You could have heard a pin drop. Thirty-one analysts, representing twenty-eight societies, plus two representatives from the American Psychoanalytic Foundation and two consultants, were seated around a large table to begin orientation and training as members of the newly formed Strategic Marketing Network. Lee Zacharias, who conducted all the external focus groups as consultant to the project, had just finished presenting the results of the focus group research conducted nationwide on patient and referral source populations.
The participants had just seen a video of our non-analyst mental health colleagues talking about us. Zacharias's voice broke the silence. “I want you to remain silent for a moment longer and focus on what you are feeling,” she said.
When she opened a discussion, I expected to hear responses moderating the effects of the difficult material just presented. I could have fully appreciated challenges to the validity of the research, for example, or interpretations of the research subjects' resistance to psychoanalysis. Instead, the responses around the room — and everyone wanted to say something—had the quality of a long sigh of relief. In effect, the group said, “At some level we've known this all along, but we haven't been able to talk about it.”
Photo by Mervin Stewart
In addition to giving us information about how to shape our messages, our non-analyst colleagues gave us something quite surprising and disturbing — though much more important and useful. Instead of mere information, we got, in effect, an interpretation. We found out that other mental health professionals actually knew a lot more about psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts than we anticipated.
Glenn E. Good, Ph.D., chairs the Strategic Marketing Committee.
We learned it wasn't so much that they didn't like psychoanalysis as that they didn't like us. Across the country, professionals told us why our messages aren't being heard in the first place, and why they probably won't be heard until we make some changes.
Part of the APsaA meetings in New Orleans in May, the workshop had begun two hours earlier with a review of the first three phases of the Strategic Marketing Project: the internal focus groups conducted one year earlier in Chicago; the strategic marketing survey, which collected data on analytic patients and their referral sources in January; and the focus groups conducted across the country in April to test and refine the messages defined in Chicago.
The thirty-six individuals seated around the table in the Fairmont Hotel that Wednesday morning were launching the fourth phase of the project, the Strategic Marketing Network. The network was designed to provide local societies with expertise in promoting psychoanalysis.
As the analysts talked after viewing the video, the mood changed from a profound, heavy, depressive silence to an energetic, creative, enthusiastic discussion. I realized that the process I witnessed that morning had become familiar to me over the past year. I first saw it happen in the Chicago focus groups, where we moved in two hours from talking in abstract terms about the efficacy of psychoanalysis to spontaneous emotion as we put the life changing experiences of our patients into words. I saw it in Michigan when Zacharias moved our leaders from defending psychoanalytic principles to something we rarely do: putting into words the immensely gratifying experience of being a part of a transforming relationship. Now I was witnessing it again as the network discussion changed from despair at our reputation to a spirit of excitement and possibility as we began to put our organizational and professional problems into words.
“We learned it wasn't so much that they didn't like psychoanalysis as that they didn't like us. Across the country, professionals told us why our messages aren't being heard in the first place, and why they probably won't be heard until we make some changes.
The morning session of the workshop presented messages about psychoanalysis that were found from the research to be the most useful. The afternoon was structured to provide in vivo experience of talking about those messages with members of the press. Members of the network would return to their local societies equipped with tested effective messages and emerging new skills. Later that afternoon, Dottie Jeffries, our media consultant, with the assistance of a New Orleans reporter, led the group through effective exercises in writing op-ed pieces and letters to the editor, as well as training on how to conduct oneself effectively in an interview with a reporter. Sandra Walker, chair of the workshop, created realistic television interviews before lights and camera with network members.
The training program proceeded flawlessly, engaging the energies and creative minds of the new network members. The major surprise was the results of the referral source focus groups. The surprising results were undeniable. They had been duplicated in each section of the country among all of the mental health professions, and across all levels of training.
Your local network representatives returned from New Orleans with new knowledge and skills in talking and writing about psychoanalysis, and they have received the final focus group report. I urge you to give them an opportunity to present the results of the Strategic Marketing Project and to begin discussions at your society on how to improve your relationships with other mental health groups.
Having witnessed the beginnings of such discussions nationally and locally, I am encouraged by the potential benefit they can have on local and national organizational functioning. Like the effects of any good analytic interpretation, the news from our colleagues across the country, while difficult, provides a new foundation for hope. We began this project with the challenge of putting the psychoanalytic process into words. Now we face the challenge of putting our own profession-wide problems into words. If we can put it into words, we will change and our messages will be heard.