An external credentialing agency is vitally needed, because our field must have a generally accepted set of minimal standards by which to judge the adequacy of psychoanalytic training.
So-called psychoanalytic institutes are proliferating at a rapid rate. In New York State alone, there are currently more than fifty-eight self-designated psychoanalytic institutes. The public has no way to determine which training programs are adequate and which are bogus. The field is in a position analogous to that of medicine seventy years ago, before the Flexner Report, when medical diplomas could be bought from diploma mills.
Moreover, we have been given to understand by informed observers in Washington that, continuing our current stance of opposing the application of the American Board for Accreditation in Psychoanalysis of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (ABAP/NAAP) to be the national accrediting body in psychoanalysis while offering no positive proposal for an alternative organization, damages our credibility. In the absence of any generally acceptable alternative, the Committee on Recognition of Post-Secondary Accreditation and the U. S. Department of Education, the two national accrediting bodies, will eventually accede to repeated applications by NAAP and award it recognition. If NAAP gains recognition as a national accrediting body, psychoanalysis will be redefined in terms of NAAP's totally inadequate standards, as a therapy that can be conducted once a week by individuals with no graduate degree, no mental health background, and little, if any, clinical training.
To purvey falsely another modality of psychotherapy as though it were psychoanalysis, and represent those trainees as psychoanalysts who practice psychoanalysis, would put the unsuspecting public at considerable risk of dangerously incompetent evaluation and treatment. Regardless of whatever organization may later be also recognized, this lowest common denominator will be perceived by the public, lay and professional, as representing psychoanalysis. Analogous to Gresham's Law of bad money driving out good, when the profession is so devalued, bad therapists will drive out good ones.
Were The American to go it alone and set up an independent accrediting body with the training standards of The American, the other members of the Psychoanalytic Consortium would not only oppose it as representing only a minority of the psychoanalytic community, resulting in a serious disruption of the Consortium, but would, no doubt, set up a competing accrediting body with their own standards. The stage would then be set for NAAP or a similar organization to also seek recognition with the credible claim that, since there are no standards generally accepted by the national psychoanalytic community, their standards also deserve recognition. Thus, going it alone would increase the likelihood of NAAP obtaining recognition, with the disastrous consequences described above. Only a joint Consortium-sponsored effort will provide a generally accepted national “floor” of minimum standards that would preclude the recognition of NAAP-like organizations. A jointly sponsored accrediting organization could have standards generally equivalent to those of The American, with the exception of a three-time-per-week frequency of analysis rather than four, and a requirement of two supervised cases instead of three. The IPA requires two supervised cases, and we belong to that organization, although its standard is lower than ours.
Our own internal standards would be guaranteed against any erosion by a requirement that any institute seeking accreditation that is affiliated with a national psychoanalytic organization (such as The American) must first meet the standards of that organization to be eligible to apply.
An added bonus accruing from an accrediting organization that is recognized by the Department of Education is the availability to students of such accredited institutes of low-cost loans up to $25,000 per student. In these days of diminished income in our field that increases the hardship of expensive psychoanalytic training, such loans would greatly benefit students, especially those who would otherwise be unable to finance their training.
By taking a leadership role in such an accrediting organization, The American would greatly increase its influence on psychoanalytic education. Certainly, the participation of high-quality medical schools, such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Tulane, in accrediting organizations along with schools that have lower standards has not eroded their standards. Instead, they have acted as role models to lesser training centers, stimulating emulation of their excellent programs. Similarly, The American would be in a position to educate the rest of the psychoanalytic community on the advantages of our higher standards and through such education to encourage upgrading minimal standards to optimal ones.
The Consortium consists of representatives of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Division of Psychoanalysis (#39) of the American Psychological Association, and the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (affiliated with the National Federation of Societies for Clinical Social Work).