This is not Camelot. We are facing difficult times and cannot delude ourselves that the gap between the elite and the common folk does not exist in The American, whatever form it might take. I intend in my term as president to take very seriously the hopes, the trust, and the confidence of members that their needs will be addressed, their will respected.
My election over two years ago took place as delinkage was debated, and as the power that members should have in The American, as well as their expectations of the organization, was legitimized by ballot. That was a time of discord, heightened tensions, and anxiety about the outcome of that change. We have by now accepted and metabolized what once appeared dangerous, and have moved to further empower and serve the practicing analysts whose voices are the chorus of American psychoanalysis. They make up this organization.
We must now work together to expand the large area of common ground that exists between the fissures that have again developed in our organization. Originally the chasm yawned between the certified and the uncertified, but today similar rifts can be detected along a number of fault lines: Board vs. Council; members of CAPS groups vs. the uninvited; writers-thinkers vs.
practitioners; training analysts vs. faculty; CCRI vs. CPR; attendees at small conferences and parties vs. the excluded; and young, often HMO-involved practitioners vs. established analysts.
These polarizations erode our capacity to respect ourselves and to feel at home in The American. In addition, divisions this intense preclude solutions that all can feel are fair, and divert us from more pressing concerns. We need to recruit candidates and stabilize our institutes while at the same time supporting our societies and their members. We need also to defend and promote psychoanalysis in the media and in the health care arena, and to protect and affirm the very essence of psychoanalysis: its intimacy and confidentiality in the context of a freely made commitment, by two persons, to the exploration of the roots of emotional disability, and to its alleviation.
The movement of the last few years has placed a great deal of trust in the capacities and commitment of our graduates to find a path; it found inspiration and strength in the diversity we not only face, but also seek. What might offhandedly be dismissed as the narcissism of small differences reflects, I believe, our very human need to find something larger than ourselves in The American, in the practice of psychoanalysis, and in the protection of both. What we need now are new, mediating voices and strategies to bring us together. The most significant role for the president now, and it is an active one, is to listen to members and articulate priorities. While the focus on health care policy poses a crisis of legitimacy for us as analysts, it is a challenge that demands that we live, free of calumny or rumormongering, and respectful of one another, with ambiguity, uncertainty, and disagreement. In the process we will find ways to deescalate tensions and develop mutual understanding.