With the May meetings, the ranks of the APsaA have swelled to include 324 Associate Members. This new class of membership, instituted at the December meetings of 1972, providing for full participation except voting privileges, is offered to all graduates of approved institutes and training centers.
Along with other new policies and procedures, Associate membership is designed to increase participation of psychoanalysts in the APsaA. Because a minimum of two years after graduation was required for admission to Active (full) membership, Associate membership was instituted to cover the transition period. A provision was made for extension of the three-year term in cases where “satisfaction of the requirements for Active Membership in the Association is imminent.”
The first considerable success of Associate membership must be measured not only in the numbers added to the ranks. Sixteen Associate Members are serving on nine committees and boards of the APsaA and 37 participated in the May meetings in Denver. For those who wish to be involved in the APsaA and its activities, Associate membership offers a valued step. “I'm personally delighted to be an Associate Member” one colleague wrote recently. Another Associate Member put it this way: “I see myself as a psychoanalyst and I want to be active in the major psychoanalytic organization in the U.S.”
Although a large number have accepted the chance for partial membership, records of the Central Office of the APsaA indicate that 550 of 874 eligible colleagues have not availed themselves of the opportunity to become Associate Members. “Most who have not applied for membership do not become involved in other organizations either,” writes one Associate Member. Another, however, writes that “many colleagues have not applied for Associate membership because of the second class implications.”
There are problems ahead for Associate membership. A considerable number of those who have become Associate Members have no interest in the time-consuming procedure involved in meeting the requirements for Active membership. One analyst, for instance, described himself as “a little undone to be told that after waiting for two years to get ‘a little experience,’ I then had to write a summary of each of my four control cases…. My attitude was pretty much ‘to hell with it’ and I did nothing about it until this strange offer came from the American Psychoanalytic about a year ago offering me a membership.” Another Associate Member, who holds a high academic post, writes: “… I did not intend to apply for membership in the American Psychoanalytic Association when I completed my training … my reservations about the membership in the American Psychoanalytic had to do with a kind of professional identity—the fact that my principal identity is that of an academician who happens to be a psychoanalyst. It has always seemed to me that the American Psychoanalytic Association defines a psychoanalyst as… one… who spends a majority of his time and professional effort in private psychoanalytic practice…. That is an opinion held by many psychoanalysts who are full time academicians…. However, when Associate membership became available, the fact that it did not require a great deal of effort to apply … was of some interest.”
To hold firm to the present course means to lose those analysts in two years who would like to take part in the APsaA but cannot or will not apply for Active membership. A second course would be to extend Associate membership from three years to permanent tenure. This risks a run on Associate membership with fewer applying for Active membership. A third alternative, which finds favor among many Associate Members, including those who intend to apply for Active membership, is to offer Active membership on the basis of graduation from an approved Institute or Training Center, as Associate membership is offered now. Such a procedure would require that the American, be more active in enforcing high standards for graduation. In addition, a certification procedure could be offered for those who wish to qualify further as specialists or as teachers of analysis.
Associate membership highlights the familiar problem of where to draw the line: for exclusion or for inclusion.
Anton O. Kris, M.D.