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At the end of my first term as APsaA president, on November 25, 2000, in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, I delivered a plenary address titled “The Good Fight: Psychoanalysis in the Age of Managed Care” (Pyles 2003). At that time, I expressed the hope that we would focus our efforts on two major organizational objectives. Coming now to the end of my second term, I have the opportunity to reflect on how we have done.
First, I called upon our association to embrace—fully and forcefully—the tasks of engagement with the world around us: to take on the major political and social threats to our profession and to our patients, to come out from behind our couches and form a network of analysts interacting with the public, with prospective patients, with the media, and with lawmakers at every relevant level of government.
Second, I urged us to turn our gaze inward as well as outward, in order to revisit and reconsider our entrenched habits of governance and education, as well as our attitudes toward analysts outside our association—analysts with whom we share our challenges, our fortunes, and a common fate. With leaner models of governance and a new spirit of collectivism, I hoped, we could confront our changing world with a growing sense of openness to opportunities for growth, a spirit of experimentation, and a commitment to collaboration among us all.
Looking at ourselves today, I am immensely proud of the remarkable advances we have made—and continue to make—regarding our engagement with the world around us. I am enormously proud of our extensive and effective lobbying efforts on behalf of our profession, of our vigorous advocacy with regard to critical social issues, and am deeply encouraged to see the considerable advances we have made in reaching out to the media.