In 1973 HEW issued a report entitled “Records, Computers, and the Rights of Citizens” defining the relationship between personal privacy and record keeping. The report established the right of an individual to decide what the contents of a record kept on him will be, and what disclosures and use will be made of the identifiable information in the record.
The growing consumer-advocacy movement received further legal recognition in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, sponsored by Senator James Buckley of New York. The bill, passed by Congress in August 1974, was to become effective November 19, 1974. It provided children and their parents access to their school records. Only as the effective date of the law neared did college and university administrators become aware that its provisions applied to them as well, and they reacted intensely to the threatened breach of the confidentiality of their record-keeping systems and letters of reference. The training systems of psychoanalytic institutes seemed similarly threatened.
As a result of the intensive lobbying efforts made on behalf of the colleges, the law was amended in the last hours of the 93rd Congress. The provisions of the revised Buckley Act apply only to those institutions which receive funds administered by the Office of Education, which is the major component of the Division of Education (the “E” of HEW). The Buckley Act applies only to those institutes which are administratively closely allied to a university or college which receives funds from the OE. Analytic institutes receiving funds from NIMH or NIH are not affected. It seems likely, therefore, that the Buckley rules apply to only two of our university-affiliated institutes.
For those institutes to whom the Buckley Law does apply, all letters of recommendation made before January 1, 1975 are exempt from access to students; applicants for admission may waive their right to future access to letters of recommendation (enabling more “effective” letters of recommendation); private notes of teachers are exempt from access; rejected applicants for admission are not considered “students” and therefore do not have access to their records; and psychiatric records may be accessible to a professional person designated by the student. Otherwise, a student may request access to his educational records.
Even though the Buckley Law does not apply to most psychoanalytic institutes, an interesting development has surfaced. There have been spontaneous moves by supervising analysts to share their reports with the supervisee before the reports are submitted to the institutes. One institute requires the signature of a trainee attesting to his having read the supervisor's report before it will be accepted by the director. Similarly there is evidence of an increasing classroom exchange of opinions and reactions between candidates and teachers.
These developments were reviewed and discussed during the April 29, 1975 meeting of the Joint Ad Hoc Committee on Confidentiality in Los Angeles, where the important distinctions between the need for privacy of the analysand-analyst relationship in comparison with the desirability of openness between two colleagues in the supervisee-supervisor relationship were elaborated. It was further emphasized in these discussions that openness between teacher and student fosters the educational as well as the analytic process.
Although the Buckley Law has not had the specific impact on psychoanalytic training programs that was feared in late 1974, it seems to reflect a trend in consumer advocacy that may affect positively the evolving relationships between psychoanalytic candidates and their teachers.
Jerome S. Beigler, M.D.
Chairman
Committee on Confidentiality