Rosenblitt: Larry, congratulations on your election as chair of the Board on Professional Standards.
Chalfin: Thank you, Don.
Rosenblitt: I know that you have given much thought to clarifying the role of the Board within our organization. How do you conceptualize that role in the current period?
Chalfin: The Board has the responsibility for articulating and maintaining principles, procedures, and standards for the education of candidates. The Board works closely with our institutes to ensure that psychoanalytic education within an institute of The American provides a strong basis for the lifelong professional maturation of our graduates. The future of psychoanalysis depends on the most thoughtful nurturing of the idealism and search for truth that motivates gifted people from diverse backgrounds to “train” at our institutes. The Boards “constituency” consists of the present generation of psychoanalytic patients and future generations of candidates and graduates. It is important that this constituency be represented when issues are engaged. It is best represented when standards are maintained.
Rosenblitt: When you refer to the future of psychoanalysis, you raise an issue that is of particular concern to all of us these days. In a statement to the members last year, you wrote: “Many challenges and issues confront psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic education today; practice concerns, external credentialing, the development of new training opportunities, new categories of nonwaivered candidates.” Larry, what is the special role of the Board as The American responds to challenges such as these?
Chalfin: I believe the Board has the responsibility, now more than ever, to facilitate productive change. It should also protect standards. These aims need not be incompatible. The chair functions to assist the Board in achieving this balance. As we move into uncharted waters, the task is particularly complicated. Fortunately, I am the beneficiary of the Boards democratization under Marvin Margolis. This momentum for increasing inclusiveness and openness, which Marv fostered with such consummate skill, and which I will continue to support, will facilitate dialogue. Broader representation in its activities will assist the Board in these difficult times. The Fellows of the Board have an enormous responsibility, not always fully appreciated, for making decisions about education and, hence, the future of psychoanalysis. Their judgments decide the future of our profession, since the candidates we train become the practitioners of the next generation. Fellows therefore need to be as fully informed as possible. Marv, Bernie Pacella, and Judy Schachter have all been helpful in preparing me over the past year.
The Board and its chair also have the important responsibility of working collaboratively with the president of The American and with the Executive Council. At present this collaboration includes, “internally,” the ongoing study of the structure of our organization, and, “externally,” our efforts to define and secure a place for us in the mental health environment as the debate on health care progresses.
Rosenblitt: Larry, you will be stepping down from your position as chair of the Boards Committee on Institutes. How has your experience on COI affected your vision of what you would like to accomplish on the Board?
Chalfin: My experience with COI has broadened my appreciation of organizations, psychoanalytic organizations in particular. I believe this experience will help me to value the differing backgrounds and perspectives of our component institutes. All institutes manifest patterns seen in organizations more generally; they evolve, show strains, decline, and recover. Each is the product of its history as well as its efforts to build upon and transcend that history. These organizational concerns are as important as our educational ideals, as they have an impact on educational processes and ambience. Each of our institutes has its own informing structures that must be understood and respected. It is important to stress that there are many educational approaches that can achieve the educational standards of The American. Working with COI, I have learned time and again that it is imperative to facilitate solutions to the problems and needs for change that face our institutes, rather than to add encumbrances.
Rosenblitt: Can you describe in greater detail the special role of the Board with regard to the current issues facing The American?
Chalfin: We all know of the manifold pressures and changes we as an organization are responding to. Although there may be opportunities as well as risks in these changes, there is always the possibility that positions which otherwise have much to recommend them would have an unanticipated negative impact on analytic education and the principles and standards that sustain it. For example, inclusion of coverage in a national health program might seriously threaten our ability to conduct analyses and would thereby threaten the survival of psychoanalytic education and of our institutes. Similar questions are raised by external credentialing and by our participation in alliances with analytic organizations that maintain standards different from ours. It is the Boards responsibility to evaluate and discuss these issues and to ensure the integrity of analytic education currently and in the future.
For example, The American is one of many organizations that lay claim to the professional designation “psychoanalyst.” However, our individuating feature is the high quality we demand of ourselves and of our students. Other analytic organizations may have many more members or
more political clout, but what makes us distinctive is more distinguished contributors, exciting scientific meetings, our insistence on continuing research into educational matters, and—although many people complain about it—the most thoughtful and rigorous evaluation of institutes and graduates. In fact, the emphasis on standards is what really distinguishes us. We think about who and how we train because we regard the many patients who will be cared for by our candidates and graduates.
Consider the question of external credentialing. At present there is a ground swell of analytic organizations gathering together, marshaling their forces to protect their interests in the health care field. The idea is that the more there are of us who call ourselves analysts, the more we can demand. Regrettably, national policies for credentialing disciplines are necessarily broad-based and watered down. A government agency assigned to credential a group has neither the inclination nor the ability to assess one groups competence over another's. One “analyst” is as good as another. How is the public to distinguish the one from the other? However, as long as we maintain the standards for our own credentialing, and as long as these standards of quality remain widely known, the present generation of knowledgeable patients and the future generation of talented candidates will know where to go. If we jump at the offer and accept a watering-down for whatever immediate advantage it might give us, we may very well be sacrificing, however inadvertently, our individuality, our enterprise, and our future. The American must think of the present needs of the profession, but it must also take a longer view of things.
Rosenblitt: I understand you to be saying that you regard the future as the Boards constituency.
Chalfin: Well, naturally, I think the future is of interest to all parts of The American, but depending on its particular function and viewpoint, each
segment is going to approach the future somewhat differently. Although disagreements can become somewhat intense at times, this diversity is not a liability to the Association; it's an asset. I don't believe there are fundamental differences in goals within The American—just different areas of responsibility. Sometimes these seem incompatible, but finding solutions that acknowledge our various interests is essential.
That is why careful discussion of all the issues facing us, facilitation of necessary change and innovation, and protection of standards are the cornerstones of the leadership I hope to provide the Board and, through it, the Association. This goes back to what I was saying about the need for balance. In anxious times, any organization is at risk of being pressured into steps that are perhaps too hasty. But because education is concerned with the long range, the Board can help us avoid this danger, and help us respond in a measured way that does not polarize the organization.
Rosenblitt: Can you perhaps illustrate how the Board can be innovative and facilitative, while also maintaining standards?
Chalfin: Here is one illustration. There are regions of the country where institutes have a diminishing number of candidates and are unable to start a new class every year. It may be possible for several of these institutes to join efforts and develop a regionally coordinated curriculum. This would enable candidates to begin the didactic part of their analytic education. It might also lead to an enriched intellectual and collegial experience and enhance the value of being in The American. One of the most valuable things The American does for its members is to bring people together.
In a similar vein, the Board through its committees can contribute to a solution of our practice concerns by bringing analysts together, on a national basis, in workshops to share and discuss their experiences in developing analytic treatments. There are always many analysts, regardless of seniority and status, who have satisfying analytic practices, and often this relates to their individual understanding of case development.
Rosenblitt: You obviously have brought a great deal of seasoned thoughtfulness to your position. Could you tell us something of the path you have traveled in your own development?
Chalfin: In the most general way, I started with the motivation common to all of us: a curiosity about the complexities of life, a search for truth, and a belief in the unique passions and potentialities of each individual that can be freed by psychoanalysis. These interests were fostered by the ambience in my institute, NYU, which had great respect for the education and development of its candidates. My institute provided an opportunity to teach and participate in the life of the institute at an early stage in career development, which was not so common back then.
Rosenblitt: And what are some of the changes you have seen?
Chalfin: Psychoanalysis has become more open, theoretically better balanced, and mature. There has been a decrease in dogma as well as in the authoritarian stance taken by analysts and analytic teachers. Our institutes are less stratified, and we generally convey a more inquiring attitude, with a greater emphasis on learning than on the authoritarian passing down of knowledge. Our students and faculty are more inquiring, and education is more fun. The emphasis is more on education than on training, on “principles” than on “standards.” All of this has enriched our science and our educational processes.
Rosenblitt: Has this change created any new challenges for the Board?
Chalfin: The realities of current professional life often make it difficult for candidates to attain a synchrony between, and an immersion in, the various aspects of the learning experience. This is a substantial problem that we need to consider carefully. In general, there are more external pressures today that affect psychoanalytic education.
I have come to understand that all our educational efforts are subject to processes of growth and development. There is much still to be learned about an optimal educational approach. Psychoanalysts are always in the process of “becoming,” and our profession is always in the process of advancing. The centrality of the Board in achieving these advances is a vital element of The American.
Rosenblitt: Today we are seeing the increasing demedicalization of psychoanalysis. How important do you feel it is for The American to support a strong medical component within psychoanalysis?
Chalfin: I come from an institute with a tradition of close involvement with residency training. My experience with residents in psychiatry has convinced me of the importance of a mutually enriching alliance with psychiatry even as we extend our reach into clinical psychology, clinical social work, and other mental health professions. Discoveries about the mind require an active alliance between biology, psychology, and the social sciences. Our future depends on an openness to these fields. Most important, our future requires that our science and our treatment be conveyed with a heavy admixture of humanism.
Rosenblitt: Thank you, Larry. The American and the Board are fortunate to have you as chair at this crucial moment in our history.