I believe that full membership in the American Psychoanalytic Association should be freed from its dependence on certification for the sake of the organization's continued health and growth. Certification should certainly be retained, as it is complementary to membership, but, since the two address different aspects of our Association, they should be independent of each other.
The purpose of a scientific society is to promote the free exchange of scientific ideas and experience and to maintain an organization to foster such activities. Such a society should be open to all those of good character who qualify by virtue of their education and training. Only by encouraging the scientific and organizational participation of all those who are qualified is the growth of a science optimally stimulated.
The purpose of a certification procedure is to verify and warrant the particular professional skill and competence of a practitioner. The ultimate goal of a certifying body is to promote high standards of care and thus benefit the public. It is clear that both membership and certification serve laudable goals, but entirely different ones. It is difficult enough when a single organization, such as ours, attempts to serve both as a scientific body with a membership and as a certifying body. To add to these difficulties by artificially coupling the two is to impede the proper functioning of both.
“The logical answer to any doubts about the level of training standards is more stringent oversight of individual institutes, rather than the current, inappropriate requirement for certification.”
The original Moore Committee, which devised our current procedures in 1975, was quite aware of the grave disadvantages of melding certification and membership. For this reason, they changed the previous arrangement whereby examination of professional skill was an integral part of membership application to one where certification was a clearly articulated separate procedure, though still required for full membership. The Committee explicitly stated that it viewed the dependence of membership on certification as an interim state, not as a preferred condition; it expected the two eventually to become completely separated from and independent of each other. For the past 13 years, this process of separation has been stalled.
There is a widespread perception among recent graduates that the certification requirement for membership represents an unwarranted and arbitrary scrutiny of their credentials by an aging power elite more concerned with imposing conformity than with fostering scientific growth and organizational vigor. Whether or not it is correct, this perception is pervasive and is exacting a heavy toll on our Association. The average age of our members ominously continues to increase, reflecting the discouragement of our valuable youth.
Institute educators, as well as recent graduates, perceive the current certification requirement as an implicit denigration of the ability of institutes to maintain adequate standards of education on their own. Why, they ask, does the Association accredit and monitor institutes, when it does not then trust these Institutes to determine the adequacy of their graduates? The logical answer to any doubts about the level of training standards is more stringent oversight of individual institutes, rather than the current, inappropriate requirement for certification.
Those who oppose delinkage prophesy that it will promote a deterioration of standards, that the Association will become overrun by hordes of inadequately trained members, who will then, by imposing their will, scrap the careful safeguards of standards maintained by the Board on Professional Standards. Such anxiety is groundless. The proposed change would retain the requirement of certification for all officers of the Association, as well as for all Training and Supervising Analysts. Moreover, any future changes affecting training standards and policies would require a two-thirds vote. Currently about 80% of all applicants are eventually certified. Even were the remaining 20% all to be inadequately trained and even if they then all were to vote en bloc—both highly unlikely assumptions—it is hard to see how they could subvert the Association by mustering a two-thirds vote.
With delinkage, certification would be freed from its currently perceived demeaning role of providing a “kosher” stamp for graduates aspiring to membership. Instead, it would assume its rightful significance as a mark of special distinction, analogous to certification by a specialty board. Graduates would likely pursue it as a prestigious achievement, rather than regard it as an onerous burden. Both membership and certification would thus benefit from the dissolution of their unnatural coupling, which represents a developmental arrest in our organization.