In May 1998 there was a change in the sponsorship of the Minnesota New Training Facility. The Board on Professional Standards approved the recommendation of the Committee on New Training Facilities (CNTF) that a team of three senior educators, appointed by Donald Rosenblitt, chair of BOPS, work with the analytic community in Minnesota to establish the necessary educational and administrative structures to support the official start of first-year classes in the Twin Cities in September 1999. This committee functions as a sponsoring team, assuming all the responsibilities of a sponsoring institute.
The Minnesota sponsoring team consists of Ralph Engle of Boston (chair), Marvin Margolis of Michigan, former president of the APsaA, and Kenneth Newman, current dean at the Chicago Institute. These three bring to the task a wealth of educational and administrative experience and a working knowledge of the Minnesota group. The sponsoring team is working under the guidance of the CNTF Subcommittee for Minnesota, which is chaired by David Lake from the San Francisco Institute and includes Steven Wein, Michael Harty, and Jane Walvoord (a candidate at the Dallas Institute and currently chair of the Membership Committee of the Affiliates Council of the American). In turn, this CNTF subcommittee works with and reports to the entire CNTF, whose members come from ten institutes, four new training facilities, and one provisional institute. With this wide representation of different institutes, disciplines, and levels of experience, the three groups bring to the Minnesota situation a range of analytic and educational experience that provides for creative flexibility in thinking about educational and administrative matters. Periodically, Rosenblitt is consulted in his role as chair of BOPS, and the Coordinating Committee is kept up to date on all developments. We trust that this will result in the development of an institute that reflects the individual strengths and interests of the local analytic community while staying within the national guidelines established over time by BOPS.
For more than twenty-five years, candidates have traveled from Minnesota to the sponsoring institute in Chicago for their analytic classes. There are now in Minnesota two training analysts, nine other graduates (including a number of potential training analysts), seven advanced candidates, and three candidates in the first years of training in Chicago or Denver. In 1996, the group in Minnesota formed an Institute Planning Committee to work on a plan that would lead to the start of analytic classes in the Twin Cities. For several years, the group has offered a successful psychoanalytic psychotherapy program, resulting in a growing community interest in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic training.
Encouraged by Marvin Margolis, the Minnesota study group applied for and received recognition by the Executive Council as an official society of the American in May 1998. Michael Moore is currently president of the Minnesota Psychoanalytic Society. There is also an active psychoanalytic foundation.
Attendees at bimonthly dinner meetings have included representatives of the Minnesota Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Society for Psychoanalytic Studies (the local branch of Division 39), the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies (an independent institute), the Minnesota Committee on Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work, and the Psychoanalytic Foundation of Minnesota.
Since May 1998, the Minnesota group has been hard at work with members of the sponsoring team and the CNTF subcommittee to develop a structure to support the training in Minnesota. Keith Horton chairs the Education Committee. Admissions, curriculum, facilities, faculty and finance committees are all in place. Institute and society by-laws have been adopted. Policies and procedures for the selection of candidates and review of transfer students have been approved. A committee of training analysts from three different institutes has been appointed to serve as a Training and Supervising Analyst Selection Committee. Richard Ruzumna chairs the committee; Jim Herzog and Suzanne Gassner are members. The clinical work of training analyst applicants is reviewed by two independent analysts before the application comes before this committee.
By December 1998 the Admissions Committee, under the leadership of David Stagner, had accepted nine new candidates; the pool of applicants included psychiatrists, psychologists, and clinical social workers. There is already interest in a future analytic class that may include members of the current psychotherapy training class, midway through its three-year program.
Drawing on the curricula from several institutes, the Curriculum Committee now has in place the outline for a four-year curriculum. Starting in January 1999, psychoanalytic seminars have been offered for applicants accepted to begin the official first-year classes in September. Classes will be held at the Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in Minneapolis, where classrooms are equipped with both audio and video-conferencing capabilities. This will allow the new training facility to supplement local teaching with national educators from around the country. The psychoanalytic library will be supplemented by the HCMC library's computer search and Internet capabilities. A faculty development program is also planned.
There is much excitement in the Twin Cities where an enthusiastic, dedicated group of faculty, candidates, and community members are hard at work on the ongoing development of the Minnesota New Training Facility. If you would like to be involved in the development of this new institute, don't hesitate to contact the Minnesota group, the sponsoring team, the CNTF subcommittee, or me for more information. There is still much work to be done.
In order to meet increasing administrative costs, the American Psychoanalytic Association will charge for continuing professional education credit, beginning with the Eighty-Eighth Annual Meeting. For those who wish to obtain credit for the meeting, a flat fee of $25.00 will be payable on site at the Continuing Education Desk.
Ellen Rowntree, M.D., is chair of the Committee on New Training Facilities. She may be contacted by e-mail at or by telephone at 914-328-5616. For an additional report on developing new analytic institutes, see David Sachs's article on page 15.