The new Committee on Certification, chaired by Dr. Justin Krent, has been functioning since May, 1977. It has met twice and has had the opportunity to evaluate several series of applications for certification in psychoanalysis, and to start its own inquiry into and assessment of the current application procedure. Although he noted that the current method has been worked on and worked out carefully by previous membership committees, Dr. Krent feels it is the current committee's responsibility to consider the many pertinent questions raised by the membership about the certification process.
Some have questioned the advisability of relying on written case reports and have suggested offering instead a written examination testing the applicant's theoretical knowledge and his other responses to particular clinical situations. Thus far the committee has judged that the written reports of the candidate's case experience during training with the comments of his institute and his supervisors constitute the best “examination” to test this essential question: what is the applicant's understanding of analytic theory and the analytic process and his ability to conduct completed analyses. The committee needs to be able to follow the ways an applicant permits the transference to emerge, and how he reacts to the pressures of the transference and facilitates its resolution. The written case report gives an applicant the best opportunity to demonstrate this. Some have raised the question of limiting the reports to just two or three training cases instead of all. The committee feels that it is important to know and understand the candidate's disappointments as well as his achievements and progress in training. Further, this provides the committee with an overview of the training process which can be the source of constructive feedback from the committee to the institute. Conversely, discussions with institute representatives about applications help the committee evaluate its own work, and the assumptions it makes, as well as the effect its observation has on training procedures.
Some members have been concerned about the effect of an applicant's ability to write on his being certified. Dr. Krent notes that rarely have they received extremely poorly written writeups, and that poor literary style may reflect poor analytic work. Deferred applications often reflect some failure to demonstrate adequately the presence of a psychoanalytic process. Some deferred applications would have been helped by documenting more, through relevant clinical material, the theoretical and clinical assumptions made, the interpretations given and the clinical improvements in the patient. More abstract and generalized discussions tend to make it difficult for the committee to get a good sense of the patient. Another difficulty noted was that some reports did not give enough information about important relationships of the patient either from the genetic point of view or from the point of view of current day to day reality. It was felt that those who primarily assembled the periodic reports required by their institute did not present an integrated account of an analysis.
The committee is reinstituting a “reject” category. This will be used for those few applicants thought to have little chance to be certified, although they have the right to reapply. This is considered to be a more candid approach in these few instances. Under consideration by the committee is the idea of using an oral examination in some cases to clarify ambiguities in the application. At the same time, this would be an opportunity for the committee to test the solidity of the assumptions made on the basis of the written report. Finally, it has been stated that this evaluation only tests the applicant's ability to do analysis at the time of graduation. This limitation may be met in part by asking those who apply much later to submit examples of their current analytic work.