The Committee on New Training Facilities (CNTF) is one of the standing committees of the Board on Professional Standards. It was formed in 1953 when the Committee on Institutes decided that two committees were needed: one to work with established institutes and one to deal with the establishment of new institutes.
At that time, several new training centers were being anticipated, planned or actually getting started. CNTF was to represent the Board and the Association by lending the counsel of experienced analytic educators to these early developments. An important principle had already been enunciated: psychoanalytic training was the function of an institute and not of an individual. It followed from this that new institutes would come into being through the sponsorship of existing institutes. The sponsoring institute undertook to train and endorse the training analyst(s) who would be analyzing candidates in the new community. These were crucial appointments, and the Board required that CNTF make its own evaluation of these analysts and submit that evaluation for the approval of the Board.
In the early stages, candidates in the new center would be selected by the sponsoring institute, analyzed by the geographic rule training analysts, commute to the sponsoring institute for classes and supervision, be evaluated in their progression, and ultimately graduated by the sponsoring institute.
It was CNTF's job first to ensure that the training received by the candidates in the new facility was in every respect equal to that given by the sponsoring institute to its own local candidates. Another set of functions gradually became indicated. CNTF was also to help in the process whereby the training analysts in the new facility, as well as the other analysts who would be joining them, had an opportunity to learn how to conduct a quality analytic training program which would ultimately function independently.
In this, CNTF joined with the sponsoring institute in working out ways for the future institute faculty to get practical experience in every aspect of institute work.
For many years the CNTF has divided itself into a series of sub-committees. These sub-committees would meet semi-annually with (a) representative analysts who wanted to begin planning for the establishment of an institute, (b) representatives from the sponsoring institute and the geographic rule training analysts, and (c) representatives of the provisional institutes. Provisional Institutes are institutes which have been judged ready by themselves, their sponsors and CNTF to be ready to function independently of the sponsoring institute. There follows a period during which CNTF monitors their progress until the Committee recommends to the Board full independent status.
It became apparent that for a variety of reasons (population is one of the most significant) not all training facilities develop at the same rate. CNTF has recently secured the Board's approval to consider certain analytic training centers as “branches” or “extensions” of existing institutes. For example, a community which has a limited number of training analysts, or candidates, or both, and in which there seems no immediate prospect of an increase in these components, is effectively a part of the sponsoring institute and is now considered as such. CNTF has assured the several facilities in this category of its continued interest and its eagerness to establish regular consultation whenever more analysts or more candidates make planning for future independent functioning a likely possibility.
There is another route to the establishment of a new institute. This is in consequence of a split within an existing institute. At one time the Board held that in such a circumstance, both groups should become provisional institutes, but this has not always been obtained.
At the present time CNTF is directly concerned with four provisional institutes, Cincinnati, Houston-Galveston, P.I.N.E., and San Diego. There are two long-established training facilities which might be categorized as “extensions”, Miami-Baltimore and Columbia-Emory, and because of the large number of candidates and training analysts, CNTF has elected to maintain a close association with them. There are also CNTF sub-committees assigned to the activities of New York-Westchester and Washington-Virginia. The last two represent a recent trend to establish new training facilities in more suburban or ex-urban locations and CNTF is seeking to learn more of the special ecological circumstances of such phenomena.
In some recent meetings, CNTF has undertaken to re-evaluate its policies and procedures, both in regard to site visiting and in regard to the functioning of its sub-committees.
The Committee has acted to increase the site visiting so that a new facility will be site visited prior to its being recommended for provisional status, again a year after provisional status has been accorded and regularly thereafter until independent status is reached. Visits to provisional institutes will include a member of the Committee on Institutes so that there will be within that Committee someone who already has some working knowledge of the new institute when the Committee on Institutes begins its relationship to that facility.
Along with the increase in site visits CNTF wishes to increase. the breadth of its contact with the new facilities at the annual meetings, and is planning to invite more of the local training analysts to meet with the sub-committee for ongoing discussion of both local and general issues of analytic education.
The aim is to establish with the new facilities and/or with their sponsoring institutes an ongoing, mutual process of study, consultation and assessment which leads ultimately to the accreditation of new institutes of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
Laurence B. Hall
Chairman