As I write my first column for TAP as BOPS chair, I thought it might be informative to compare my philosophy about the role of the Board and its chair in the life of the association with the larger world of psychoanalysis and my experience in my first forty days in my new office.
My service on various task forces and committees, including the Committee on Institutes, has taught me that standards and practices can never be static. Continuous self-appraisal is an appropriate standard for the Board and for its chair. To quote Ed Koch when he was mayor of New York City, “How am I doing?”
The American Psychoanalytic is strengthened by its unique way of serving and institutionalizing its values for educational excellence while serving the professional needs of a wide range of relatively similar-minded psychoanalyst members. As a combined membership and educational organization we are — and can continue to be — greatly effective in our outreach efforts to analysts and non-analysts and in advocating for our patients and our services in this challenging era of governmental and corporate involvement in health care. We demonstrate our sensitivity to the potential for conflicts resulting from our educational and membership tasks by structuring our association to focus these different duties within separate bodies in our organization. This helps to ensure that each perspective is amply considered within the APsaA and helps to preserve the public's trust.
At our meetings in New Orleans in May, both Board and Council approved the report of the Task Force on Education and Membership by wide margins. The report reaffirmed the APsaA's commitment to the model of membership/educational organization. It clarified areas where the Board is relatively autonomous within our structure and those in which it functions in an integral fashion in our deliberations. The task force's report envisions full voting rights for all active and affiliate members. By providing for relative budgetary autonomy and other procedures, it also recognizes the special circumstances required to insure that accrediting and certifying functions can take place independently and on their own terms.
The Board on Professional Standards has three complex roles to play within the association.
It is the representative body of institutes that develops a national consensus among our educators about standards.
It is a democratic body of national scope that oversees the application of those standards when it accredits institutes, certifies members, and supports the selection and progress of trainees, active members, and teaching faculty.
Finally, the Board elects its chair, whose duty, along with the BOPS secretary, is to represent psychoanalytic education at the highest echelon of our association.
BOPS is specifically charged with exclusively promoting educational values. The Board is a trustee of these educational values and has a duty to advocate for them. The officers and the Executive Council also have a duty toward educational and practice standards, but their charge is broader. The Board's deliberations in depth and their determinations should challenge the APsaA to include the educational perspective in every position and decision.
Our values, emphasizing inclusiveness, sound business and public relations considerations, and promoting the interests of our members, sometimes seem to conflict with our high clinical and educational standards. Both sets of values are vital to our membership and our profession. Both must be balanced in an organization that serves membership as well as accreditation and certification functions. This balancing is continuous and dynamic. There can never be a final point of equilibrium, since circumstances are always changing. I believe that the two perspectives enrich each other.
The Board on Professional Standards elects its chair as an officer of the APsaA on the Executive Committee and affirms the appointment of the secretary of the Board. The chair and secretary must speak knowledgeably and effectively for the Board on the Executive Committee and provide the educational perspective in all the committee's deliberations while keeping in mind the overall well-being of our association and its members.
Both chair and secretary must try to articulate the Board's perspective clearly and advocate a spirit of principled compromise. The chair is performing his or her duties successfully when cooperation and reasoned decisionmaking replace impasse, disharmony, and a “winners and losers” attitude. When conflict between components of the APsaA does arise, we should find ways to study the problem and obtain data to enable us to resolve the dispute thoughtfully and rationally.
While it is the Board that primarily develops standards for education, eligibility for membership, appointments of training analysts, accreditation of institutes, and certification of individuals, ultimately a wider consensus than the Board's must be achieved. In its public interest functions, the Board must be insulated but never insular.
BOPS has another set of responsibilities, not specifically mandated, that are shared with other bodies of the association including the Affiliate Council. The Board must be an advocate for our candidates and their careers as analysts. It has always been difficult to be a trainee, and it is particularly difficult now. Candidates are typically older than previous generations of candidates, with family and other responsibilities. They train in a culture of hostility toward long-term and in-depth treatment. Their professional lives must frequently be divided between analytic and non-analytic types of practice. The Board, by being sensitive to these matters, can aid candidates and recent graduates in achieving analytic knowledge, skills, and an analytic identity.
I see the role of BOPS chair as a presiding officer and representative of the Board and as a responsible officer on the Executive Committee. In my view, the chair should provide the kind of clarity and focus that serves the Board's open process of deliberation and decisionmaking. BOPS can fulfill its duties best when fellows are fully informed on an ongoing basis — ideally informed, actively participating, and empowered.
One of our most important initiatives is the activities of the Committee on Accreditation of Free-Standing Institutes. I have asked Eric Nuetzel to chair this committee. A consultative model promotes the best relations between the Board and institutes both within and currently outside the APsaA. I believe we can interest some institutes in APsaA accreditation while remaining consistent with our own established standards and without disadvantaging our current institutes. This model can aid all institutes by bringing ideas from one institute to
another, and by providing national support for complex decisions about standards and procedures. These decisions are hard to make when an institute and its leaders feel isolated and alone in their effort to serve their local community of colleagues.
A major duty of the BOPS chair is to nurture the work of Board committees and task forces. I am making efforts to recruit and appoint members to our committees and task forces who are capable and eager to serve. Our committees should represent the diversity of gender, race, region, and educational backgrounds within our institutes. Appointments should reflect ability and potential. We can never have enough qualified members who are interested in furthering their own growth through service to our association. I have learned in my first forty days that there is more work to be done than there are human and financial resources to accomplish it. I welcome nominations, including self-nomination, for membership in our committees and task forces.