To the Editor:
The major thrust of the arguments advanced for favoring a revision of the current procedures and criteria for active membership in the Association appears to turn on the notion that it is imperative to sign up as many graduates of institutes as possible. The fact that a not insignificant number of graduates (whether clustered from a relatively small number of institutes or not) do not apply for certification, and thereby for active membership, is certainly not a matter that the Association can ignore. That would be an absurd oversight. But the rationale seems dubious to me for suggesting that the “solution” to this disturbing phenomenon lies in the removal of the certification qualification from the membership issue. Many of the discussions in this debate include references to those disgruntled graduates who reportedly find it repellent to consider having their analytic work examined once again. However, it is of interest that relatively little, if anything, has been articulated by, let alone solicited of, the candidate and graduate groups, apart from the disinterested sector, concerning the matter. From that perspective, I would like to offer the following.
What will result from passage of any of the proposed revisions in the present procedures? Without doubt, more graduates may be induced to become dues-paying, active members. With equal certainty the Board on Professional Standards will lose a central piece of its authority, that is, to evaluate the analytic competency of individuals and on this basis to determine who may become an active, voting member of this organization. The arguments for change imply that the exercise of such authority by the Board is either irrelevant, or disaffecting, or even self-destructive, if such a procedure results in potential applicants turning away from the organization altogether. But this argument stands or falls on the
estimation of what will ultimately be destroyed most in all of this.
To focus on the increased revenue to the organization, stemming from larger collections of dues, or on the supposedly widened base of support within and for the Association is tempting. The present economic turmoil and a changing social climate add to the already multifold pressures on practicing analysts. But is it sufficient to increase funds and to win friends? Or may we risk losing the baby with the bath-water? I fear the latter may be the likely outcome.
From the perspective of the Association, the problem rests in what kind of organization is desired. The Freudian praxis has come to occupy a central role in American psychiatry, no doubt, and yet it has never commanded an unmitigated popularity; nor will it ever. One goal the Association does and should hold out for itself is to provide forums for educating the interested public and nonmembers. This means to include in its scientific programs discussions and debates about the important questions in our field. These forums and programs should be intended to stimulate interest and to provide information about what we do and what we think about what we do. However, to diminish the seriousness with which the potential active, voting membership is scrutinized for its qualifications will only lead a false strength in numbers.
Why do I say a “false strength”? Because one is made to wonder if the future of analysis in this country—a future which is challenged on many fronts and which demands confrontations with many different kinds of difficulties—is realistically to be thought the primary concern of graduate analysts who find it repugnant or intimidating to meet the requirements of an application procedure that is hardly the most exacting in nature? Or is the organization's prowess to be augmented by those who find it infantilizing or demeaning to be asked to demonstrate adequate clinical skills, not only to the local group whence they come, but also to the national, impartial body of observers?
But more important perhaps from the point of view of those of us who have been and are willing to have our work examined, who do believe that our training, progress, and development as analysts have involved long, costly, hard-won and invaluable attainments, is the question of what sort of organization are we seeking membership in? For us, the existence of the role and authority of the Board to evaluate, to certify for active membership, and to maintain the highest of standards is central in this issue. For without such an entry procedure and a Board empowered to make good on it, membership in the American becomes little more than a ticket for admission into a diluted specialty group. Perhaps more popular but surely less meaningful.
Erik Gann
San Francisco