The primary concern of the Board on Professional Standards and its committees is the education of candidates. As knowledge and experience accumulate, our educational practices and procedures should undergo constant review at all levels of our organization. Psychoanalytic education is better today than when I was a candidate thirty years ago, a maturation that has come from increasing awareness of the problems inherent in teaching candidates and in learning to become a psychoanalyst. I think that we are better able now to build upon the considerable strengths and talents of our candidates, while relying on them to provide feedback regarding our procedures. Psychoanalytic education has evolved into a mutual and cooperative effort between teacher and student, thereby modeling for our students the attitudes and values of the analytic situation.
I am convinced of the value of a committed group of educators making an open effort to grapple with the many aspects of our educational process. In my own institute as an educator and administrator, and as chair of the Committee on Institutes, I have seen the benefits of an ongoing review both of general principles and of the situation of a given candidate. Such efforts often yield new insights and creative approaches. The Board, too, needs continually to examine and evaluate its procedures, with an eye toward finding better solutions to educational problems.
The changing environment for psychoanalysis creates pressures for change that must be acknowledged and considered in determining how our procedures can best meet the high educational standards we uphold. Notable developments in this regard include reduced possibilities for clinical immersion, so crucial to the development of candidates, and the difficulty of maintaining a psychoanalytic practice sufficient to sustain one's analytic identity. The recent broadening of eligibility criteria for training also has implications for our standards. BOPS Secretary Donald Rosenblitt and I plan to bring some initiatives to the Board that will contribute to the ongoing review of our procedures. We hope that the ensuing deliberations will lead to a further understanding of contemporary problems, and we expect that the Board will continue its tradition of finding creative solutions to vexing problems.
As we work toward the refinement of our educational standards, we are also completing the periodic task of reviewing and codifying the standards as they currently exist. An ad hoc Board committee charged with reviewing the published standards is at present preparing an initial draft that should soon be available to institute education committees for review and comment.
In the next few years, several particularly important issues will be coming up for consideration within our organization. These issues will require patience, tolerance for diversity of opinion, and the provision of adequate, nonpoliticized forums if our response is to be measured and wise.
One of these issues is the question of external credentialing—yes or no, and if yes, what, where, and how. All of the bodies of the organization will have to debate and further clarify the rationale for credentialing beyond the de facto credentialing the organization currently conducts through the Board's sanctioning and monitoring of institutes. Those of us who have devoted time to the study of this issue are aware of its unusual complexity. Because whatever path we choose is likely to have important implications for the character of psychoanalytic education and practice, it is vital that our organization clarify and articulate aspects of our collective vision of what psychoanalysis is and where we want it to go. The framing of this vision is a necessary first step that will guide us in sorting through the many aspects of the external credentialing issue and in making a thoughtful decision. Such a clarification of vision and principles will begin with the Executive Committee and will undergo refinement and clarification in Board and Council, in the committees of both those bodies, and in our institutes and societies.
Since we began our exploration of external credentialing several years ago, our understanding of the issues has advanced considerably. As an illustration, a concern about maintaining eligibility for third-party reimbursement was important at the outset in motivating societies and institutes to support the exploration of this issue. We now know that it is unlikely that external credentialing will affect such eligibility, since the two national bodies involved—the Committee on Recognition of Postsecondary Accreditation (CORPA), a private body, and the U.S. Department of Education—accredit institutions rather than individuals. Additionally, the national credentialing organizations, and the process of credentialing itself, are quite different from what pertained when The American last seriously explored this issue some fifteen years ago.
External credentialing is an issue over which there will be strong differences. These need to be articulated and understood by our members, and considered in the context of the vision, principles, and standards of our organization, before decisions are reached. Diversity of opinion should not be read as divisiveness within the organization, but rather as the reflection of different concerns and constituencies. The political process in truly democratic organizations requires that all constituencies be heard so that consensual solutions to common problems can be reached. Once the heat of the moment passes, we can generally see the value of what has been achieved and can renew our determination to work together for further development.
Don and I will be contacting each institute to discuss these questions with local leaders. As we become better informed about local perspectives, we will be better able to assist the Board in the coming years.