it as nonexistent, irrelevant, undoable and/or not worth doing. It is my hope that we can begin to make inroads into both the teaching and supervising of psychoanalytic theory and practice and the arena of research. This becomes more and more important in today's climate, both within the American Psychological Association and the current mental health delivery system in this country. Our training as psychologists makes us THE psychoanalysts best able to carry out this research. THE PSYCHOANALYTIC CONSORTIUM As we know, the Division started the Psychoanalytic Consortium, a membership group of four psychoanalytic groups, The American Academy of Psychoanalysis, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work and ourselves. For several years the consortium was loosely organized, as it took several years before all members formally joined. The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) was the last to join in December 1994. . The Consortium first met to deal with the issues which arose out of the Clinton Health Reform movement and drafted an extensive Psychoanalytic Consortium Outpatient Benefits Proposal. Those reforms failed and the Consortium coalesced around fighting the National Association for Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP) in its efforts to be the sole accrediting body for psychoanalytic institutes. While the members of the Consortium have many differences among them they were (and are) in agreement that NAAP must be fought in their efforts to represent the accreditation of psychoanalysis in the United States. The reasons are: 1. No ONE group can adequately represent psychoanalysis in the U.S.; 2. Concerns within the Consortium regarding NAAP's purported lack of standards and lack of mental health training by many of its members and; 3. NAAP's view of psychoanalysis as an independent, rather than a specialized, profession. NAAP is organized and politically connected. They will continue in their endeavors to be the sole accrediting agency for psychoanalysis as well as their efforts to have state licensing laws in psychoanalysis passed (as in Vermont) that are based on NAAP criteria. From this standpoint NAAP serves as an incentive to the Consortium members to forge an agreement regarding a National Accrediting Board in Psychoanalysis. At the same time, Division 39, under the Presidency of Lew Aron, met with the leadership of NAAP to discuss, and gain a greater understanding of, our respective organizations. Many mistakenly believe NAAP was the first to seek recognition for psychoanalytic accreditation. In fact, the American Psychoanalytic Association first petitioned HEW in 1978 to be recognized as the accrediting body for psychoanalytic institutes throughout the country. APA's Board of Professional Affairs testified against APsaA's petition and it was denied. The APA Council in August 1990 adopted, under the guidance of Division 39, the following policy regarding the practice of psychoanalysis: "APA has long endorsed the principle of generic education and training for psychology, further recognizing that within any profession there are identifiable and demonstrable specialities. Thus, from the standpoint of these principles psychoanalysis is viewed as a theory of personality and a technique of psychotherapy. In addition, psychoanalysis is viewed as an advanced specialization of a number of professions rather than an independent or licensable profession." Division 39, with the considerable help of our parent organization, APA, has held steadfast in fighting for psychoanalysis as a advanced specialization rather than an independent practice. The Consortium is involved in a number of activities; the work of the Ethics Committee, started by Division 39's Stuart Pizer, and public policy and legislative concerns. For quite some time the Consortium has expended considerable effort toward hammering out a standards document that may eventually be used by the National Accrediting Board in Psychoanalysis, which would be independent of the Consortium itself. For the most part, the disagreement lies in the different organizational structures and views on psychoanalytic education between the Division of Psychoanalysis and the American Psychoanalytic Association. Division 39 stands for pluralism and diversity. We function as a horizontal group, rather than a vertical, monolithic one. The APsaA has individual institutes and societies which must rigidly conform to the guidelines and standards set by the APsaA. On the other hand, Division 39 is an interest group in psychoanalysis, with many institute-trained members, many informally trained members (for all those years when institutes of the APsaA were closed to nonphysicians), many psychoanalytic psychologist members and now some, and hopefully more, analytic processionals from other mental health fields. APA bylaws prevent us from accrediting institutes and training programs. Yet there are many independent institutes who are identified with Division 39 through their having evolved from local chapters (for example, Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis; Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California; Minnesota Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies). These institutes are completely separate legal entities, but were founded by key members of Division 39 and certainly have the support of the Division, which at times includes grants of money. These institutes grew at the same time that the GAPPP lawsuit was filed to open up membership to nonphysicians in institutes of the APsaA and membership in the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) to institutes who were not part of the APsaA. Preceding the development of these regional independent institutes there were numerous independent institutes in New York City which had flourished, although often in isolation from each other, for many years. These institutes in NYC have certain commonalities and, also, many differences. Many Division 39 members are part of these New York institutes. Many of the independent institutes have taken a thoughtful and theoretically-sound position toward training that is somewhat different from that of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Many, but by no means all, reject the Berlin 1920 model as the best model for analytic training. All of these institutes incorporate certain core standards, e.g. coursework, control cases, a personal analysis. However, many believe psychoanalysis is best served and analysts best trained outside the training analyst system in which the candidate is free to choose his/her analyst (and thereby his/her analysis freed). Additionally, many of the candidates at these institutes are experienced mental health professionals already in analysis and many of the institutes have taken the position that interrupting an analysis in order to be analyzed by a training analyst violates THE cornerstone of psychoanalysis, namely the analytic process. Many have attempted to take a more democratic rather than autocratic approach to analytic training. In January 1999 the Consortium agreed on a Provisitional Draft: Standards of Psychoanalytic Education to be circulated among the Consortium members' constituencies for feedback and revision. Division 39 printed the draft document in the Spring 1999 Psychologist/Psychoanalyst and sent it to many independent institutes for feedback. All feedback from the institutes was very positive about the goal of establishing a National Accrediting Board in Psychoanalysis. Regarding individual feedback, only one individual expressed concern about the need for a National Accrediting Board in Psychoanalysis, and this concern focused mostly on the fact that no provision was made for the recognition of individuals who receive informal or self-directed psychoanalytic training as opposed to institute training. Certainly, this latter point is of great interest to some of our members. Let me clarify that a National Accrediting Board in Psychoanalysis will accredit institutes, not individuals. Individuals are credentialed, which is an entirely different process and does not fall within the Consortium's purview. As psychologists we can be certified as diplomates in psychoanalysis (ABPP). The American Board of Psychoanalysis in Psychology (ABPsaA) administers the examination and it very much allows for analysts trained outside the formal institute system. In the true spirit of Division 39, ABPsaA established guidelines that respect our pluralistic nature. If a National Accrediting Board in Psychoanalysis is established I believe the diplomate in psychoanalysis (ABPP) will be increasingly important for our non-institute trained members to pursue. The leaders of Division 39 worked for years to establish this diplomate in psychoanalysis, dating back to 1983. We are grateful to them, particularly Nat Stockhamer, George Goldman, Ken Isaacs, and Bob Lane, for bringing it to fruition. After receiving feedback from institutes and individual members, The Board of Directors of Division 39 has five main objections to the first provisional draft of the standards document. 1. It includes recommended versus minimal standards and thereby creates a two-tier system. 2. It imposes the APsaA's training analyst model on all other institutes. 3. It gives institutes the right to have only "in-house" analysts serve as their analysts of candidates. 4. It recommends four to five times a week frequency of analysis, with a minimum of three times a week and no mention of analysis at a lesser frequency. 5. It is unnecessarily authoritative and infused with the assumptions and language of the American Psychoanalytic Association. However, the Board strongly supports a National Accrediting Board in Psychoanalysis and to that end Division 39 has offered revisions to the draft which address our concerns. It is our hope to work out a compromise which respects all parties, but which does not impose the thinking of one, over the rest. In that spirit of compromise, the Division has offered revisions which have focused almost exclusively on issues one and two outlined above. All decisions of the Consortium are unanimous; either we find a way to agree or we don't. Division 39 has invited our fellow Consortium members to participate in a Roundtable discussion entitled: The Future of Psychoanalytic Education: Can We All Work Together? at our Spring Meeting in San Francisco. I will chair the Roundtable, with Lew Aron representing the Division of Psychoanalysis; Richard Fox, the American Psychoanalytic Association; Sheila Hafter Gray, the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Robert Wallerstein as discussant. The Roundtable is scheduled for Saturday, April 8, 2000 at 10 AM. I welcome all of you to join us in this discussion. The strength of the Division lies in our diversity and pluralism. It can also make our life as a Division very complicated. Our members are so heterogenous that we come from independent institutes like those mentioned above, institutes of the APsaA, the four independent institutes that have formed the Independent Psychoanalytic Societies (and are members of IPA), NAAP institutes and from no institutes at all. We represent every theoretical framework. Our members are now not just psychologists, but also other mental health professionals. We are faced with guild, interest group and scientific concerns. Sometimes our concerns conflict. Thus we come back to the issue of how to define ourselves. The quote at the beginning of this column gives away my roots as the daughter of an infantry colonel. I offer the quote as an invitation to our members to voice their opinions about the issues I have raised here. Let me ( lbwagner@flash.net ) and the membership, via the Newsletter editor, (MacGroove@aol.com ) know your ideas regarding the Division's identity, our goals, the placement of our resources and energies, and our involvement in the Consortium, particularly the standards document and the issue of accreditation. I look forward to hearing from you. |
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