For the past several years, the American Psychoanalytic Association has been caught up in a whirlwind of challenges that has included a difficult lawsuit, the pervasive hostility of third-party payers, and a changing relationship with the International Psychoanalytic Association. Members have had to bear the burden of extra demands on our time, energies, and financial resources, but through it all The American has successfully resisted attempts to compromise the maintenance of its standards.
The linchpin of The American has, after all, been its rigorous maintenance of high standards: activities that have set it apart from all other psychoanalytic organizations and that make membership in it so highly prized. At the present moment in its history, though, I feel serious concern about the renewal of intensifying attacks upon these standards, which we again need to defend.
I believe that the current sponsorship of delinkage of certification from membership by some individuals and affiliate institutes is equivalent to such an attack. From my reading of it, this sponsorship is in large part a derivative of conflict within certain institutes, which is displaced externally onto The American. It foments the dissent and disaffection that have lately been such a regular part of the national psychoanalytic scene—without really addressing the underlying determinants of the conflict. As such, the clamor for delinkage not only weakens our standards, but shows potential for growing and ultimately unraveling the core fiber of The American itself.
“… the clamor for delinkage not only weakens our standards, but shows potential for growing and ultimately unraveling the core fiber of The American itself.”
For example, it has been said that one of the goals of those members of The American who are hoping to separate certification from membership is to encourage more graduates to become involved in the work of The American. Following that line of logic, one could reasonably look for parallel effects, discernible at the affiliate institute/society level, where membership usually is attainable upon graduation. My own observations at the local level over the course of the past 20 years are that graduates who have either made the effort and have achieved certification, or who are working toward it, are much more likely to become and remain involved in the administrative and education functions of the institute and society, to remain identified with the aims of psychoanalysis, and to maintain more active psychoanalytic practices. Though there are some notable exceptions, the majority of those who, for various reasons, choose not to pursue certification, remain peripherally involved organizationally, tend to develop less analytically focused practices, and also tend to withdraw from involvement in the psychoanalytic community relatively early in their graduate careers. This represents a significant loss locally, as it does nationally, of the solidarity and strength of our professional associations.
My observations have left me skeptical, therefore, that automatic membership in The American upon graduation would increase involvement, as has been postulated. In my view, this apparent goal of the advocates of delinkage is a thin disguise behind which operate various coalitions—some perhaps unwitting—of strong destructive forces aimed at undermining the standard-setting functions of the Board on Professional Standards. Given the current pace of these forces, I fear for the survival of the structure of The American Psychoanalytic Association itself.
In the present charged atmosphere of rapid change, attacks from many quarters, and intensified defensiveness from within and without the association, I strongly oppose efforts to delink certification from active membership. I instead favor a plan of careful study by a blue-ribbon committee of The American of all affiliate institutes/societies regarding patterns of career development and certification among graduates. The aim of such a study would be to identify contributing and causative factors both among those institutes whose graduates have a low rate of applying regularly for certification and among those graduates of all institutes who try but fail to achieve certification. It seems to me that only with such data in hand can we expect accurately and fully to assess the certification/membership issues that face us. We could then rationally take the next step of making thoughtful recommendations for dealing with the various components of the conflict. Such recommendations might include changes in the certification procedures or alteration of the certification requirement for membership—as well as countless other, unnamed possibilities.