The question of How to Meet the Need for Change could be seen as a common theme in three completely independent recent committee reports. These reports, examining the current state of psychoanalytic education and research, were presented to the Executive Council and the Board of Professional Standards at the Annual Meeting in May, 1969. Dr. George H. Pollack (Chicago) reported on the Sixty-Fifth Congress on Medical Education of the American Medical Association, which he attended in February, 1969, as the representative of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Dr. Heinz Kohut (Chicago) presented the findings of the Committee on Scientific Activities of the A.Psa.A., and Dr. Sylvan Keiser (New York), reporting as the outgoing Chairman of the Committee on Institutes, recorded the observations he had made during his tenure. All three chairmen offered conclusions and suggestions which are related to each other, and which are of great interest to psychoanalysts everywhere in all areas of professional activity.
Dr. Pollack's report emphasized the tasks confronting the medical community — the need for greater involvement of minority groups, the need for more manpower to accomplish delivery of service, and the call, especially by the students, for focus on human values and changes in curriculum design. Students object to being “… desensitized and isolated, plasticized and manipulated.” They call for a balance between “… scientific excellence and human understanding.” Dr. Pollack stated, “As psychoanalytic educators, researchers and practitioners, we must pay attention to the currents that now involve our universities and medical schools. Some of the concerns, problems and needs for change affect us. We must be alert if we are to continue to progress…”
Speaking for the Committee on Scientific Activities, which was created by Council action in 1966, Dr. Kohut observed that “… All is not … well with ongoing psychoanalytic research and creativity,” and that “only a serious effort will stem the tide of increasing staleness of our research, which is primarily due to an overwhelming therapy-oriented attitude, and secondly, as an outgrowth of the first, to the increasing professionalization of our training institutions.” The committee concluded that there has been a decline in the “… central areas of psychoanalytic investigations concerned with new depth psychological insights about man in health and disease that are obtained in the setting of the psychoanalytic situation itself.”
They examined intensively the factors which might influence the development of the psychoanalytic researcher during the four “crucial periods” of his career: 1) selection for training; 2) training analysis; 3) training at the psychoanalytic institute; 4) post-graduate influences and environment. Three proposals were submitted to Council, a “minimal” one, calling for presentation of the committee's findings at the scientific meetings and in the Journal, and for a selected distribution of their deliberations; an “intermediate” one which would, in addition to the above, establish a standing committee on Scientific Activities, within the framework of the Council, functioning as a series of Study Committees, similar in organization to C. O. P. E.; and a “maximum” one, calling for “… a reorganization of the American Psychoanalytic Association as the embodiment of the tenet that the three major areas with which organized psychoanalysis is concerned — namely, the professional, the educational, and the scientific — should have equal organizational representation.” (The Executive Council adopted the first, or “minimal” proposal.)
Dr. Keiser examined all aspects of Psychoanalytic Education and in his report presented the “… impressions and convictions …” based on .. years of experience from site visits (The Periodic Review Program) and the study of accumulated data. The Institutes were all characterized by the “… great dedication of their faculties to the cause of psychoanalysis.” However, because an Institute “… must be capable of change if it is to be an effective educational instrument for contemporary conditions,” Dr. Keiser emphasized those elements which might contribute adversely to the current needs of psychoanalytic education. He examined the following areas: 1) history and size; 2) ecology; 3) organizational structure; 4) policies on admission and progression (during training and as a potential educator); 4) the supervisory process; and 5) the relationship with the American Psychoanalytic Association as a national organization. The details of the report cannot be recorded here, but its recommendations, directed both to the Institutes and to the A.Psa.A., can be briefly summarized.
For the Institutes, Dr. Keiser's report recommended: a) the need to be alert to the danger of “rigidity” in the composition of the administrative body and faculty; b) advisability of critical review of “early observations” of problem students; c) increased attendance and participation of the educators at the Society meetings, to counteract the “two-class” development, to support their young students in their public presentations, and to encourage creative writing; d) re-examination of the criteria for the selection and assignment
of training analysts and supervising analysts; and e) periodic evaluations by senior students and recent graduates.
The Report recommended the following to the A.Psa.A: a) Institutes should review themselves five years after a site visit; b) two members of the Committee on Institutes might have a “brief encounter” with each Institute within five years of the site visit; c) the Board on Professional Standards should have the right to offer its facilities privately to an Institute when difficulties are apparent; the Institute would retain the privilege of refusing the offer; d) a committee be established to study the data collected from the site visits and possibly to expand the scope of the Periodic Review Program; and f) guidelines for retirement be formulated by the Board on Professional Standards.