Many members of our Association become aware of the work of the Committee on Institutes only when their own institute hosts a site visit from a team of COI members every seven years. The many other duties and activities of the committee are invisible to most members. But they are extensive.
The history of the COI goes back to 1946, when the newly formed Board on Professional Standards first attempted to achieve an ongoing relationship with institutes. A Visiting Committee was created; two years later its successor, the Committee on Institutes, was first appointed. While one function of the COI was to ensure that all approved institutes met the training standards developed by the Board, the committee had other functions as part of its mandate. The Board defined the COI as existing “primarily for the purpose of accumulating observations and making suggestions which would be beneficial to all Institutes and only secondarily as critical inspections of any particular Institute.” The current functioning of the COI is completely in accord with this philosophy.
Site visits continue to be the most visible aspect of the committee's work, but they are only one of several activities it performs. The visits are seen as an essential service to the members of the American and a consultative and collegial activity to help institutes' faculties, leaders, and candidates reflect upon their own programs' accomplishments and problems. The visits also disseminate useful innovations from one institute to others.
Each visit begins months before the visitors actually arrive on site, with collaborative meetings between institute representatives and the site visit team. The institute collects and creates documents about its activities for the site visitors and in that process reflects upon its own programs and policies. After each visit, there is a period of follow-up activity. Thus the total process of collaboration and consultation from start to finish takes place over a year or more.
Additional ongoing consultation and collaboration occurs between the COI and each accredited institute throughout the intervals between site visits. A small liaison subcommittee of two COI members meets at least annually with the leadership of each institute. There are now twenty-nine liaison subcommittees, one for each of our accredited institutes.
Sometimes special liaison arrangements are developed with an institute when special needs arise. These may consist of consultative conferences at our national meetings with representatives of the COI and other committees such as the Committee on Child and Adolescent Analysis (COCAA). These meetings may occur on a single occasion or may be ongoing. In some instances a “mini — site visit” can occur between regularly scheduled visits. This usually consists of two members of the COI making a weekend visit for a particular purpose.
Institutes' leadership, faculty, candidates, or potential candidates often consult about special situations with the chair of the COI. These very helpful encounters, addressing a broad range of local problems, demonstrate how useful a national perspective can be.
Another function assigned to the COI is the review of each new appointment of a training and supervising analyst. Local institutes develop their own regular procedures for determining eligibility and qualifications for these appointments, and they apply them to individual applicants. The COI's task is to ensure that the procedures have been applied and that the recommended applicant meets the nationally agreed-upon standards.
The committee also reviews waiver requests from institutes for specific departures from the BOPS training standards. An increasingly frequent waiver request is for a training analysis to take place on fewer than four separate days of the week. This is termed “condensed analysis” when the requisite number of sessions occurs but there is more than one session per day. The COI has developed guidelines to use in considering these requests. The committee is developing anecdotal data about this procedure and will seek methods to study these and similar issues in more depth.
The committee is now undertaking a major project to develop methods to collect, archive, and analyze the large amount of data it gathers from institutes. The goal is to preserve aggregate information while carefully protecting the confidentiality of institutes, faculty, and candidates. Much wisdom has been lost from the committee's fifty-plus years of experience. We hope that can change soon. Another obligation of the COI is to alert all institutes when the committee discovers a potential problem that could affect each of them or an especially innovative approach that could be of use to everyone. A recent example was the alert about supervision that crossed state lines and how this might affect the licensing status of the involved supervising analysts.
The COI sponsors a Workshop for Directors of Institutes and Educational Committee Chairs. This is the only formal, face-to-face meeting of all these leaders within the American's structure. Recent topics have included the role of empirical research in institutes' curricula, psychotherapy training programs, and issues of certification from educators' points of view.
Members of the COI are appointed by the Chair of the Board, with consultation from the COI chair. The committee includes one member for each institute, assuring wide representation from as many of our institutes and training centers as possible. The COI usually numbers in the low twenties. One member is a candidate, and the committee usually includes a recent graduate as well.
The COI works closely with the Committee on New Training Facilities and the COCAA. A representative from the COCAA is included on each COI site visit, as is a CNTF representative when the institute visited is sponsoring a new facility.
Representatives of the COI are often included on task forces and ad hoc committees of the Board because of the wide national viewpoint our committee members acquire.
The COI is always revising its procedures in an effort to best serve the American's institutes, faculty, candidates, and membership. The committee supports and encourages attitudes and procedures that ensure fairness, objectivity, and devotion to quality psychoanalytic education. We welcome all suggestions and inquiries to aid us in this goal.
Ronald M. Benson, M.D., is a BOPS Fellow and chairs the Committee on Institutes. He is a training and supervising analyst at the Michigan Psychoanalaytic Institute.