The American Psychoanalytic reached a very significant milestone in its history with the recent passage of the by-laws amendments granting universal suffrage for all members, including our affiliate members, and allowing all full members to stand for national office and to serve on the Executive Council. This de-linkage process, which took more than thirty years, devoured hundreds of hours of debate and bruised many of its participants.
Why was this such a lengthy and bitter struggle among well-intentioned individuals? I believe it reflected a structural fault within the organization that tended to pit educational goals against membership issues, when in fact the two are complementary. This flawed construction had more to do with power relationships than with competition between goals.
Fortunately, the joint task force that proposed these changes also offered recommendations that have been adopted to clarify the mutually synergistic and collaborative relationship between the Board on Professional Standards and the Executive Council, in the form of a procedural code now being developed. While these actions will not solve all questions with both membership and educational aspects, it does declare the spirit with which we should address them and suggests mechanisms for doing so.
The de-linkage schism took its toll on both the APsaA and its members. The association suffered as it became viewed as an elitist organization; the Board's reputation suffered in the eyes of many in and outside the association; and the ill will generated has left its mark on the certification process, in spite of its significant evolution over the past decade. The APsaA also lost the good will and services of many members and would-be members who turned away because of what they felt to be elitism and high-handed treatment.
As the Certification Committee has learned, an outdated negative image is not easily overcome, and the APsaA will have to continue to struggle against its “in group/out group,” “top-down” image as we move forward. We need not feel defensive, but we must meet this bias with a demonstration of openness and vitality.
We can begin with “inreach” to our own members by actively seeking involvement and participation. Leon Hoffman will be reorienting the Membership Committee to seek members' suggestions, criticisms, and involvement. Our committees will more actively seek new participants recruited from all of our membership, irrespective of geography and seniority.
We will also need to develop future leadership. The primary sources of leaders are local societies and institutes, where future leaders acquire experience and develop skills in a wide range of areas. They bring to the national association their expertise, ideas, and enthusiasm, all vitally needed as we expand our mission. Hence this emphasis also includes “inreach” to our societies and institutes — not to deprive them of their resources but to contribute to their development. Experience at the national level always pays dividends at the local level.
This inreach should be complemented by outreach to analysts and analytic organizations previously ignored. In doing so we can emphasize the importance of shared analytic values as well as shared standards. Such an approach may counter our judgmental, exclusionary past and the hurts it engendered.
Our outreach to new groups and new members will be the first challenge for the new Board-Council alliance envisioned in the task force's recommendations. The earlier education-membership split was a hindrance, often depleting our organizational energy in internecine struggles while critical problems were neglected.
The decline in psychoanalytic practice represents such a problem, one that threatens our future. Our marketing project has uncovered some disturbing facts about the images of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts, both in the eyes of the general public and among members of our neighboring professions. We are caught in old stereotypes, which our previous behavior did little to correct.
While the marketing committee is still developing its recommendations, it is already evident we have much to do in terms of providing up-to-date public and professional information. We have benefited notably from our increased visibility in the community and the media, but old stereotypes die hard. We can also educate our own members about this problem and methods to correct it.
We should consider our image among fellow professionals and extend our outreach beyond psychoanalytic groups to the other mental health professions. We need to develop visibility at the meetings of national psychiatric, psychological, and social work associations. We need a greater presence on the faculty and in the training programs in psychology, psychiatry, and social work in order to advance the training and practice of psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy, not only in universities and training centers but also in the community. The psychotherapy training programs of our societies and institutes have a key role to play. The APsaA can lend its support to these programs as it has to our psychoanalytic training programs.
Child analysis represents our most underutilized asset. Raising the profile of child analysis within the association will allow us to demonstrate our important contributions to child development and child welfare. We should emphasize the contributions of child analysis and child analysts to the understanding and management of the serious problems facing children growing up in our current culture. A new committee has just been formed to address these challenges.
As our agenda has expanded, our administrative and governance structure has become increasingly burdened by proliferating tasks. Ours is a volunteer organization, and our members contribute thousands of hours per year to our many activities. Our Central Office staff has contributed valiantly to these efforts, but they also are feeling the strain of overextension. We will need to re-examine our operations, streamline them where possible, and expand them where necessary.
For all these activities we need a vigorous, growing, and involved membership. Our opportunities for the future are vast. Psychoanalysis is alive and thriving in the American Psychoanalytic Association.